and loosened from the mud, than the rake will take up, and thus are left free to propagate another future supply.

It is said to be a false kindness to oysters to let them alone, as they did at New York to their famous "blue points," by a protecting law, which served only to have them so covered with mud, as to actually destroy them.

An old oysterman informed me, as an instance of the increase of oyster beds, that he used to visit a little one, thirty years ago, of one to two hundred feet long, and therefore very difficult to find, which now is a quarter of a mile long, and growing, known as the new bed. There is a field of size, also beds of size, off Benj. Davis' point, and Maurice river, N. J., and off Mahant's river, Delaware side. Since the formation of the Breakwater, lobsters and blackfish have come there in quantities. By-and-by we may expect much increase of them there! It is discovered to be a fact, in all the ponds found in the sedge marshes, lining the two shores of the Delaware, that in them are found the best oysters; and that in one of them called the "Ditch," which is an artificial canal cut into the marsh, fine oysters are always to be fished out. It has been remarked by my informant, and corroborated by others, that although oysters are found in salt water, they will not bear to be removed to water which is salter. Experiments have been made of hanging a basket of bay oysters over the vessel's side exposed to the salter sea water, and they have been found to die in twelve hours. Hence the necessity of planting them in waters less salt, or at least not salter than their native beds. Those caught after a copious rain are said to be much finer than those taken from the same place before the rain. The oyster is of a tenacious nature, attaching its gelatinous substance to almost all bodies with which it comes in contact— such as wood, iron, stone. When they are found attached to glass bottles, they are always found much fatter for it. The influence of mud to destroy, and of fresher water to fatten oysters, is well understood by their experience at New Haven, as told in Barber's History, page 106.

Those who make a business of transplanting, come early in the season, and carry them away in their boats to the inland waters about Egg Harbour, &c., from whence they are taken in the fall, quite fat, and carried over land to the city market, and sold as Egg Harbour oysters.

As in a good degree connected with the use and incidents of the Delaware, we here offer a graphic description of good old Burlington, intimately connected with the pleasure scenes and reminiscences of our own boyhood. Most feelingly we understand the picture as here drawn. Many must remember it.

Ah, old acquaintance! there thou art-
I hail thee with a beating heart,
I'll sing of thee, before we part,

Green bank of Burlington.

May I a passing tribute pay,
Where many a happy school-boy day,
In years for ever past away,

I play'd upon thy bank.

* This packet belonged to Captain Myers, a well known skipper.

40*

I hear my fellow travellers say
There is a locomotive's way,
Where school boys used to fight and
play,

In Dr. Staughton's time.

And woodman's axe, with sturdy
stroke

Has long since fell'd the lofty oak,
Where my poor neck I nearly broke,
To gain a squirrel's nest.

St. Mary's has a pastor new,
Young, and New Jersey's bishop too,

He needs must stand in public view,
May God save him from pride.
May he a shepherd's duty know,
To lead his flock where fountains
flow,
And where perennial pastures grow,
Beneath the sacred Cross.

This steamer goes as if it flew,
The city fades before my view-
We turn, I bid a long adieu

To thee, sweet Burlington.

William Castell, in his Book of Discovery, published in 1644, says of the Delaware river and people, to wit: "There is another river not fully discovered, but bigger than the former, (the North river,) called the South river. It lieth west by south, towards Virginia. The entrance into it is very wide, having Cape May to the east, and Cape Henlopen to the west. The chief inhabitants lying on the east side of the river. To the east are the Sicones and the Naranticones; on the west are the Miquans, the Senenquaans, and many more."

Joshua Fisher, of Lewistown, Delaware, made the first known Bay-chart of the Delaware. The one from which all of our subsequent ones have been copied. It bears the imprint of London, 1756.

The Pea Patch island, now a subject of dispute, is given therein at about its present distance from New Jersey, showing no appearance of having ever been annexed to that shore. How early it may have been drawn, is not now known; but it must be inferred to have been several years earlier than 1756, because the position of Cape Henlopen is therein ascribed to the joint observation of Joshua Fisher, and Thomas Godfrey. The latter we know died in 1749, and had brought out his quadrant, and lent it to Mr. Fisher for trial in his surveys of the Delaware, as early as 1730.

A large chart of the Delaware bay was published in London in 1779, called Debarre's chart, from the surveys of Lieut. Knight.

It is worthy of remark, as testing the accuracy of Godfrey, that his position of Cape Henlopen, differs only ten miles from that now scrupulously ascertained by the United States' recent surveys. The shoals and oyster beds, as laid down in Fisher's chart, though generally in the same localities as now ascertained by the United States' survey, are very different in their lengths and breadths --and especially those nearest the main land on both sides of the bay; the present surveys, showing much more of extended shoals. near the main land, than have been given in Fisher's chart. In some instances, shoals then marked are now gone; and in other cases, new ones are formed.

