THE ENVIRONMENT OF CHESAPEAKE BAY. (continued 2)

THE VIRGINIAN PLANTERS.

Land was cheap in Virginia in the early days. In 1662 the King of Mattapony sold his village and five thousand acres to the colonists for fifty match-coats. During the seventeenth century the value of land reckoned in tobacco, as sold in England, averaged for cleared ground about four shillings per acre, the shilling then having a purchasing power equal to a dollar now. It was at this time that most of the great Virginian estates along James River were formed, the colonists securing in some cases large grants. Thus, John Carter of Lancaster took up 18,570 acres, John Page 5000 acres, Richard Lee 12,000 acres, William Byrd 15,000 acres, afterwards largely increased; Robert Beverley 37,000 acres and William Fitzhugh over 50,000 acres. These were the founders of some of the most famous Virginian families. The demand for labor naturally brought Virginia within the market of the slave trader, but very few negroes were there in the earlier period. The first negroes who arrived in Virginia were disembarked at Jamestown from a Dutch privateer in 1619—twenty Africans. In 1622 there were twenty-two there, two more having landed; but it is noted that no negro was killed in the Jamestown massacre. In 1649 there were only three hundred negroes in Virginia, and in 1671 there were about two thousand. In the latter part of the seventeenth century the arrivals of negro slaves became more frequent—labor being in demand. The records show that the planters had great difficulty in supplying them with names, everything being ransacked for the purpose—mythology, history and geography—and hence the peculiar names they have conferred in some cases on their descendants. In 1640 a robust African man when sold commanded 2700 pounds of tobacco, and a female 2500 pounds, averaging, at the then price of tobacco, about seventeen pounds sterling for the men. Prices afterwards advanced to forty pounds sterling for the men. In 1699 all newly arrived slaves were taxed twenty shillings per head, paid by the master of the vessel.

As the colony developed, the typical dwelling became a framed log building of moderate size, with a big chimney at each end, there being no cellar and the house resting on the ground. The upper and lower floors were each divided into two rooms. Such a house, built in 1679, measuring forty by twenty feet, cost twelve hundred pounds of tobacco. Finally, when more prosperity came in the eighteenth century, the houses were developed and enlarged into more pretentious edifices, built of bricks brought out from England. These were the great colonial houses of the wealthy planters, so many of which exist until the present day. The most prosperous time in colonial Virginia was the period from 1710 until 1770. The exports of tobacco to England and flour and other produce to the West Indies made the fortunes of the planters, so that their vast estates and large retinues of slaves made them the lordly barons whose fame spread throughout Europe, while their wealth enabled them to gather all the luxuries of furniture and ornament for their houses then attainable. It was in these noble colonial mansions, surrounded by regiments of negro servants, that the courtly Virginians of the olden time dispensed a princely hospitality, limited only by their ability to secure whatever the world produced. The stranger was always welcome at the bountiful board, and the slave children grew up amid plenty, hardly knowing what work was. This went on with more or less variation until the Civil War made its tremendous upheaval, which scattered both whites and blacks. But the typical Virginian is unchanged, continuing as open-hearted and hospitable, though his means now are much less. To all he has, the guest is welcome; but it is usually with a tinge of regret that he recalls the good old time when he might have done more.

HAMPTON ROADS AND FORTRESS MONROE.

