AMERICA - Joel Cook

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adjoining the regular ship channel, some distance to the northward. Delaware Bay divides the States of Delaware and New Jersey. The first settlement in Delaware was made by the Dutch near Lewes in 1630, but the Indians destroyed the colony; and in 1638 a colony of Swedes and Finns came out under the auspices of the Swedish West India Company, landed and named Cape Henlopen, and purchased from the Indians all the land from there up to the falls at Trenton, finally locating their fort near the mouth of Christiana Creek, and naming the country Nya Sveriga, or New Sweden. The Swedes and Dutch quarrelled about their respective rights until New York was taken by the English in 1664, after which England controlled. The first settlement in New Jersey was made by Captains Mey and Jorisz in 1623, who built the Dutch Fort Nassau a short distance below Philadelphia; but it did not last.

      Delaware Bay is an expansive inland sea, subject to fierce storms, and broadening on its eastern side into Maurice River Cove, noted for its oysters. A deep ship channel conducts commerce through the centre of the bay, marked by lighthouses built out on mid-bay shoals, and, as the shores approach, by range lights on the banks, the Delaware Bay and River being regarded as the best marked and lighted stream in the country. Up at the head of the bay, years ago, a ship loaded with peas and beans sank, and this in time made at first a shoal, and afterwards an island, since known as the "Pea Patch." Here and on the adjacent shores the Government has lately erected formidable forts, which make, with their torpedo stations in the channel, a complete system of defensive works in the Delaware, first put into active occupation during the Spanish War of 1898, as a protection against a hostile fleet entering the river. Over in the "Diamond State" of Delaware, near here, on the river shore, is the aged town of Newcastle, quiet and yet attractive, having in operation, and evidently to the popular satisfaction, the whipping-post and stocks, a method of punishment which is a terror to all evil-doers, and is said to be most successful in preventing crime, as thieves and marauders give Newcastle a wide berth. This was originally a Swedish settlement, the standard of the great Gustavus Adolphus being unfurled there in 1640, when it was called Sandhuken, or Sandy Hook, it being a point of land jutting out between two little creeks. The Dutch soon captured it, changing the name to New Amstel; and about 1670 the settlement, then containing nearly a hundred houses, became New Castle, under English auspices. The northern boundary of the State of Delaware, dividing it from Pennsylvania, is an arc of a circle, made by a radius of twelve miles described around the old Court House at Newcastle, which still has in its tower the bell presented by Queen Anne.

      MASON AND DIXON'S LINE.

      In coming over by railroad from the Chesapeake to the Delaware, the train, after crossing the broad Susquehanna and the head of Elk, and rounding in Maryland the Northeast Arm of Chesapeake Bay, soon enters the State of Delaware near the northeastern corner of the former State. This corner is at the termination of the crescent-shaped northern boundary of Delaware. The northern boundary of Maryland here beginning and laid down due west, to separate it from Pennsylvania, is the famous "Mason and Dixon's Line," surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two noted English mathematicians and astronomers in the eighteenth century. This boundary gained great notoriety because it so long marked the northern limit of slavery in the United States. For almost a century there were conflicts about their respective limits between the rival proprietaries of the two States, producing sometimes riot and bloodshed, until, in 1763, these men were brought over from England, and in December began laying out the line on the parallel of latitude 39° 43' 26.3" North. They were at the work several years, surveying the line two hundred and forty-four miles west from the Delaware River, and within thirty-six miles of the entire distance to be run, when the French and Indian troubles began, and they were attacked and driven off, returning to Philadelphia in December, 1767. At the end of every fifth mile a stone was planted, graven with the arms of the Penn family on one side and of Lord Baltimore on the other. The intermediate miles were marked by smaller stones, having a P on one side and an M on the other, all the stones thus used for monuments being sent out from England. After the Revolution, in 1782, the remainder of the line was laid down, and in 1849 the original surveys were revised and found substantially correct.

