es, New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, * are still the counties of
Delaware, each one extending across the State and filling its whole
length from the hills of the Brandywine on the Pennsylvania border to
the sands of Sussex at Cape Henlopen. The term "Territory" has ever
since been used in America to describe an outlying province not yet
given the privileges of a State. Instead of townships, the three
Delaware counties were divided into "hundreds," an old Anglo-Saxon
county method of division going back beyond the times of Alfred the
Great. Delaware is the only State in the Union that retains this name
for county divisions. The Three Lower Counties were allowed to send
representatives to the Pennsylvania Assembly; and the Quakers of
Delaware have always been part of the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia.

* The original names were New Castle, Jones's, and Hoerekill, as
it was called by the Dutch, or Deal.

In 1703, after having been a part of Pennsylvania for twenty years, the
Three Lower Counties were given home rule and a legislature of their
own; but they remained under the Governor of Pennsylvania until the
Revolution of 1776. They then became an entirely separate community and
one of the thirteen original States. Delaware was the first State to
adopt the National Constitution, and Rhode Island, its fellow small
State, the last. Having been first to adopt the Constitution, the people
of Delaware claim that on all national occasions or ceremonies they are
entitled to the privilege of precedence. They have every reason to be
proud of the representative men they sent to the Continental Congress,
and to the Senate in later times. Agriculture has, of course, always
been the principal occupation on the level fertile land of Delaware; and
it is agriculture of a high class, for the soil, especially in certain
localities, is particularly adapted to wheat, corn, and timothy grass,
as well as small fruits. That section of land crossing the State in
the region of Delaware City and Middleton is one of the show regions in
America, for crops of wheat and corn. Farther south, grain growing is
combined with small fruits and vegetables with a success seldom attained
elsewhere. Agriculturally there is no division of land of similar size
quite equal to Delaware in fertility. Its sand and gravel base with
vegetable mold above is somewhat like the southern Jersey formation,
but it is more productive from having a larger deposit of decay