The constantly broadening estuary of the James assumes almost the proportions of an inland sea, and in the bays encircled by the low shores are planted the seed oysters, which are gathered by fleets of small vessels for transplanting into salt-water beds. In front, near the mouth of the river, is thrust out the long point of Newport News, with its grain elevators and shipyards, dry-docks and iron-works, the great port of the James River, which is the busy terminal of railways coming from the West. Here is a town of thirty thousand people. It was almost opposite, that in the spring of 1862 the Confederate ram "Merrimac" (then called the "Virginia"), armored with railroad rails, came suddenly out from Norfolk, and sank or disabled the American wooden naval vessels in Hampton Roads; the next day, however, being unexpectedly encountered by the novel little turret iron-clad "Monitor," which had most opportunely arrived from the upper Hudson River, where Ericsson had built her. The "Merrimac" was herself soon disabled and compelled to retire. This timely and dramatic appearance of "the little Yankee cheese-box on a raft" made a sudden and unforeseen revolution in all the naval methods and architecture of the world. Around the point of Newport News the James River debouches into one of the finest harbors of the Atlantic Coast, Hampton Roads, named from the town of Hampton on the northern shore. This is the location of a Veteran Soldiers' Home, with two thousand inmates, an extensive Soldiers' Cemetery, and of the spacious buildings of the Normal and Agricultural Institute for Negroes and Indians, where there are eight to nine hundred scholars, this being a foundation originally established by the Freedmen's Bureau, the chief object being the training of teachers for colored and Indian schools.

The little peninsula of Old Point Comfort, which makes the northern side of the mouth of the James and juts out into Chesapeake Bay, has upon it the largest and most elaborate fortification in the United States—Fortress Monroe. It is related that when Newport and Smith first entered the bay in 1607, and were desirous of ascending the James, they coasted along the southern shore and found only shallow water. Starting out in a boat to hunt for a channel up which their ships could pass, they rowed over to the northern shore and discovered deeper water entering the James, close to this little peninsula, there being twelve fathoms depth, which so encouraged Smith that it confirmed him in naming the place Point Comfort. This channel, close inshore, could be readily defended, as it was the only passage for vessels of any draft, and consequently when the colony got established at Jamestown they built Fort Algernon at Point Comfort to protect the entrance to the James. In 1611 this fort was described as consisting of stockades and posts, without stone or brick, and containing seven small iron guns, with a garrison of forty men.

After the British invasion of Chesapeake Bay, in 1814, when they burnt the Capitol and White House at Washington, it was quickly decided that no foreign foe should be again permitted to do such a thing, and that an elaborate work should be built to defend the entrance to the bay. General Simon Bernard, one of Napoleon's noted engineers, offered his services to the United States after the downfall of the Emperor, and he was placed in charge, with the duty of constructing, at the mouth of James River, a fortification which would command the channel into that river and to the Norfolk Navy Yard, and at the same time be a base of operations against any fleet attempting to enter the bay and menace the roadstead. Bernard built in 1819, and several following years, an elaborate fortress, with a broad moat and outlying water-battery, enclosing eighty acres, the ramparts being over two miles in circumference. It was called Fortress Monroe, after the then President James Monroe, of Virginia. Out upon an artificial island, known as the Rip-raps, built upon a shoal some two miles off-shore, and in the harbor entrance, the smaller works of Fort Wool were subsequently constructed, and the two make a complete defense for the Chesapeake Bay entrance. During all the years this fortress has existed it has never had occasion to fire a gun at an enemy, but its location and strength were invaluable to the North, who held it during the Civil War. It is the seat of the Artillery School of the army. To the southward, at the waterside, are the hotels of Old Point Comfort, which is one of the favorite seaside watering-places of the South. In front is the great Hampton roadstead, usually containing fleets of wind-bound vessels and some men-of-war.

NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.

Over on the southern side of Chesapeake Bay is the Elizabeth River, in reality a tidal arm of the sea, curving around from the south to the east, and having Norfolk on its northern bank and Portsmouth opposite. The country round about is flat and low-lying, and far up the river are Gosport and the Navy Yard, the largest possessed by the United States. There are probably sixty thousand population in the three towns. The immediate surroundings are good land and mostly market gardens, but to the southward spreads the great Dismal Swamp, covering about sixteen hundred square miles, intersected by various canals, and yielding cypress, juniper and other timber. It is partly drained by the Nansemond River, on which, at the edge of the swamp, is the little town of Suffolk, whence the Jericho Run Canal leads into Lake Drummond, a body of water covering eighteen square miles and twenty-one feet above tidewater. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has woven much of the romance of this weird fastness and swamp into her tale of Dred. The Dismal Swamp Canal, twenty-two miles long, and recently enlarged and deepened, passes through it from Elizabeth River to the Pasquotank River of North Carolina, and the Albemarle Canal also connects with Currituck Sound. This big swamp was first explored by Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, in 1728, when he surveyed the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina.

