The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1872-03-02
2niscellaneoms.
From Scribner's Monthly for March,
The chesapeake Peninsula

! Shore of Maryland were our three peninsulas
of the lost and the vague, until Thoreau
| Roosevelt, and the newspaper tourists shed
| light upon the former two. a like senSiee is
I vet to be rendered to the larger, more populous
| and in many respects more quaintand venera-
ble strip of Maryland, which is inclosed be
| tween the Chesapeake and the ocean. In point
of ter-scenery, it is the Puget-Sound country
| of the Atlantic, pierced with broad, navigable
arborescent bays and rivers, almost as iruity
in The salt delicacies of shell fish and wild
| fowl as are their shores with orchards OF peach
and groves of nuts and berries The loamy
sometimes sandy soil is varied by long aisles
of pond and brackish sound or bayou, whose
humid vegetation is strong and stately in cy-
! press, gum, or hemlock forests. The dozen OF
| twenty fishing or courthouse towns are larger
and more characteristic than the Maryland
settlements on the Western Shore, and several
| of them possess attractions for the traveller in
| old-church, manor-house, and mill architec-
| ture. and in picturesque groupings of forms
and angles not current in thoroughfare parts
of erica,--bridges broken roofs. and queer
river-craft blended in atmospheres which, at
sunsets and twilight, are of exquisite Sottness
or splendor; while, locked away for two hun
dred years in this forgotten nook, the people
/ generally retain purity Of English blood and
spirited natures entirely compatible with pro
vincialsms of speech and manner, and amusing
/
of the thirteen Colonies and parts OF two others,
are comprehended between the head and the
| Capes of the Chesapeake.
| The typical Delawarean is robust, easy
going, l0lling compound of Swedish, Finnish
| Dutch, Huguenot, Welsh, and English stock,
shut out from the enterprising lite of the sea
| by want of harbors and commerce, inhabiting
flat land of sluggish creeks, good farms, and
tracts of low forest, and, except in the northern
county of New Castle, he seldom passes the
| plane of village ,Epieureanism and inoffensive
| "cleverness." John NJ. Clayton, for time
President Taylors Secretary of State, and
| Lorenzo Thomas, for shorter time President
| Johnson's Secretary of War, were Delaware
| types.
| The two counties Of Virginia east of the
/ Chesapeake, although in a high state of pro-
! ductiveness compared to their worn out kins-
men across the bay, maintain in other respects
! the Old Dominion character-pride ofState and
opinion, personal bearing, and the capacity of
ready discipline and public spirit. From these
/ counties came Henry A. Wise, and that Custis
! family whose fortunes were interviewer with
| Washington's.
The Eastern Marylander is the Virginian
without his institutions and dogmatsm. The
| seed of Quakerism and Wesleyanism success
! sively fell upon kindly soil in these old and
hospitable counties, softening society, and in
| toning it to consonance with the surrounding
| gentle scenery the establishments of church
and estate magistracy abated their claims in
| the presence of so cordial a democracy, and
| Methodism kept ariStocracy at bay, not less by
the energy of its circuit preachers than by the
55to1, Ii3i;" g:cscc:;t itSs::t.ss =yrh II
The landholders, whose roomy residences, built
of English brick-the ballast of their return
ing produce vessels-still beautify the banks
of the Wye and the Choptank, have lived to
see the dissenters' chapels flourish above their
Il rieh oh,1 rio al
grave stones, and in some cases the usurper
has not only appropriated the tithes but also
the ritual. The Methodsts of Cam bridge have
decorated their pulpit with the cipher |. II. S.
and the Roman Cross and introduced choris-
ters and responses into the service.
To visit the Peninsula most expeditiously
before the reforming era has quite remodeled
it, one must leave the great southern railway
line at Wilmington, the metropolis of the
Peninsula-a rattling town of mills and ship
yards, now nearly of the population of Phila-
delphia at the Revolution, and possessing the
only daily newspapers of the whole region.