RIVER SCHUYLKILL.

THIS name, given it by the Dutch, is said to express "Hidden river," it not being visible at its mouth as you ascend the Delaware. From the Indians it bore the name of Manajung, Manaiunk, and in Holmes' map it is called Nittabaconck. It is told as a tradition that the Indians called the river the mother, and that what is called "Maiden creek," a branch of the Schuylkill above Reading, was called Onteelaunee, meaning the little daughter of a great mother. The letter of Governor Stuyvesant, of 1644, to Colonel Nicolls, says they discovered the Varsche Rivierte--the little freshwater river, in 1628.

I have heard it conjectured that the flat ground of Pegg's marsh, and the low ground of Cohocsink swamp, are the beds of the Schuylkill, which may have passed there before Fairmount barrier gave way-one channel having come from Fairmount to Pegg's swamp, and the other from the Falls of Schuylkill by Cohocsink. The particulars of this theory may be read in my MS. Annals, p. 352, 353, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

In the year 1701, William Penn writes to James Logan, saying, "Pray see the utmost of poor Marshe's project of navigating flats up Schoolkill and Susquehanna above the falls; he assuring me he could make the experiment for 40s. be it 50s. or £3. it were a mighty advantage."

In 1722, the common council this year appointed a committee to examine a route to Schuylkill through the woods, and to fix upon the site of a ferry at the end of High street, whereupon it was resolved to address the assembly for an act for the same.

The same year the corporation of Philadelphia made a causeway on both sides of the ferry, and appointed boats, &c. The ferrymen were to dwell on the western side, and to ferry persons over at one penny, horses Id., cows and oxen 1d., cart or wagon 6d. to 1s., sheep d., &c. The upper and lower ferries were then called Roach's and Blunston's, on private account. This one became of course "the middle ferry."

In the year 1762, we see by a minute of the council that they then leased "the middle ferry," for three years, at £200. per annum.

I am not able to say when the floating bridges were first introduced; but we know the British army made one across the Schuylkill when they held the city, which I believe they destroyed when leaving it, as it is known that Joseph Ogden built and kept a new bridge at the middle ferry, soon after they were gone.

Mr. Kalm states, that at the first building of Philadelphia, they erected sundry houses upon the Schuylkill side, which they after

wards removed to the Delaware side, on finding settlements there did not take.

The river scenery and banks of Schuylkill were once picturesque and beautiful-such as I have elsewhere described the "Baptisterion," at the end of Spruce street. Benjamin Franklin, too, said it was his custom when young to go out there with his companions, Osborne, Watson, Ralph, &c., to take a charming walk on Sundays in the woods then bordering on the river. There they used to sit down and read and converse together; now how changed the scene to a busy, bustling coal mart?

66

Receding forests yield the labourers room,

And opening wilds with fields and garlands bloom!"

It is even now within the memory of aged men, when it was a great fishing place. Old Shrunk assured me he had caught as many as 3000 catfish of a night with a dip-net, near the Falls. Penn's letter, of 1683, speaks of Captain Smith, at Schuylkill, who drew 600 shades at a draught."

In the year 1759, there appeared in the Gazette a writer from Berks, who greatly urges the advantages to be produced by clearing and opening the river channel. Some of them were then set upon by a subscription.

The 4th of July, 1824, being Sunday, the long desired era arrived of opening the canal from Reading to Philadelphia. Many witnessed the operations near Reading with great gratification. This is "the consummation devoutly to be wished!"

A fact occurred in November 1832, which goes to confirm the theory before advanced, that the Schuylkill once passed from the Falls by the way of the Cohocksink creek. In making a coffer dam, (the first one on the eastern side,) to form the foundation of the railway-bridge at Peters' island, they came at the depth of thirty feet of excavation to the stump of a tree completely embedded in the soil, thus evincing that the course of the river has been changed from its original channel.-See Poulson's Gazette, of Nov. 26, 1832.

I have in my possession, a copy of a curious old deed of the 2d of May, 1681, from Peter Peterson Yocum, a Swede, to Niels Jonason, for two hundred acres of land to begin at a creek on the west side of Schuylkill above Arromink, called the little Quarnes fall, and thence, up along the river side to the Great-hill, being part of the original tract of 1100 acres granted by patent of Governor Lovelace at New York to Captain Flans Modens, i. e. Moens. [The Great hill, may be understood to be Conshohockin now-and the Quarnes, (Quarries,) the Little falls.]

The place called Swedesford, had a work of defence cast upon its margin by the Americans, in the time of the Revolution. It was the crossing place then of the army.

Near there was the Swedes' church, since rebuilt by the Episcopalians; the grave ground is well filled with Swedes, who very much