All about the Norfolk wharves are cotton bales, much timber, tobacco and naval stores, and immense quantities of food and garden products, not forgetting a profusion of "goobers," all awaiting shipment, for this, next to Savannah, is the greatest export port for food and other supplies on the Southern Atlantic. The "goober," or peanut, is the special crop of this part of Virginia and Carolina. The cotton compresses do a lively business in the cotton season, the powerful hydraulic pressure squeezing the bale to barely one-fourth its former size, and binding it firmly with iron bands, thus giving the steamers increased cargo. In the spring the shipment North of early fruits and vegetables is enormous, vast surfaces being devoted to their growth, the strawberry beds especially covering many acres. The oyster trade is also large. The settlement of Norfolk began in 1680, and in 1736 it was made a borough. Portsmouth was established later, but the starting of the navy yard there, which has become so extensive, gave it great impetus. Portsmouth claims that in the Civil War, in proportion to size, it sent more soldiers to the Southern armies and had more dead than any other city. The capacious naval hospital and its fine grove of trees front Portsmouth towards the harbor. Norfolk has St. Paul's Church, founded in 1730, as its chief Revolutionary relic—an ancient building, with an old graveyard, and having in its steeple the indentation made by a cannon-shot, when a British fleet in 1776 bombarded and partly burnt the town. An old-fashioned round ball rests in the orifice; not, however, the one originally sent there by the cannoneers. Relic-hunters visiting the place have a habit of clandestinely appropriating the cannon-ball, so the sexton, with an eye to business, has some on hand ready to put into the cavity, and thus maintain the old church's patriotic reputation. A novel sight in Norfolk is its market, largely served by negroes—old "mammies" with bright bandannas tied about their heads and guarding piles of luscious fruits; funny little pickaninnies who execute all manner of athletic gyrations for stray pennies, queer old market wagons, profusions of flowers, and such a collection of the good things of life, all set in a picture so attractive that the sight is long remembered.

THE EASTERN SHORE.

Northward from Old Point Comfort and Hampton Roads the great Chesapeake Bay stretches for two hundred miles. It bisects Virginia and Maryland, and receives the rivers of both States, extending within fourteen miles of Pennsylvania, where it has as its head the greatest river of all, the Susquehanna, which the Indians appropriately called their "great island river." Its shores enclose many islands, and are indented with innumerable bays and inlets, the alluvial soils being readily adapted to fruit and vegetable growing, and its multitudes of shallows being almost throughout a vast oyster bed. It has, all about, the haunts of wild fowl and the nestling-places of delicious fish. These shores were the home—first on the eastern side and afterwards on the western—of the Nanticokes, or "tidewater Indians," who ultimately migrated to New York to join the Iroquois or Five Nations, making that Confederacy the "Six Nations." From Cape Charles, guarding the northern entrance to the Bay, extends northward the well-known peninsula of the "Eastern Shore," a land of market gardens, strawberries and peaches, which feeds the Northern cities, and having its railroad, a part of the Pennsylvania system, running for miles over the level surface in a flat country, which enabled the builders to lay a mathematically straight pair of rails for nearly ninety miles, said to be the longest railway tangent in existence.

Chesapeake Bay is now patrolled by the oyster fleets of both Virginia and Maryland, each State having an "oyster navy" to protect its beds from predatory forays; and occasionally there arises an "oyster war" which expands to the dignity of a newspaper sensation, and sometimes results in bloodshed. The wasteful methods of oyster-dredging are said to be destroying the beds, and they are much less valuable than formerly, although measures are being projected for their protection and restoration under Government auspices. We are told that a band of famished colonists who went in the early days to beg corn from the Indians first discovered the value of the oyster. The Indians were roasting what looked like stones in their fire, and invited the hungry colonists to partake. The opened shells disclosed the succulent bivalve, and the white men found there was other good food besides corn. All the sites of extinct Indian villages along the Chesapeake were marked by piles of oyster shells, showing they had been eaten from time immemorial.

