The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-07-18
A New AtIantis.-A Sea. Horn Common.
wealth.

And here let us be INDUCED with few
words about section of our great CONT
nent which has never been sung in rhyme,
and which it is almost matter of course to
treat disparaginglv. A cheap and thread
bare popular joke, assigns the Delaware
river as the eastern boundary of the United
States of America, and defines the out
landers whose homes lie between that
current and.the Atlantic ocean as foreigners,
liberians, and we know not what. Scarcely
more of an exile was Victor Hugo, sitting
on the shores Of Old Jersey, than is the
denizen Of Ne,c Jersey when he brings in
his half-sailor costume and his beach
learned manners into contrast with the thrift
and hardness Of the neighboring common
wealth. The native of the alluvium is an
other being from the native of the great
mineral state. But, by the very reason
of this difference, there is a strange soft
charm that comes over our thoughts of
the younger Jersey when we have done
laughing at it. That broad, pale peninsula,
built of shells and crystal-dust, which
droops toward the south like some vast
tropical leaf, and spreads its two edges
toward the fresh and salt waters, enerva-
ted with drouth and sunshine-that flat
leaf of land has characteristics that are al
most Oriental. To make it the sea heay-
ed up her breast, and showed the whiten-
ed sides against which her tides were
beating. To walk upon it is in a sense
to walk upon the bottom of the ocean.
Here are strange marls, the relics of
infinite animal life, into which has sunk
the lizard or the dragoon Of anti
quity-the gigantic Hadrosaaas, who
cranes his snaky throat at us in the
museum, swelling. with the tale of imme-
mortal times when he weltered here in the
sunny ooze. The country is a mighty
steppe, but not deprived of trees the lick
clothes it with its set, dark foliage, and the
endless woods of pine, sand-planted, strew
over that boundless beach a murmur like
the sea. The edibles it bears are of the
quaintest and most individual kinds; the
cranberry is its native condiment, full of
individuality, unknown to Europe, beauti-
full as carbuncle, wild as Tartar belle,
and rife with a subacid irony that is like
the wit Of Heine. Here is the palate douce,
with every kind of sweet f1eshed gourd
that loves to CAD along the sand-the citron
in its carved net, and the enormous melon,
carnation-colored within and dark-green to
blackness outside. The peaches here are
golden-pulped, as if trying to be
oranges, and are richly bitter, with
dark hint of prussic acid, fas-
cinating the taste like some enchanress
of Venice, the pursuit of whom is made
piquant by fancy that she may poison
you. The farther you penetrate this huge
idle peninsula, the more of its idiosyncrasy
is borne in on your mind Infinite hori-
IONS San everlasting wash of air. the
wild pure warmth of Arabia, and heated
iungles of dwarf oaks balancing balmy
plantations of pine. Then toward the sea,
the wiry grasses that dry into g salt hay''
begin to dispute possession with the forest,
and finally support them; the sand is blown
into coasthills, whose crests send off into
every gale a foam of flying dust, and which
themselves change shape, under pressure
of the same winds, with slower imitation
of the waves. Finally, by the gentlest of
transition, the deserts and the quicksands
become the ocean.
The shores melt into the sea by a net
work of creeks and inlets, edging the terri
tory (as the flying osprey sees III with an
lnimitable lace work ofazare water; the pat
tern is one of looping channels with oval in
terstices, and the dentellated border of the
commonwealth resembles that sort of lace
which was made by arranging on glass the
food Of silk-spinnng worm; the creature
ate and wove, having voracity always be-
fore him and Fine Art behind him. Much
of the solder part of the state is made of
the materials which enter into glass manu-.
facture mighty enchanter might fuse
the greater portion of it into one
gigantic goblet. A slight approximation
to this work of magic is already being car
red on. The tourist who has crossed the
lagoons of Venice to see the fitful lights
flash up from the glass furnaces OF Mura-
no, will find more than one locality here
where leaping lights, browning low banks
of sand, are preparing the crystal for our
infant industries in glass, and will remind
him of his hours by the Adriatic. Every
year bubbles of greater and greater beauty
are being blown in these secluded places,
and soon we hope to enrich commerce
with all the elegances of latticinio and
schmelze, the perfect glass of an Ameri-
can Venlce.--FTom A Neao Atlantis. in
LippincoH's Magazine.
ANNUAL SESSION OF THE GRAND