New Jersey coast

“ It's not pleasant news.”
“I am prepared to hear anything, Captain Mayo. Nothing matters a great deal just now.”
“We are being driven on to the coast. I don't know whether it's the Delaware or the New Jersey coast. It doesn't make much difference. The breakers are just as bad in one place as in the other.”
“Why don't you anchor this boat? Are you going to let it go ashore and be wrecked?” asked Bradish, with anger that was childish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We were thinking of some place on the New Jersey coast.”
“The New Jersey coast is all sand and glare. It would spoil your bride’s complexion. I’ll tell you what you’d better do. You’d better go and pass your honeymoon at my cottage in New Hampshire—Beacon Rock. It’s shut up and doing no one any good—consequence of my wife’s trip to Europe. Say the word, and I’ll wire Perkins—my general factotum there—to open and air the house, start fires, and be ready to welcome you with a warm dinner on the 26th.” ”

“ Departing hence, and always following the shore, which stretched to the north, we came, in the space of fifty leagues, to another land, Delaware and New Jersey Coast which appeared very beautiful and full of the largest forests. We approached it, and going ashore with twenty men, we went back from the coast about two leagues, and found that the people had fled and hid themselves in the woods for fear. By searching around we discovered in the grass a very old woman and a young girl of about eighteen or twenty, who had concealed themselves for the same reason ”

“ To the northward is Long Branch, the most fashionable and exclusive of the New Jersey coast resorts, being mainly a succession of grand villas and elaborate hotels, stretching for about four miles along a bluff which here makes the coast, and has grass growing down to its outer edge almost over the water. In the three sections of the West End, 195 Elberon and Long Branch proper, the latter getting its name from the "Long branch" of the Shrewsbury River, there are about eight thousand regular inhabitants, and there come here about fifty thousand summer visitors, largely from New York. ”

“ Many carriages are moving and thousands of people walking 85 about in the streets and open spaces beneath us, while upon the ocean side the piers extend out in front, with their steamboats sailing to or from the Narrows to the northward, around the knob and hook at Norton's Point. Far south over the water are the distant Navesink Highlands behind Sandy Hook and the low adjacent New Jersey Coast, gradually blending into the Staten Island hills to the westward. ”

“ Thus if we were to find ourselves in almost any village or rural settlement along the coast of New Jersey or Long Island, and were to fall in with any old resident who was fond of talking to strangers, he would probably point out to us the blackened and weather-beaten ribs of a great ship which had been wrecked on the sand bar off the coast during a terrible storm long ago ”

“ 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. ”

“ A number of facts indicate that the coast of New Jersey and Long Island is gradually sinking. From the marshes of New Jersey are taken the trunks of trees which could not have grown there except when it was drier ground, and on the shore stumps are seen, now under water, of trees which must have grown on land. So, too, the sea throws up in storms portions of turfy soil, once covered only by the air, and similar soil has been reached below the sea-level in pits dug through drifted sand along its margin. ”

“ It has a climate favorable to those who are convalescing from illness or seek to recuperate their health. On this account it is a popular resort during the entire year. It has a superior school system and all the other facilities and institutions which mark the progressive city. Long Branch, farther north, is the oldest resort on the coast. Another resort of many years standing is Cape May City. Other well-known resorts are Ocean City, Point Pleasant, Sea Girt, Manasquan, Spring Lake, Belmar, Ocean Grove, Asbury Park, Sea Bright, and Atlantic Highlands. ”

“ Green Run Inlet, which had a depth of about six feet of water for nearly ten years, also closed after shifting half a mile to the south of its original location. The tendency of inlets on this coast is to shift to the southward, as do the inlets on the coast of New Jersey.
Oystermen, fishermen, and farmers live along the upland, and in some cases on the island beaches. From these bays, timber, firewood, grain, and oysters are shipped to northern ports. The people are everywhere kind and hospitable to strangers. ”

“ Schooners bring them from all along the coast, freight-cars come loaded with the beauty of the inland hills, and huge market carts trundle their precious burden from the near-lying forests and damp meadows. Although it is prohibited by law to cut young trees from the barrens along the coast, as the growth of pines keeps the sand from drifting, many small coasting vessels drop into the bays and inlets around Sandy Hook and other parts of the Jersey shore a little before Christmas-time, and send their crews ashore by night to secure a cargo to bring to New York. ”

“ Newark Bay is rather a small lake, communicating by long outlets with the sea. The Bay of Amboy, between Staten Island and Sandy Hook, affords little shelter for vessels. There is a long bay, formed by a beach four or five miles from the shore, extending along the coast from Manasquan river, in Monmouth county, almost to Cape May. Through this beach are a number of inlets, by which the bay communicates with the ocean. Delaware Bay lies between the states of Delaware and New Jersey, formed by the mouth of Delaware river and several other smaller ones. ”

“ Rivers they are called by the Floridians, but are long stretches of salt water lying parallel with the coast, and separated from the sea by a sandy beach of a mile in width, which is covered with a growth of pitch-pine and palmetto scrub. In New York and New Jersey such waters are called bays, and on the coast of Carolina they are sounds. They furnish a convenient boat-navigation for the people, who in consequence do most of their traveling by water. ”

“ The small triangular section of the coastal plain in New Jersey north of Delaware Bay deserves separate treatment because of the development there of a peculiar topographic feature, which throws light on the occurrence of the islands off the New England coast, described in the next paragraph. ”