The English colonists at Jamestown were told by the Indians of the wonders of the "Mother of Waters," as they called Chesapeake Bay, about the many great rivers pouring into it, the various tribes on its shores, and the large fur trade that could be opened with them; so that the colonists gradually came to the opinion that the upper region of the great bay was the choicest part of their province. Smith explored it and made a map in 1609, and others followed him, setting up trading-stations upon the rivers as far as the Potomac and the Patuxent. Soon this new country and its fur trade attracted the cupidity of William Claiborne, who had been appointed Treasurer of Virginia, and was sent out when King James I. made it a royal province, the king telling them they would find Claiborne "a person of qualitie and trust." He was also agent for a London Company the king had chartered to make discoveries and engage in the fur trade. Claiborne, in 1631, established a settlement on Kent Island, the largest in the bay, about opposite Annapolis, and one hundred and thirty miles north of the James, which thrived as a trading station and next year sent its burgesses to the Assembly at Jamestown.

CALVERT AND MARYLAND.

Sir George Calvert, who had been private secretary to Lord Cecil in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and also held office under King James, upon retiring was created Baron of Baltimore in Ireland, and purchased part of Newfoundland, which he called Avalon. He sent out a colony and afterwards visited Avalon; but, being discouraged by the cold climate, he abandoned the colony, and persuaded the next king, Charles I., to give him land on both sides of Chesapeake Bay north of the Potomac. Before the deed was signed, however, Baron Baltimore died, and his son, Cecilius Calvert, succeeded him and received the grant. This was one of the greatest gifts of land ever made, extending northward from the Potomac River, including all Maryland, a broad strip of what is now Pennsylvania, all of Delaware, and a good deal of West Virginia. The charter made the grant a Palatinate, giving Lord Baltimore and his heirs absolute control of the country, freedom to trade with the whole world and make his own laws, or allow his colonists to do this. The price was the delivery of two Indian arrows a year at the Castle of Windsor, and one-fifth of all the gold and silver found. This grant was dated on June 20, 1632, and the name first intended by Calvert for his colony was Crescentia; but in the charter it was styled Terra Mariæ, after Queen Henrietta Maria, or "Mary's Land." The expedition came out the following winter, leaving the Isle of Wight in November in two vessels, named the "Ark" and the "Dove," under command of Leonard Calvert, Cecil's brother, there being two hundred emigrants, nearly all Roman Catholics, like their chief, and mostly gentlemen of fortune and respectability. While the colony was Catholic, Cecil Calvert inculcated complete toleration. In his letter of instructions he wrote: "Preserve unity and peace on shipboard amongst all passengers; and suffer no offence to be given to any of the Protestants; for this end cause all acts of the Roman Catholic religion to be done as privately as may be;" and he also told his brother, the Governor, "to treat all Protestants with as much mildness and favor as justice would permit," this to be observed "at land as well as at sea." In March, 1633, they entered the Chesapeake and sailed up to the Potomac River, landing at an island and setting up a cross, claiming the country for Christ and for England.

