possible, by conferring upon him the power to select for this Federal city the locality he had in prophetic fancy chosen as a suitable site for the capital of the Republic.
In the act passed July 16, 1790, Congress expressed its faith in the President by permitting him to establish the capital anywhere along the Potomac between the East Branch and the Conogocheague, a distance of eighty miles. The boundaries of no other city were ever fixed by so illustrious a surveyor. It is recorded that, as he walked over the wilderness with his engineering instruments and corps, he was harassed by the "importunities of anxious residents and grasping speculators," but not for a moment did he waver in his purpose to select the site whose majesty had appealed to him in former years as a fitting environment for the Federal home. Within nine months the confines of the federal territory were established. The corner-*stone was laid with appropriate ceremonies at Jones's Point, Alexandria, April 15, 1791, but the territory west of the river was retroceded to Virginia in 1846. Not a cent was advanced by Congress for buildings or grounds. In fact, with an empty treasury
