e piedmont and
mountainous region form part of the original North American continent.
South of that line the more or less sandy level region was once a shoal
beneath the ocean; afterwards a series of islands; then one island with
a wide sound behind it passing along the division line to the mouth of
the Hudson. Southern Jersey was in short an island with a sound behind
it very much like the present Long Island. The shoal and island had been
formed in the far distant geologic past by the erosion and washings from
the lofty Pennsylvania mountains now worn down to mere stumps.

The Delaware River flowed into this sound at Trenton. Gradually the
Hudson end of the sound filled up as far as Trenton, but the tide from
the ocean still runs up the remains of the Old Sound as far as Trenton.
The Delaware should still be properly considered as ending at Trenton,
for the rest of its course to the ocean is still part of Old Pensauken
Sound, as it is called by geologists.

The Jerseys originated as a colony in 1664. In 1675 West Jersey passed
into the control of the Quakers. In 1680 East Jersey came partially
under Quaker influence. In August, 1664, Charles II seized New York, New
Jersey, and all the Dutch possessions in America, having previously
in March granted them to his brother the Duke of York. The Duke almost
immediately gave to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, members of
the Privy Council and defenders of the Stuart family in the Cromwellian
wars, the land between the Delaware River and the ocean, and bounded
on the north by a line drawn from latitude 41 degrees on the Hudson to
latitude 41 degrees 40 minutes on the Delaware. This region was to be
called, the grant said, Nova Caesarea, or New Jersey. The name was a
compliment to Carteret, who in the Cromwellian wars had defended the
little isle of Jersey against the forces of the Long Parliament. As the
American Jersey was then almost an island and geologically had been one,
the name was not inappropriate.

Berkeley and Carteret divided the province between them. In 1676 an
exact division was attempted, creating the rather unnatural sections
known as East Jersey and West Jersey. The first idea seems to have been
to divide by a line running from Barnegat on the seashore to the mouth
of Pensauken Creek on the Delaware just above Camden. This, however,
would have made a North Jersey and a South Jersey, with the latter much
smaller than the former. Several lines seem to