The "Ark" anchored, and the smaller "Dove" was sent cruising along the shore of the Potomac above Point Lookout, "to make choice of a place probable to be healthfull and fruitfull," which might be easily fortified, and "convenient for trade both with the English and savages." The little "Dove" sailed some distance up the Potomac, examining the shore, and encountered various Indians, who were astonished when they saw the vessel, diminutive, yet so much larger than their canoes, and said they would like to see the tree from which that great canoe was hollowed out, for they knew nothing of the method of construction. The colonists talked with the Indians, having an interpreter, and Leonard Calvert asked a chief: "Shall we stay here, or shall we go back?" To this a mysterious answer was made: "You may do as you think best." Calvert did not like this, and decided to land nearer the bay, so his vessel dropped down the river again, and they finally landed on a stream where they found the Indian village of Yoacamoco. The Indians were very friendly, sold part of their village for some axes and bright cloth, gave up their best wigwams to Calvert and his colonists, and in one of these the Jesuit fathers held a solemn service, dedicating the settlement to St. Mary; and thus was founded the capital of the new Palatinate of Maryland. Under Calvert's wise rule the colony prospered, kept up friendliness with the Indians, enjoyed a lucrative trade, and, after a long struggle, ultimately managed to make Claiborne abandon the settlement on Kent Island, which became part of Maryland. To the northward of them was the estuary of the Patuxent River, meaning "the stream at the little falls." St. Mary's County is the peninsula between the Patuxent and the Potomac, terminating at Point Lookout, and a quiet and restful farming country to-day. Leonardstown, on the Patuxent, named after Leonard Calvert, is the county-seat; but the ancient village of St. Mary's, the original colony and capital, afterwards superseded by Annapolis, still exists, though only a few scattered bricks remain to mark the site of the old fort and town. At St. Inigoe's is the quaint colonial home of the Jesuit fathers who accompanied Calvert, and its especial pride is a sweet-toned bell, brought out from England in 1685, which still rings the Angelus. At Kent Island scarcely a vestige remains of Claiborne's trading-post and settlement.

THE MARYLAND CAPITAL.

The settlers of Maryland were not all Roman Catholics, however, for Puritan refugees came in there. Above the Patuxent is the estuary of the Severn River, and here, in a beautiful situation, is Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, which has about eight thousand inhabitants, and was originally colonized in 1649 by Puritans driven from the James River in Virginia by the Episcopalians in control there. The settlement was at first called Providence, and Richard Preston, the eminent Quaker, was long its commander. Afterwards it was named Anne Arundel Town, after Lady Baltimore, which still is the name of its county, although the town came to be finally known as Annapolis, from Queen Anne, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, who gave it valuable presents. It is now best known as the seat of the United States Naval Academy, which has a fine establishment there, founded by George Bancroft, the historian, when he was Secretary of the Navy, in 1845. Its ancient defensive work, Fort Severn, has been roofed over, and is the Academy gymnasium. The city was made the capital of Maryland in 1794, the government being then removed from St. Mary's, and the State Capitol is a massive brick structure, standing on an eminence, with a lofty dome and cupola, from which there is a fine view of the surrounding country and over Chesapeake Bay. In the Senate Chamber General Washington surrendered his Commission to the American Colonial Congress which met there in December, 1783, and in it also assembled the first Constitutional Convention of the United States, in 1786. In front of the building is a colossal statue of Chief Justice Taney, of the Supreme Court of the United States, a native of Maryland, who died in 1864. Annapolis formerly had an extensive commerce and amassed much wealth, until eclipsed by the growth of Baltimore, and now its chief trade, like so many of the towns of the Chesapeake, is in oysters.

THE MONUMENTAL CITY.

The head of Chesapeake Bay, on either side of the Susquehanna River, is composed of various broad estuaries, with small streams entering them. To the eastward the chief is Elk River, and to the westward are the Gunpowder and Bush Rivers, with others. Not far above the Severn is the wide tidal estuary of the Patapsco, so named by the Indians to describe its peculiarity, the word meaning "a stream caused by back or tidewater containing froth." A few miles up this estuary is the great city and port of the Chesapeake, Baltimore, so named in honor of Lord Baltimore, and containing, with its suburbs, over six hundred thousand people. The spreading arms of the Patapsco, around which the city is built, provide an ample harbor, their irregular shores making plenty of dock room, and the two great railways from the north and west to Washington, which go under the town through an elaborate system of tunnels, give it a lucrative foreign trade in produce brought for shipment abroad. From the harbor there are long and narrow docks, and an inner "Basin" extending into the city, and across the heads of these is Pratt Street. This highway is famous as the scene of the first bloodshed of the Civil War. The Northern troops, hastily summoned to Washington, were marching along it from one railway station to the other on April 19, 1861, when a Baltimore mob, sympathizing with the South, attacked them. In the riot and conflict that followed eleven were killed and twenty-six were wounded. A creek, called Jones's Falls, coming down a deep valley from the northward into the harbor, divides the city into two almost equal sections, and in the lower part is walled in, with a street on either side. Colonel David Jones, who was the original white inhabitant of the north side of Baltimore harbor, gave this stream his name about 1680, before anyone expected even a village to be located there. A settlement afterwards began eastward of the creek, known as Jonestown, while Baltimore was not started until 1730, being laid out westward of the creek and around the head of the "Basin," the plan covering sixty acres. This was called New Town, as the other was popularly termed Old Town, but they subsequently were united as Baltimore, having in 1752 about two hundred people.

