There can be no better place for beginning a survey of our country
than upon this great bay, which Smith and his companions entered in
1607. Chesapeake Bay is the largest inland sea on the Atlantic Coast
of the United States. It stretches for two hundred miles up into the
land, between the low and fertile shores of Virginia and Maryland,
both of which States it divides, and thus gives them valuable
navigation facilities. In its many arms and estuaries are the
resting-places for the luscious oysters which its people send all over
the world. It is one of the greatest of food-producers, having a
larger variety of tempting luxuries for the palate than probably any
other region. Along its shores and upon its islands are numberless
popular resorts for fishing and shooting, for its tender and
amply-supplied water-foods attract the ducks and other wild fowl in
countless thousands, and bring in shoals of the sea-fishes, which are
the sportsmen's coveted game. Its terrapin are famous, while its
shores and borderlands, particularly on the eastern side, are a series
of orchards and market-gardens, providing limitless supplies of
fruits, berries and vegetables for the Northern markets. It receives
in its generally placid bosom some of the greatest rivers flowing down
from the Allegheny Mountains. The broad Susquehanna, coming through
New York and Pennsylvania, makes its headwaters, and it receives the
Potomac, dividing Maryland from Virginia, and the James, in Virginia,
both of them wide estuaries with an enormous outflow; and also
numerous smaller streams, such as the Rappahannock, York, Patuxent,
Patapsco, Choptank and Elizabeth Rivers. Extensive lines of profitable
commerce, all large carriers of food-supplies, have transport over
this great bay and its many arms and affluents. Canals connect it with
other interior waters, and leading railways with all parts of the
country, while there are several noted cities upon its shores and
tributaries.