Wilmington daily commercial. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1866-1877, 1872-02-19

tidal creek which empty into it, New Castle
shows the most decay, ,--once great ferry slip
between North and South, and the first strong
hold ON the Delaware for both Swede and Dutch
man, now merely jail and pillory-place for it's
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 opposite upon low island in the
channel and from a railway which will soon
join it to Pennsylvania Deutschland +; Smyrna
and Milford are tiourishing grain markets, run
ming 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 a new railway, and 1t sustains
steamship line to New York around Cape May
II is a village upon sand-heap, made OF clap
boarded houses,-often the homes of pilots or
seafarng men, and with some pretenses to be
watering place. One old Episcopal church, sur
rounded by many gravestones, some of people
wrecked of the Capes OF the Delaware, will de-
tain the traveller for half an hour, while, nearly
mile across q salty plain, the lamps of Cape
Henopen are seen to cap the summit Of
mighty hill Of sand which has blown over the
tallest boes of former forest and buried them
alive. Here is the great brakewater Of stone,
still unfinished, although the work has been
in almost continuous progress under our gov
ernment for more than third of a century,
where sea-going vessels, and coasters can safely
run in from impending storms between Highland
Light and Hampton Roads, about three bundled
miles. In time of calm this breakwater is moth
ing merely two long, rough sea-walls
of toppled stone, raised well above
the surface Of the waves, and supporting
the hut of a lamplighter. Standing at
Henlopen 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 coniure
npno thoughts more direful than Of sly pirates in
the olden time, stealing in through these Capes
from bloody voyages in the rig of quiet mer-
chantmen, sending perhaps yawl ashore by
night to bury their treasures and afterward tack
up the great South river" to dock demurely at
Philadelphia But when the black spot upon the
distant storm stands up ON the horizon like Eli
out their telescopes aud look sagaciously ere
they make their wagers on the interval before
the blow, the water-line is pierced by top-sails
peeping up from the deep, and barques and
schooners crowding sail for refuge. They rise
from every point of the water line and stand in
for these friendly piers, where sometimes hun
dreds of ships, brigs, three-masted schoone rs,
punges and bay boats lie together. spars entan-
gled the vast roadstead scarcely equal to its
necessities, and one side the Atlantic, writhing
in the grip of the storm, howles against the
breakwater and dashes over it while on the
other the old unchangng towN OF Lewes--the
Plymouth OF the races of our Middle States, set
tied almost continuously since 1885, once worthy
of British bombardment, and now unable either
to rise or to perish-bnks out at the COM
merce which is 80 near and yet 30 far.