Here, in the cleft between two small rivers
one of fine water power and the other naviga-
ble-was the capital of Swedish America, kept
in green remembrance to this day by one
picturesque church which obtained its pastors
from the Bishop of Upsala, nearly to the date
of our Independence.
In the environs is the College of Newark, the
alma mater of the Peninsula, with prepara-
tory department of above a century's uninter-
rupted usefulness and at New Castle is one of
the three whipping-posts and pillories which
remain in the United States, where the State
of Delaware is fogged and egged in the esteem
of the nation after every term of court.
The creeks which rise in the Pennsylvania
hills come dashing down by many mill-dam,
and the Brandywine ceases its active life just
at Wilmington, by feeding one of the most
picturesque and elderly series of grist-mills i'll
the country. They are built of stone in the
old style, with bent roofs and many tiers OF
windows, and packet-vessels ascend in deep
water to take cargo beneath their caves, with
in sound of the tumbling rapids which move
their wheels. Even in Washington's admin
stration these toiling houses ground 100000
bushels of grain year, when the town was
half q century old. Wilmington is now rich
city, almost monopolizing iron ship-building,
and turning out prodigious quantities OF car
riages, railway-cars, machinery, and leather.
In the vicinity are the largest powder-mills in
the world founded by the Huguenot family of
Dupont, and paper-mills, and wooden and cot
ton mills, admirable in capacity and construc
ton. The Swedish church is an exquisite OBJ
ect, buried up in ivy and gravestones, and the
traditions of the place go back to the daughter
of Gustavus Adolphus, and the conquests OF
Petrus Stuyvesant. Marcus Hook, a few miles
up the river, was originally a Finnish settle
ment, and the descendants of Swede and Finn
are numerous round about
''Ther old names writ in English ways,
In English prayers their Swedish praise"
The monument to Cunning Bedford COM
mander of the Delaware line in the Revou-
ton, and the Welsh Tract Meeting house of
what are called "Hard-shell Baptists" in the
vicinity, give some idea of the mingled refine
ment and hard simplicity of these North Del
aware elements.
Between Wilmington and the head of the
Chesapeake the ground is the historic scene of
Washington's maneuvers to arrest the march
of Howe upon Philadelphia, and the eminences
which force apart the waters of the Chesapeake
and Delaware were picket and signal posts, not
only in that cam paign, but when at q later date
the armies moved southwark in pursuit Of Ar
mold and Corvallis The Hudson's palisaded
scenery is not stronger than the Susquehanna's
at Port Deposit, where its deep and rocky
breadth com presses that numbering mart to a
narrow beach at the foot of a preci pice exposed
to annual freshets and the Wow from Havre
de Grace of the broad Chesapeake and the blue
tablets of the distant mountains OF Elk Neck is
of such soft nobility that some have Iamented
the Federal capital was not set there. Here,
in the limpid nights, hundred lamps often
dot the surface of the bay, where the shad and
herring fleet row with their seines and gillnets
and at dawn the hocks of the North recall the
apostrophe =
ssWise is the wild duck, wnging straight to thee,
River of Summer !! from the cold Arctic sea
Coming, like his fathers for centuries to seek
The sweet, salt pastures of the far Chesapeake"
At Elkton, the home of Postmaster General
Creswell,-a very old town of large brick
houses, on the edge of marshes and under hills,
the pennsuar tourist may choose his route,
either to descend the roads of Delaware or the
parallel highway system of Maryland.
The towns of Delaware are sometimes quaint
but seldom busy, and are often inhabited by a
social life superior to their apparent resources.
Women of spirit, and young men ofgentle man
\ ners, with frequent instances personal beauty
in both sexes, relieve the lstless by-streets,
and fine old men and women, courteously in
quistive as to strangers, suggest authorities for
neighborhood traditions and humorous studies
| in human nature. The inns are almost inva-
riably poor ; for nobody goes to tavern who
can rely upon good introduction, acquaintance,
or even fair appearance. The railroad runs
through the State like seam, and has created
several new and sprightly towns, called
generally after State folk or railway digntaries,
| and the inns in these cases are often kept by
] Pannsvlvanians of German descent. OF the