A Trip up Chesapeake Bay
On Board Steamer Tangier, Chesapeake Bay, Dec. 11, 1883.
I have passed through a part of the glorious old county of Accomac, that gave the Democratic party 2,980 votes against 1,185 Republican, being a majority for the Democrats of 1,795 or about 2 1/2 to 1; and if my count is right this is the banner Democratic county of the State. This patriotic old county, though cut off from the great body of Virginia by the broad Chesapeake bay, is true to "the mother" as the needle to the pole. I find its people prosperous without extravagant notices of enjoyment. Their main crop is sweet potatoes, on which they make money at $1.50 a barrel, but the average price of this crop is about $3 a barrel. I do not mean, however, to leave out the fish and oysters, which are great sources of revenue to her people. During the height of the potato-shipping season as many as 10,000 barrels a week were taken away from Onancock alone.
St. George's Church.
I have just passed St. George's Episcopal church -- a brick structure of bricks brought from England in the colonial times -- and it is about the third oldest church of the United States. Not a brick has changed. Every one seems as sound as the day it was laid. There is endurance for you, the structure being about 250 years old.
An Old Academy.
Near by -- say a mile nearer Onancock -- stands Margaret Academy, also a brick structure of great age. At this academy the late Judge Scarbrough, General Henry A. Wise, Judge E. P. Pitts, Judge S. W. H. Bailey, and other distinguished Virginians received their early education and training. Opposite Mr. Thomas Finney's wharf, on Onancock creek (navigable for vessels drawing eight to ten feet of water), stands the very excellent and capacious former residence of the late Governor Henry A. Wise, who I have just alluded to. Down here are most happily blended those great elements (shall I say elements?) of man's existence, earth and water, tortuously entwined, in figures -- strangely distributing little peninsulas -- on each side of which are navigable bayous that furnish to residents separate principalities, with kindest and well-drained soil for cultivation and vast varieties of fish and also oysters and crabs for food.
Didn't Like It.
One thing I saw I did not relish so much; but I am an old fogy, and it matters very little what one may fancy or dislike. I passed Pungoteague, a small town, just before getting to Margaret Academy, and there I counted about forty or fifty buggies, besides other vehicles and saddle-horses, comprising, with their owners, a large gathering. The excitement was an impending horse race. Well, I thought such industrious people could have employed their time much better; but a hard year's work is nearly over, and perhaps they call it recreation.
Smith's Island.
We are in the midst of Pocomoke and Tangier sounds. Little-necked islands extend in three dotted lines from the Eastern Shore of the bay out into this great inland water. Between the more northern line and that which is the more southern lie two channels, separated by the middle line. The northern channel leads up to Crisfield (claimed in former days by Governor Wise to belong to Virginia), a considerable Maryland town. The southern channel leads up Pocomoke river. The northern projection of the dotted islands includes Smith's island, inhabited by about 200 souls, who are engaged exclusively fishing.
[Illegible] Virginia, after reaching Smith's island, ran the line across this island southeastwardly to the centre of the channel that leads on by Crisfield; then the line is turned in return course at a right angle, and runs westwardly along this channel towards the bay it has so lately parted with. After following this Crisfield channel some good distance it again turns at something like a right angle towards Pocomoke sound, crossing one of the little islands of the middle dotted line, and strikes the channel up said sound, and then follows this channel up Pocomoke river to a point where it takes an easterly bee-line to the Atlantic ocean. And so this long-agitated line that has cost the expenditure of so much money and so much brain-power has been twisted and tortured into the shape which I have described -- very nearly correctly perhaps -- and it is now said to be so settled forever.
What The People Think.
The people hereabout, or very many of them, regard it as a strange conclusion, and a prodigious blunder. Well, I could not help pondering over it as night drew its mantle of seclusion over this doubtful engineering, as it was pointed out to me by a member of the Virginia Senate. Nature would seem to have indicated a line due east from a point that would give to our old mother her share of frontage on the Atlantic Shore. Natural law is equity, and Maryland, with one-fourth of the area of Virginia, has more salt-water frontage than Virginia, so that we have hardly enough water left to drown Cornwallis and his army if he should ever come.
It may not be generally remembered that, again, Maryland was originally part of Virginia, and was detached about 1632, when George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, was assigned a grant of territory off of Virginia.
My acquaintance said, "It is finally settled, and there is now no other resort." Ah, but it strikes me Equity was made before Law. Equity is the purpose and the destiny of Justice, and holds over Law the sword of rehabilitated reason and the retribution of right. Equity is Law, but Law is not Equity. Equity can never be less than Law. Law can never be greater, but must be subordinate to Equity; and a court of justice without power to do Equity is no court of justice at all. So I am vexed to speak in behalf of Justice. Is it because I have been talking with a judge? But we did not talk about laws, and yet the association may have set up the matter in my mind in connection with the wrongs of old Virginia and may she be blessed in her midst and in the remotest regions of her still glorious dominion.
C.