There Are Said
To Be Over Sixty Thousand Acres Of Land On The
Peninsula Planted With Peach-Trees, Which Are
Estimated To Be Worth Fifty Dollars Per Acre, Or
Three Million Dollars.
To harvest this crop
requires at least twenty-five thousand men, women,
and children.
The planting of an acre of
peach-trees, and its cultivation to maturity, costs from
thirty to forty dollars. The canners take a large
portion of the best peaches, which are shipped
to foreign as well as to domestic markets.
The low lands and river-shores of the
peninsula exhale malaria which attacks the inhabitants
in a mild form of ague. During the spring,
summer, and early fall months, a prudent man
will not expose himself to the air until after
the sun has risen and dispelled the mists of
morning. The same caution should be observed
all through the low regions of the south, both
as to morning and evening exercise. Chills and
fever are the bane of the southern and middle
states, as this disease affects the health and
elastic vigor of the constitution, and also
produces great mental depression. Yet those who
suffer, even on every alternate day, from chills,
seem to accept the malaria as nothing of much
importance; though it is a well-known fact that
this form of intermittent fever so reduces the
strength, that the system is unable to cope with
other and more dangerous diseases for which it
paves the way.
Upon a little creek, tributary to St. Martin's
River, and near its confluence with the Isle of
Wight Bay, a long day's pull from the swamp of
Love Creek, was the old plantation home of a
friend of my boyhood, Mr. Taylor, who about
this time was looking out for the arrival of the
paper canoe. It was a question whether I could
descend Love Creek three miles, cross Rehoboth
and Indian River sounds, ascend White's Creek,
make a portage to Little Assawaman Bay, thread
the thoroughfare west of Fenwick's Island Light,
cross the Isle of Wight Bay, ascend and cross St.
Martin's River to Turval's Creek, and reach the
home of my friend, all in one day. But I
determined to attempt the task. Mr. Webb roused his
family at an early hour, and I rowed down Love
Creek and crossed the shallow waters of
Rehoboth Bay in the early part of the day.
From Cape Henlopen, following the general
contour of the coast, to Cape Charles at the
northern entrance of Chesapeake Bay, is a
distance of one hundred and thirty-six miles; from
Cape Charles across the mouth of Chesapeake
Bay to Cape Henry is thirteen miles; from
Henlopen south, the state of Delaware occupies
about twenty miles of the coast; the eastern
shore of Maryland holds between thirty and
forty miles, while the eastern shore of Virginia,
represented by the counties of Accomac and
Northampton, covers the peninsula to Cape
Charles.
Commencing at Rehoboth Bay, a small boat
may follow the interior waters to the Chesapeake
Bay. The watercourses of this coast are
protected from the rough waves of the ocean by
long, narrow, sandy islands, known as beaches,
between which the tides enter. These passages
from the sea to the interior waters are called
inlets, and most of them are navigable for
coasting vessels of light draught. These inlets are so
influenced by the action of storms, and their
shores and locations are so changed by them,
that the cattle may graze to-day in tranquil
happiness where only a generation ago the old skipper
navigated his craft. During June of the year
1821 a fierce gale opened Sandy Point Inlet with
a foot depth of water, but it closed in 1831.
Green Point Inlet was cut through the beach
during a gale in 1837, and was closed up seven
years later. Old Sinepuxent Inlet, which was
forced open by the sea more than sixty years
ago, closed in 1831. These three inlets were
within a space of three miles, and were all north
of Chincoteague village. Green Run Inlet,
which had a depth of about six feet of water for
nearly ten years, also closed after shifting half a
mile to the south of its original location. The
tendency of inlets on this coast is to shift to the
southward, as do the inlets on the coast of New
Jersey.
Oystermen, fishermen, and farmers live along
the upland, and in some cases on the island
beaches. From these bays, timber, firewood,
grain, and oysters are shipped to northern ports.
The people are everywhere kind and hospitable
to strangers. A mild climate, cheap and easily
worked soils, wild-fowl shooting, fine oysters and
fishing privileges, offer inducements to
Northerners and Europeans to settle in this country;
the mild form of ague which exists in most
of its localities being the only objection. While
debating this point with a native, he attacked my
argument by saying:
"Law sakes! don't folks die of something,
any way? If you don't have fever 'n' ague round
Massachusetts, you've got an awful lot of things
we hain't got here - a tarnashun sight wuss ones,
too; sich as cumsempsun, brown-critters, mental
spinageetis, lung-disease, and all sorts of
brownkill disorders. Besides, you have such awful
cold winters that a farmer has to stay holed four
months out of the year, while we folks in the
south can work most of the time out of doors.
I'll be dog-goned if I hadn't ruther live here in
poverty than die up north a-rolling in riches.
Now, stranger, as to what you said about
sickness, why we aren't no circumstance to you
fellows up north. Why, your hull country is
chuckfull of pizenous remedies. When I was a-coasting
along Yankeedom and went ashore, I found
all the rocks along the road were jist kivered
with quack-medicine notices, and all the farmers
hired out the outsides of their barns to advertise
doctor's stuff on."
In no portion of America do the people seem
to feel the burden of earning a livelihood more
lightly.
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