Having Now Reached
Love Creek, I Deposited My Canoe With Mr.
Webb, And Started Off For Lewes To View The
Town And The Ocean.
Across the entrance of Delaware Bay, from
Cape Henlopen Light to Cape May Light on the
southern end of New Jersey, is a distance of
twelve statute miles.
Saturday night and
Sunday were passed in Lewes, which is situated
inside of Cape Henlopen, and behind the
celebrated stone breakwater which was constructed
by the government. This port of refuge is much
frequented by coasters, as many as two or three
hundred sails collecting here during a severe
gale. The government is building a
remarkable pier of solid iron spiles, three abreast, which,
when completed, will run out seventeen
hundred feet into the bay, and reach a depth of
twenty-three feet of water. Captain Brown, of
the Engineers, was in charge of the work. By the
application of a jet of water, forced by an
hydraulic pump through a tube down the outside of
the spile while it is being screwed into the sand,
a puddling of the same is kept up, which
relieves the strain upon the screw-flanges, and
saves fourteen-fifteenths of the time and labor
usually expended by the old method of inserting
the screw spile. This invention was a happy
thought of Captain Brown.
The government has purchased a piece of land
at Lewes for the site of a fort. Some time in the
future there will be a railroad terminating on the
pier, and coal will be brought directly from the
mines to supply the fleets which will gather
within the walls of the Breakwater. Here, free from
all danger of an ice blockade, this port will
become a safe and convenient harbor and
coaling station during the winter time for government
and other vessels.
At dusk on Sunday evening the collector of
the port, Captain Lyons, and his friends, took
me in their carriage back to Love Creek, where
Mr. Webb insisted upon making me the
recipient of his hospitality for the night. A little
crowd of women from the vicinity of the swamp
were awaiting my arrival to see the canoe. One
ancient dame, catching sight of the alcohol-stove
which I took from my vest-pocket, clapped her
thin hands and enthusiastically exclaimed, "What
a nice thing for a sick-room-the best nuss-lamp
I ever seed!" Having satisfied the curiosity of
these people, and been much amused by their
quaint remarks, I was quietly smuggled into Mr.
Webb's "best room," where, if my spirit did not
make feathery flights, it was not the fault of the
downy bed in whose unfathomable depths I now
lost myself.
Before leaving Delaware I feel it an
imperative duty to the public to refer to one of her
time-honored institutions.
Persons unacquainted with the fact will find
it difficult to believe that one state of the great
American Republic still holds to the practice of
lashing men and women, white and black.
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