Jersey

“ And in spite of her spacious and resounding past, New Jersey’s name now seems to mean incorporations and mosquitoes and sea-bathing and popcorn-crisp rather than either legend or romance. But with the coming of the Great War strange things are stirring in the world, and in the farthest corners of the land the earth is shaken by the tramp of new armies. In the skies by day and night there is a sign. And the things one does not believe can happen may be happening, even in New Jersey. ”

“ In short, our impressions of Jersey have tended much to corroborate in our minds the poet’s dictum, that
God made the country, and man made the town;
for while the town is a huge seething kettle of corruption, the country is a labyrinth of loveliness. It is a labyrinth of lanes all arched by trees and fringed by lush herbage, and with certain lights presenting little fantastic avenues of fairy beauty. ”

“ All the country flat as the flattest part of Jersey, rich in grass and grain, cut up by canals, picturesque with windmills and red-tiled roofs, framed with trees in rows. It has been all day hot and dusty. The country everywhere seems to need rain; and dark clouds are gathering in the south for a storm, as we drive up the broad Place de Meir to our hotel, and take rooms that look out to the lace-like spire of the cathedral, which is sharply defined against the red western sky. ”

“ Northern New Jersey was recognized as one of the riskiest regions of the United States. Time out of mind, American readers have noted, with the short-lived American anger, the many newspaper tales of Paterson and anarchy, of New Jersey and New Thought, of socialistic ranters hailing from this or that semi-foreign community, in one of the oldest states in the American union, whose battlefields in our first war for freedom are spread on many glorious pages of our country’s history. The battlefields of Jersey are different now, and are not so glorious. ”

“ She was Jersey born, her father was reputed to have laid by a goodly sum of money—not all got in this Vier Marchi; and that he was a smuggler and pirate roused a sentiment in their bosoms nearer to envy than aught else. Go away naked and come back clothed, empty and come back filled, simple and come back with a wink of knowledge, penniless and come back with the price of numerous vergees of land, and you might answer the island catechism without fear. Be lambs in Jersey, but harry the rest of the world with a lion's tooth, was the eleventh commandment in the Vier Marchi. ”

“ We, who come to woo Nature—for we love her with all the pure idolatry of a Thomson or a Davy—select the bye-lanes and the meadow paths. Yet even here we loiter not, although these garden meads of Jersey are the very choicest spots for the secluded rambles of lovers and the joyous festa of gipsying, especially when the warm south-west blows over the Atlantic.
But running water is well-nigh a blank in Jersey. As in all small islets, the rivulets are quiet little runnels rippling down from springs on the northern brow, and stealing south straight into the bays ”

“ In Jersey the custom of five hundred years ago still reaches out and binds; and so small is the place that every square foot of it almost—even where the potato sprouts, and the potato is Jersey's greatest friend—is identified with some odd incident, some naive circumstance, some big, vivid, and striking historical fact. Behind its rugged coasts a little people proudly hold by their own and to their own, and even a Jersey criminal has more friends in his own environment than probably any other criminal anywhere save in Corsica ”

“ This winter life in New Jersey, of men and officers from New England, the Middle States, Virginia, and the South, appears to us now as very interesting, and in many ways a curious life. Into a quiet country neighborhood there came an entirely novel element,—an army which had not come there to fight, but to live.
Washington's first winter in New Jersey was spent in Morristown in 1777. This place was chosen because it was a productive country, and well situated for sudden expeditions against the enemy in that part of the State. ”

“ But each part of Jersey with all its variety, has a certain likeness. Everywhere are seen the same quaint old farmhouses of granite, half sunk in the earth, solidly built, with moss overgrown roofs and round arched doorways ”

“ Chapter XIX TO JERSEY WITH A THIEF
The night's boat was the Ella. When the train drew to a standstill and the passengers got out Bertie supposed that their journey was at an end. His ideas as to the whereabouts of Jersey were very vague indeed. He was surprised, therefore, when the captain, taking his hand, led him along the gangway to the boat. The stars were shining brightly overhead, but midnight never is quite as light as noon, and in the uncertain light he could neither see nor understand where it was that they were going. ”

“ The surface of the country is broken by winding valleys having a general direction from north to south, and as they approach the south uniting so as to form small plains. The lofty hedges which bound the small enclosures into which Jersey is divided, the trees and shrubberies which line the roads and cluster round the uplands and in almost every nook of the valleys unutilized for pasturage or tillage, give the island a luxuriant appearance, neutralizing the bare effect of the few sandy plains and sand-covered hills. Fruits and flowers indigenous to warm climates grow freely in the open air. ”

“ At the time when the American colonists began to be restless under the rule of Great Britain, the people of New Jersey showed as strong a desire for independence as those of any other Colony, and they were by no means backward in submitting to any privations which might be necessary in order to assert their principles. As has been said before, the people were prosperous, and accustomed to good living, and it was not likely that there was any part of America in which a cup of well-flavored tea was better appreciated than in New Jersey. ”

“ Those who have never experimentally proved what riches the landscape-loving eye counts for its own in this portion of the State may still hold to the calumnious tradition that all Jersey is flat and unprofitable to the searcher for the beautiful in pictorial nature. There is no hilltop of this gracious country that does not rise to salute some yet more sightly hill ”

“ Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, is situated in a deep bay of the French coast, from which it is distant twenty miles. Its extreme length from east to west is twelve miles, its breadth six. The island is fertile and beautiful, it enjoys a mild and salubrious climate; the coast is studded with granite rocks, and indented by small bays, which add greatly to the beauty of the scenery. The chief town is St. Helier's,—its principal trade is with Newfoundland: ship-building is carried on extensively. The natives are kind, but thrifty and parsimonious. ”

“ In order to pass from Cape May to Atlantic City one takes a long circuit by rail through the Jersey sands. Jersey is a very prolific State, but the railway traveler by this route is excellently prepared for Atlantic City, for he sees little but sand, stunted pines, scrub oaks, small frame houses, sometimes trying to hide in the clumps of scrub oaks, and the villages are just collections of the same small frame houses hopelessly decorated with scroll-work and obtrusively painted, standing in lines on sandy streets, adorned with lean shade-trees. ”

“ There was this enormous difference between life in the Island of Jersey and life in French Canada, that in Jersey, tradition is heaped upon tradition, custom upon custom, precept upon precept, until every citizen of the place is bound by innumerable cords of a code from which he cannot free himself. It is a little island, and that it is an island is evidence of a contracted life, though, in this case, a life which has real power and force. ”

“ In southern New Jersey there are no rocky eminences or elevations worthy of the name of mountains. Its rounded hills are all earthy, and the results of denudation or erosion; the most elevated—the Navesink highlands—are about 400 feet high.
The southern half of the State is a great plain, sloping gently from its centre towards the Atlantic and the Delaware, and has been eroded in the Drift period. [1] It contains tracts of gravelly loam largely used for market gardens and vineyards. Extensive tidal marshes border the Atlantic and Delaware Bay, to the extent of nearly 300,000 acres. ”

“ He lived in the recollection of those who saw him in New Jersey as a man of strong passions, fond of convivial pleasures, well versed in the ways of the world, and, at one period of his life not a stranger to the gallantries which so frequently marred the character of the man of that age. ”

“ The Jerseys are graceful, deer-like cattle, whose home is in the island of Jersey, where, by means of stringent regulations against the importation of cattle, the breed has been kept pure for many generations. As its milk is especially rich in fat (so rich that it requires to be diluted with a little water before it can be safely fed to calves) , the Jersey has attained a wide reputation as a butter-producing breed. It is a great favourite in England, where many pure-bred herds exist. ”

“ East Jersey had a population of about ten thousand, composed of Quakers, New England men, and Scotch Presbyterians. Of the four thousand inhabitants of West Jersey, the Quakers were the prevailing element. The population of New Jersey was homogeneous, being very largely English; the few Dutch, Germans, and Swedes having little effect on the character of the colony. Jerseymen were vigorous and quick-witted, although Governor Belcher (1748-1757) wrote, "They are a very rustical people, and deficient in learning." ”

“ I cannot but remember the place that New Jersey holds in our early history. In the early Revolutionary struggle few of the States among the old thirteen had more of the battle-fields of the country within their limits than old New Jersey. May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I mention that away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, such a one as few of the younger members have ever seen,—"Weems's Life of Washington." ”

“ The soil of New Jersey is not generally so fertile as that of the states which have been named, being sandy along the sea-coast, and hilly in the interior. Although this state has an extensive sea-coast yet, as there are few very commodious harbors, to vie with that of New York on the one side and of Philadelphia on the other, it has but little commerce:—These cities import almost all the foreign articles and dispose of most of the manufactures and produce of this state. ”

“ We have so long looked upon New Jersey as prominent among what were called the "free States" of the Union, that it now seems strange when we consider, that among the first of the institutions established upon its soil by the early settlers, was the system of slavery. This was the case not only in New Jersey, but in all the American Colonies. The settlers of New England, as well as those of the Southern Colonies, used negro slaves as laborers on their farms; and the trade in native Africans was a very important branch of industry. ”

“ There are nineteen banks and trust companies. In manufacturing, Jersey City ranks second in the state. Its great commercial and industrial growth is due to its nearness to New York, to its connection with that city by ferries and railroad tunnels, by which passengers and freight are carried to the heart of the city of New York in a few minutes, and to the abundance of facilities for all kinds of transportation. ”

“ Mont Orgueil, where we stand, is not a bad starting-point from which to commence our exploration of Jersey. Happy, indeed, the visitor who arrives at this little port from France—and the steamer comes from Carteret in little more than an hour. Most English tourists, on the other hand, make Jersey first at St. Helier, which happens to be a town of considerable dulness, and compares very badly with St. Peter Port, in Guernsey. Mont Orgueil, however, may be reached at once from St. Helier by one of the two strange little railways that traverse the south coast of the island. ”

“ Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread arbitrament of battle. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prisonship. ”

“ New Jersey is rich in its facilities for recreation and recuperation. The long sea coast is one long line of attractive summer resorts, which are famous all over the world, while some places are pleasure and health resorts all the year round, and attractions of a different kind are found in abundance among the mountains, woods, lakes, and streams of the northern part of the state. ”

“ The fruit vendors--and with what delicious fruit the Guernsey men board the Jersey boats!--were preparing to take their leave, and those passengers who had gone to stretch their legs with a saunter on the jetty were returning to the steamer.
The rest of the voyage was uneventful. Jersey is not very far away from Guernsey, and for a considerable part of the distance the passengers were in sight of land. The breeze began to freshen, and as they steamed round Jersey towards St. Heliers it began to dawn upon not a few that enough of this sort of thing was as good as a feast. ”