“ An important fur trade was rapidly developed in the Hudson Valley and exploration of the coast was continued. In 1616 Hendrickson examined Delaware Bay, and in 1620 the same region and Chesapeake Bay were visited by May. The southern extremity of New Jersey still bears the name of the Dutch explorer. ”

“ The iron is mined with greater difficulty than in the larger iron-producing regions, but the saving of the cost of transportation makes it profitable. The New Jersey ores have a larger per ton value ($3.18 in 1899) than those obtained in any other State.
Fisheries. New Jersey, with its long and well indented coast line, and bounded by the Hudson and the Delaware, is well adapted for the development of an extensive fishery industry, in which seventeen out of the twenty-one counties of the State participate directly. There were 12,270 persons so engaged in 1898, as against 16,539 in 1891. ”

“ From this it is seen that, according to the first charter, the coast-line of the First Colony in Virginia extended from a point on the coast of New Jersey, just opposite the City of Philadelphia, on southward to the headland which is today known as Cape Fear, North Carolina. ”

“ He first discovered it on the south, and partially explored Delaware Bay; then he sailed up the coast and entered New York Bay, and sailed some distance up the river which now bears his name.
Hudson did more for New Jersey than any of the other discoverers, for his men were the first Europeans [Pg 17] who ever set foot upon its soil. Some of them landed in the vicinity of Bergen Point, and were met in a friendly way by a great many of the original inhabitants. But the fact that he found here possessors of the soil made no difference to Hudson: he claimed the country for the Dutch. ”

“ Wherever, along our coast, the waves drive obliquely upon the beach, a movement of the sand takes place, and the inlets are consequently continually shifting.
The Long Island inlets are moving westward, and Sandy Hook advances to the northward, because the sea rolls in along the axis of the great bay between Long Island and New Jersey, and necessarily sweeps along the beaches, instead of taking the direction of a normal to the shore line. ”

“ A continued elevation of the coast would add to their seaward extent and a depression would cause a westward recession until they were brought to rest by contact with the mainland shore. In New Jersey the latter condition may be observed between Long Branch and Point Pleasant and also at Cape May.
So far as it is known to the writer, the only way in which a beach can be entirely destroyed is by an inlet shifting its position. In this case the beach obliterated is replaced by the extension of an adjacent beach. ”

“ A glance at the chart at noon shows us off the northern coast of Florida and the deep blue of the water betokens the Gulf Stream. Next morning men begin to don their white suits, and the sailors wander about barefooted. A bright girl suggests that a voyage from New York to the tropics is like a shower bath taken backwards, and we all are glad that the warm water faucet is at last turned on.
THE ROAD TO MARKET
A typical highway of Jamaica, followed by natives going to Kingston
The first land we sight after the Jersey coast has faded away is Watling Island, in the Bahamas. ”

“ The tide rolled up on the shelving beach beneath the square window with a sullen, treacherous roar.
"It's the bar that gives the sea that sound," said the captain. "This is the ugliest bit of coast for vessels from Nova Scotia to Florida. It's like this," drawing his finger across the table in the vain effort to map out the matter intelligibly to a landsman's comprehension. "Here's the Jersey coast. You've got to hug it close with your vessel to make New York harbor—there ”

“ A submerged reef of coral may have formed a nucleus on which the waves and currents deposited a load of calcareous sand, but the superficial portion is evidently similar in origin to that of the beaches farther north.
Barrier beaches are found on all the sea-coasts of the world where opportunity for their growth has been afforded, and those of New Jersey may be regarded as types of these formations in all their essential features. ”

“ It has long since crossed the Mississippi, and emigrated beyond the Missouri. What used to be called the "West" has already become the centre; and "out west" now means Kansas or Colorado, if anything at all. The Erie road, with its broad-gauge coaches, takes you through the picturesque, as well as rich and fertile regions of northern New Jersey, and western New York, whence the ride through Ohio, down the lovely valley of the Miami to Cincinnati, is substantially as through a garden. Over much of this region, it is plain to be seen, New England has left her mark, never to be effaced. ”

“ In 1667, Samuel Wyllys, of Hartford, bought Plum Island for a barrel of biscuit and a hundred awls and fish-hooks.
Any one who looks at the long ellipse of water embraced within Long Island and the Connecticut shore, and remarks the narrow and obstructed channel through which it communicates with the Hudson, the chain of islands at its meeting with the ocean on the east, must be impressed with the belief that he is beholding one of the greatest physical changes that have occurred on the New England coast. As it is, Long Island Sound lacks little of being an inland sea. ”

“ On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of the car may be made transparent. New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a traveller, a double-headed suburb rather than a State. Its dull red dust looks like the dried and powdered mud of a battle-field. Peach-trees are common, and champagne-orchards. Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by, feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs. ”

“ From their treeless waste extends the sea, a bath of deep, pure color. All seems keen, fresh, beautiful and severe: it would take a pair of stout New England lungs to breathe enjoyably in such an air. That is the northern coast. Mr. William Richards gives us the southern—the landscape, in fact, of Atlantic City. In his scenes we have the infinitude of soft silver beach, the rolling tumultuousness of a boundless sea, and twisted cedars mounted like toiling ships on the crests of undulating sand-hills. It is the charm, the dream, the power and the peace of the Desert. ”

“ The northern mountainous section, which is not specially profitable for agriculture and other purposes, is particularly useful in furnishing sources of water supply. The many large cities in the northern part of the state draw their water from the upper parts of the Hackensack, Passaic, and Raritan basins. ”