Baltimore is rectangular in plan and picturesque, covering an undulating surface, the hills, which are many, inclining either to Jones's Falls or the harbor. Its popular title is the "Monumental City," given because it was the first American city that built fine monuments. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the State of Maryland erected on Charles Street a monument to General Washington, rising one hundred and ninety-five feet, a Doric shaft of white marble surmounted by his statue and upon a base fifty feet square. This splendid monument stands in a broadened avenue and at the summit of a hill, surrounded by tasteful lawns and flower gardens, with a fountain in front. It makes an attractive centre for Mount Vernon Place, which contains one of the finest collections of buildings in the city, and presents a scene essentially Parisian. Here are the Peabody Institute and the Garrett Mansion, both impressive buildings. Baltimore has a "Battle Monument," located on Calvert Street, in Monument Square, a marble shaft fifty-three feet high, marking the British invasion of 1814, and erected in memory of the men of Baltimore who fell in battle just outside the city, when the British forces marched from Elk River to Washington and burnt the Capitol, and the British fleet came up the Patapsco and shelled the town. The city also has other fine monuments, so that its popular name is well deserved.

The City Hall is the chief building of Baltimore, a marble structure in Renaissance, costing $2,000,000, its elaborate dome rising two hundred and sixty feet, and giving a magnificent view over the city and harbor. There are two noted churches, the Mount Vernon Methodist Church, of greenstone, with buff and red facings and polished granite columns, being the finest, although the First Presbyterian Church, nearby, is regarded as the most elaborate specimen of Lancet-Gothic architecture in the country, its spire rising two hundred and sixty-eight feet. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is an attractive granite church, containing paintings presented by Louis XVI. and Charles X. of France. Cardinal Archbishop Gibbons, of Baltimore, is the Roman Catholic Primate of the United States. The greatest charities of the city are the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University, endowed by a Baltimore merchant who died in 1873, the joint endowments being $6,500,000. Hopkins was shrewd and penurious, and John W. Garrett persuaded him to make these princely endowments, much of his fortune being invested in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, of which Garrett was President in its days of greatest prosperity. This railroad is the chief Baltimore institution, giving it a direct route to the Mississippi Valley, and was the first started of the great American trunk railways, its origin dating from 1826, when the movement began for its charter, which was granted by the Maryland Legislature the next year. This charter conferred most comprehensive powers, and the story is told that when it was being read in that body one of the members interrupted, saying: "Stop, man, you are asking more than the Lord's Prayer." The reply was that it was all necessary, and the more asked, the more would be secured. The interrupter, convinced, responded: "Right, man; go on." The corner-stone of the railway was laid July 4, 1828, beginning the route from Baltimore, up the Potomac and through the Alleghenies to the Ohio River.

DRUID HILL AND FORT McHENRY.

Baltimore is proud of the great art collection of Henry Walters in Mount Vernon Place, exhibited for a fee for the benefit of the poor; and it also has had as a noted resident Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, who married, and then discarded by Napoleon's order, Miss Patterson, a Baltimore lady. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has remarked that three short American poems, each the best of its kind, were written in Baltimore: Poe's Raven, Randall's Maryland, My Maryland, and Key's Star-Spangled Banner. It is also proud of its park—"Druid Hill"—a splendid pleasure-ground of seven hundred acres, owing much of its beauty to the fact that it had been preserved and developed as a private park for a century before passing under control of the city. The route to it is by the magnificent Eutaw Place, and the stately entrance gateway opens upon an avenue lined on either hand by long rows of flower vases on high pedestals, laid out alongside Druid Lake, the chief water-reservoir. The Park has an undulating surface of woodland and meadow, with grand old trees and splendid lawns, making a scene decidedly English, not overwrought by art, but mainly left in its natural condition. The mansion-house of the former owner, now a restaurant, occupies a commanding position, and on the northern side the land rises to Prospect Hill, with an expansive view all around the horizon and eastward to Chesapeake Bay.