      When the little colony of Swedes and Finns under Peter Minuet came into Christiana Creek in April, 1638, and established their fort, they began the first permanent settlement in the valley of the Delaware. It was built upon a small rocky promontory, and they named it Christina, in honor of the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. The Dutch afterwards captured it and called it Fort Altena; but the town retained part of the original name in Christinaham, and the creek also retained the name, the English taking possession in 1664. The Swedes, however, regardless of the flag that might wave over them, still remained; and their old stone church, built in 1698, still stands, down near the promontory by the waterside, in a yard filled with time-worn gravestones. This old Swedes' Church of the Holy Trinity, the oldest now on the Delaware, was dedicated on Trinity Sunday, 1699, and Rev. Ericus Tobias Biorck came out from Sweden to take charge as rector. It was sixty by thirty feet and twenty feet high, and a little bell tower was afterwards added. The ancient church was recently thoroughly restored to its original condition, with brick floor, oaken benches, and stout rafters supporting the roof. This interesting church building is in a factory district which is now part of Wilmington, the chief city of Delaware, a busy manufacturing community of sixty-five thousand people, built on the Christiana and Brandywine Creeks, which unite about a mile from the Delaware. This active city was laid out above the old settlement, in 1731, by William Shipley, who came from Leicestershire, England. Ships, railway cars and gunpowder are the chief manufactures of Wilmington. The Brandywine Creek, in a distance of four miles, terminating in the city, falls one hundred and twenty feet, providing a great water power. Up this stream are the extensive Dupont powder-mills, among the largest in the world, founded by the French statesman and economist, Pierre Samuel Du Pont De Nemours, who, after the vicissitudes of the French Revolution, migrated with his family to the United States in 1799, and was received with distinguished consideration. He afterwards was instrumental in securing the treaty of 1803 by which France ceded Louisiana, and was in the service of Napoleon, but finally returned to America, where his sons were conducting the powder-works, and he died near Wilmington in 1817. Admiral Samuel Francis Dupont, of the American Navy, was his grandson. Farther up the Brandywine Creek, at Chadd's Ford and vicinity, was fought, in September, 1777, the battle of the Brandywine, where the English victory enabled them to subsequently take possession of Philadelphia.

      WILLIAM PENN.

      Above Wilmington, the Delaware River is a noble tidal stream of about a mile wide, flowing between gently sloping shores, and carrying an extensive commerce. The great river soon brings us to the famous Quaker settlements of Pennsylvania. William Penn, who had become a member of the Society of Friends, was bequeathed by his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, an estate of £1500 a year and large claims against the British Government. Fenwick and Byllinge, both Quakers, who had proprietary rights in New Jersey, disputed in 1674, and submitted their difference to Penn's arbitration. He decided in favor of Byllinge, who subsequently became embarrassed, and made over his property to Penn and two creditors as trustees. This seems to have turned Penn's attention to America as a place of settlement for the persecuted Quakers, and he engaged with zeal in the work of colonization, and in 1681 obtained from the king, for himself and heirs, in payment of a debt of £16,000 due his father, a patent for the territory now forming Pennsylvania, on the fealty of the annual payment of two beaver skins. He wanted to call his territory New Wales, as many of the colonists came from there, and afterwards suggested Sylvania as specially applicable to a land covered with forests; but the king ordered the name Pennsylvania inserted in the grant, in honor, as he said, of his late friend the Admiral. In February, 1682, Penn, with eleven others, purchased West Jersey, already colonized to some extent. Tradition says that some of these West Jersey colonists sent Penn a sod in which was planted a green twig, to show that he owned the land and all that grew upon it. Next they presented him with a dish full of water, because he was master of the seas and rivers; and then they gave him the keys, to show he was in command and had all the power.

      Penn's Letitia Street House, Removed to Fairmount Park

      When William Penn was granted his province, he wrote that "after many waitings,

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