The Eastern Shore

This fair region of the United States, which for so many years has been closed to the outer world, is now open through easy and rapid communication, both north and south, offering unsurpassed inducements to new settlers to make it a home, not only for business, but for pleasure. It is known as the Eastern Shore of Virginia, and is comprised of the two lower, or Virginia counties, which, with the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the State of Delaware, compose the Peninsula. It is seventy miles long, with an average width of ten miles, with the Chesapeake Bay on the west, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. Has numerous arms and inlets from both, extending in the main, and forming numbers of islands acting as break-waters to the higher land. The salt air from the surrounding sea, and the warm temperature of the water in the Gulf Stream, make the climate milder and less liable to frost than other localities of lower latitude. Until recently, communication with other parts of the country has been by steamboats and sail vessels -- a fine line of staunch steamers connecting us on the Bay side with Baltimore; these took the staple crops, the sweet and white potatoes, together with onions, peas, cabbages, asparagus and small fruits, to the markets of Baltimore and New York, bringing a return to the producers of a million and a half dollars.

In addition to these facilities, the building of the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad within the last year, from Delmar, on the dividing line between the States of Delaware and Maryland, to Cape Charles, at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and from thence making the city of Norfolk by a line of fast and elegant steamers, completes the chain of the great short line north and south, and lessens the time of travel some ten hours between New York and points south. The road is admirably located in these two counties, running down the centre, without ten feet of grade, and an air line, with rails of first class steel, and an equipment not surpassed. It is said to be a protege of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which insures its success and safe management.

The soil of this section is a light sandy loam, warm and easily tilled, rarely requiring more than one horse to fallow the land; its subsoil is red clay. The crops grown are corn, oats, wheat, sweet and white potatoes. All the small fruits and garden vegetables come early and are prolific, with proper care, and now, with quick and competing transportation by steamboats and railroads to twenty millions of people in the north and west, this forgotten land must soon be converted into the market garden for the metropolitan cities of the country, and become to them in these products, what Florida (whose situation with reference to the influence from the salt water surrounding her is similar to our own), with her tropical fruits is to the rest of the United States.

The timber is principally the long leaf pine, the varieties of oak, hickory, walnut, poplar, chestnut, maple, dog-wood and gum. The "shatter," or leaves from the pine, are used as adsorbents for stables and cattle yards. Large quantities of manure used in growing the potato, are thus made. The lands are for the most part poor, the result of bad farming under the old slavery system, and a failure to adopt a proper system since the negroes were freed. There is, however, no soil that the writer has ever seen, that responds so readily to a little attention, and yields such handsome returns for the capital invested. Lands are for sale at various prices, from ten to fifty dollars per acre. The price, however, is no indication of the quality of the soil, but is fixed by the sentiment of the holder, and his peculiar preference or attachment to one locality over another, marking strongly the individuality of the original English settler, of whom these people are the oldest in the United States, retaining to a marked degree the quaint manners and expressions of the mother country a century and more ago.- The population numbers some thirty-three thousand, that of Accomac, the upper county, being twenty-four thousand four hundred and eight, of which fifteen thousand and fifteen are white, and nine thousand three hundred and ninety-three are black, and forty-eight foreign born, an increase of thirty-one in the last named since 1870. About one fifth of the population is engaged in planting oysters and fishing, from which a good living is always made. Churches are numerous, and public schools convenient, the system of which is prescribed and supported on a substantial bounty by the State government. Taxes are moderate, being ninety cents on the hundred dollars' worth of property -- which is rated for taxes at about two-thirds of its cash value. Political freedom is a fact, founded on a fair count, and no one is proscribed for his political opinions. One of the strong Democratic towns elected a Republican (a leader of his party), for its Mayor, because he was a good and efficient man. The county roads are well located and naturally good. The healthfulness of the county is most excellent, a doctor finding it hard to live by his profession alone. In fact, there is nothing lacking here but people -- new people, new blood, new ideas. We are as intelligent and industrious as most people, but we need new life to pull us out of the grooves and ruts, and turn us into different and more progressive channels. The writer, as a southerner and a native, can see our shortcomings. How much more forcibly they would strike a man from the progressive North. The aid of the American Agriculturist is invoked to let it be known who and where we are.