The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1872-03-02

port-towns built upon the Delaware or some OF
the slow tidal creeks WI ich empty into it.,
Newcastle shows the most lecay,-once great
| ferry slip between North md South, and the
first stronghold ON the Delaware for both
Swede and Dutchman, now merely jail and
pllory- place for its county, and rusty and lazy
when the court-week is done Delaware City
was long the shipping port for Delaware
peaches, and it still derives some Importance
from the Chesapeake Canal, of which it is the
outlet from Fort Delaware, which stands OPP
posite upon low island in the channel and
from railway which will soon join it to Penn
syivania Deutschland; Smyrna and Milford
are fourishing grain markets, running packet
and freight boats to Philadelphia Lewes,
called for the English shire town of the county
for which its own is named is the old terminus
of new rail way, ,sand it sustains a steamship
line to New York around Cape May; it is a
village upon sand heap, made of clap pboarded
houses, s,-often the homes of pilots or seafaring
men,-and with some pretenses to be wa ter
ing place. One old Episcopal church, sur
rounded by many gravestones, some of people
wrecked off the Capes of the Delaware, will de-
tain the traveller for half ali hour while, nearly
a mile across salty plain, the lamps of Cape
Henlopen are seen to cap the SUBMITS of q
mighty hill of sand which has blown over the
tallest boles of former forest and buried them
alive. Here is the great breakwater of stone,
in almost continuous progress under our govern
ment for more than a third of century,
where ea-going vessels, colliers, and coasters
can safely run in from impending storms be-
tween Highland Light and Hampton Roads,
about three hundred miles. In time of calm
this breakwater is nothing merely two long,
rough sea walls of toppled stone, raised we'll
above the surface of the waves, and supporting
the hut of lamplighter. Standing at Henlo-
pen Light in the calm, few sails are seen to
saunter in the ofing, like listless females on
promenade, and the mind of the beholder as
he gazes toward the tall white tower of Cape
May, twelve miles across the ripples, can con-
jure up. no thoughts more direful than of sly
pirates in the olden time, stealing in through
these Capes from bloody voyages in the rig of
quiet merchantmen, sending perhaps yawl
ashore by night to bury their guilty treasures,
and afterward tack up the great South river"
to dock demurely at Philadelphia. But when
the black spot of the distant storm stands up
on the horizon like Eljah's signal and the old
gossps at Lewes run out their telescopes and
look sagaciously ere they make their wagers
on the interval before the blow, the water-line
is pierced by topsails peeping up from the deep,
and barques and schooners crowding sail for
refuge. They rise from every point of the wa
ter line and stand in for these friendly piers,
where sometimes hundreds of ships, brigs,
three-mas!ed schooners, pungies aud bay-boats
Ile CoSelhe:, spars ehlAhgie"' inc NdS1 Fodu-
stead scarcely equal to its necessities, and on
one side the Atlantic, writhing in the grip OF
the Storm howls against the breakwater and
dashes over it while on the other the old, un-
changing town of Lewes-the Plymouth of the
races of our Middle States, settled almost con-
tinuously since 1868, once worthy of British
bombardment, and now unable either to rise or
to perish-blinks out at the commerce which
is so near and yet so far. These capes were the
Highland lights, the pillars of Hercules, to
American mariners, as long as Philadelphia
kept commercial supremacy past them sail
ed Blackboard and Decatur, and the long line
of privateers and heroes which made the sea
grim with legends, but softened its wrinkles to
acknowledgment of another state and type of
men. To this day the Delaware scenery, river
craft, and river folk keep res emblances to their
antitypes of the Schelde, the Mas, and the
Elbe =