In this beautiful park the higher grounds are used for water-reservoirs. Baltimore has the advantage of receiving its supply by gravity from the Gunpowder River to the northward, where a lake has been formed, the pure water being brought through a tunnel for seven miles to the reservoirs, of which there are eight, with a capacity of 2,275,000,000 gallons, and capable of supplying 300,000,000 gallons daily. These reservoirs appear as pleasant lakes, Montebello and Roland, with Druid Lake, being the chief. Across the ravine of Jones's Falls is Baltimore's chief cemetery, Greenmount, a pretty ground, with gentle hills and vales. Here, in a spot selected by herself, is buried Jerome's discarded wife, Madame Patterson-Bonaparte, whose checkered history is Baltimore's chief romance. Here also lie Junius Brutus Booth, the tragedian, and his family, among them John Wilkes Booth, who murdered President Lincoln.

The most significant sight of Baltimore, however, is its old Fort McHenry—down in the harbor, on the extreme end of Locust Point, originally called Whetstone Point, where the Patapsco River divides—built on a low-lying esplanade, with green banks sloping almost to the water. It was the strategic position of this small but strong work, thoroughly controlling the city as well as the harbor entrance, that held Baltimore during the early movements of the Civil War, and maintained the road from the North to Washington. Its greatest memory, however, and, by the association, probably the greatest celebrity Baltimore enjoys, comes from the flag on the staff now quietly waving over its parapets. Whetstone Point had been fortified during the Revolution, but in 1794 Maryland ceded it to the United States, and the people of Baltimore raised the money to build the present fort, which was named after James McHenry, who had been one of the framers of the Federal Constitution and was Secretary of War under President Washington. When Admiral Cockburn's British fleet came up the Chesapeake in September, 1814, the Maryland poet, Francis Scott Key, was an aid to General Smith at Bladensburg. An intimate friend had been taken prisoner on board one of the ships, and Key was sent in a boat to effect his release by exchange. The Admiral told Key he would have to detain him aboard for a day or two, as they were proceeding to attack Baltimore. Thus Key remained among the enemy, an unwilling witness of the bombardment on September 12th, which continued throughout the night. In the early morning the attack was abandoned, the flag was unharmed, and the British ships dropped down the Patapsco.

Key wrote his poem on the backs of letters, with a barrel-head for a desk, and being landed next day he showed it to friends, and then made a fresh copy. It was taken to the office of the Baltimore American and published anonymously in a handbill, afterwards appearing in the issue of that newspaper on September 21, 1814. The tune was "Anacreon in Heaven," and there was a brief introduction describing the circumstances under which it was written. It was first sung in the Baltimore Theatre, October 12th of that year, and afterwards became popular. The flag which floated over Fort McHenry on that memorable night is still preserved. Fired by patriotic impulses, various ladies of Baltimore had made this flag, among them being Mrs. Mary Pickersgill, who is described as a daughter of Betsy Ross, of Philadelphia, who made the original sample-flag during the Revolution. The Fort McHenry flag contains about four hundred yards of bunting and is nearly square, measuring twenty-nine by thirty-two feet. It has fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, which was then the official regulation, there being fifteen States in the American Union. The poem of the Star-Spangled Banner, thus inspired and written, has become the great American patriotic anthem, and has carried everywhere the fame of the fort, the city, and the flowery flag of the United States. The following is the song, with title and introduction, as first published:

DEFENCE OF FORT McHENRY.

Tune—"Anacreon in Heaven."