ed
vegetation.

The people of Delaware have, indeed, very little land that is not
tillable. The problems of poverty, crowding, great cities, and excessive
wealth in few hands are practically unknown among them. The foreign
commerce of Wilmington began in 1740 with the building of a brig named
after the town, and was continued successfully for a hundred years.
At Wilmington there has always been a strong manufacturing interest,
beginning with the famous colonial flour mills at the falls of the
Brandywine, and the breadstuffs industry at Newport on the Christina.
With the Brandywine so admirably suited to the water-power machinery
of those days and the Christina deep enough for the ships, Wilmington
seemed in colonial times to possess an ideal combination of advantages
for manufacturing and commerce. The flour mills were followed in 1802 by
the Du Pont Powder Works, which are known all over the world, and which
furnished powder for all American wars since the Revolution, for the
Crimean War in Europe, and for the Allies in the Great War.

"From the hills of Brandywine to the sands of Sussex" is an expression
the people of Delaware use to indicate the whole length of their little
State. The beautiful cluster of hills at the northern end dropping into
park-like pastures along the shores of the rippling Red Clay and White
Clay creeks which form the deep Christina with its border of green reedy
marshes, is in striking contrast to the wild waste of sands at Cape
Henlopen. Yet in one way the Brandywine Hills are closely connected with
those sands, for from these very hills have been quarried the hard
rocks for the great breakwater at the Cape, behind which the fleets of
merchant vessels take refuge in storms.

The great sand dunes behind the lighthouse at the cape have their equal
nowhere else on the coast. Blown by the ocean winds, the dunes work
inland, overwhelming a pine forest to the tree tops and filling swamps
in their course. The beach is strewn with every type of wreckage of
man's vain attempts to conquer the sea. The Life Saving Service men have
strange tales to tell and show their collections of coins found along
the sand. The old pilots live snugly in their neat houses in Pilot Row,
waiting their turns to take the great ships up through the shoals and
sands which were so baffling to Henry Hudson and his mate one hot August
day of the year 1609.

The Indians of the northern part of Delaware are said to have been