The description of this region sent to England by the intrepid fur trader attracted, in 1660, a party of emigrants who founded homes in the Maryland forests and meadows, fought or bargained for advantage with the Indians, and soon reduced to ruin the rude huts of their primitive capital. Husbandry invaded their domains and corn and wheat crops were grown. It looked as if romance had fled to remoter forests, and that henceforth that portion of the New World now the capital city of the United States would be given over to the "homely joys and destiny obscure" of emigrant farmers and their heirs.
For more than a hundred years the only record these humble settlers gave the outside world was that they had found the soil productive and that their farms were bordered by a majestic river on which white swan floated in innumerable flocks.
It was reserved for the father of the American Republic to discover that from the time of the original occupation of the region this simple colony of wood-choppers and ploughmen had cherished a reputed prophecy made in 1663 that this locality would, in the course of destiny, become the renowned capital of a great nation.
