07 Mary's Land, Virginia's State, and Penn's Woods

Did you ever trade a top for some marbles or an apple for an orange? Long before there was any Washington or any United States there used to be trader Indians living on the shores of the river that flows by Washington. These Indians paddled their canoes up and down the river and traded with other Indians, swapping things they had for things they wanted—beads for furs, bows for arrows, corn for potatoes. In the Indian language the name for Traders was Potomac, so we call the river after these trader Indians, the Potomac River. The Potomac separates two States with girls' names:Maryland and Virgina. They are named after two queens. The Potomac Indians paddled their canoes down the river till they came to a much broader piece of water. This piece of water was so big it seemed to them like the ocean, and they called it “the Mother of Waters,” which in their own language was “Chesapeake.” You can see it on the map. Chesapeake Bay is not the ocean, but it is the biggest bay in the United States.

Did you ever eat snails or terrapin or frogs' legs? Some people like them. The Indians found oysters growing in the Chesapeake Bay. At first no one thought of eating oysters—they didn't look good to eat. But one day an Indian who was very hungry broke an oyster-shell open and ate the oyster inside. It tasted good and it didn't hurt him, so others began to eat oysters, and now almost every one likes oysters, either raw or cooked. Oysters grow in other parts of the World too, but many people say that those in the Chesapeake Bay are the largest and best, but they are not supposed to be good unless they are eaten during the eight months that have an R in their names. They are good in MaRch but not in June.

Near “the Mother of Waters” are two cities. One is named Annapolis. The other is named Baltimore. Annapolis means Anna's City, and it too was named after a queen. That makes three places—Anna's City, Mary's Land, and Virginia's State—named after queens. Annapolis is the capital of the State of Maryland, just as Washington is the capital of all the States. At Annapolis the United States has a school for teaching boys to be sailors and fit to fight the sea battles of the United States if the country should ever have any. This school is called the Naval Academy. Some of the best boys chosen from each State in the United States go to Annapolis. They study all about boats and fighting and about geography;they visit other countries and learn to command ships.

Baltimore is the largest city in Maryland. It was named after an English lord. The first railroad in our country started in Baltimore, and as it ran from Baltimore to the State of Ohio, it was called the Baltimore & Ohio, or the B. & O. for short. Baltimore is famous for the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital. Boys come from all over the World to study at the “Hopkins,” and people come from all over the World to be treated at the “Hopkins Hospital.”

A man named Penn once owned the State just north of Maryland. It was then all woods, so it was called Pennsylvania,which means Penn's Woods. But ages before Penn's Woods other woods were there—huge forests of trees and giant plants growing high and thick and fast. More ages passed and these forests died and became buried and mashed down under the ground and turned into black rock. More ages passed and men dug up this black rock, and by accident they found that unlike other rock this rock would burn. Of course it would burn, because, as we know now, it was really only hardened wood—which we call coal.

There are two kinds of coal. One is called hard and the other is called soft. Soft coal doesn't mean soft like a cushion;it means it crumbles easily. Hard coal is the best; soft coal is dirtier and smokier, but is a great deal cheaper. Why is it that the best things almost always cost the most? In the eastern part of Pennsylvania the coal that comes out of the ground is hard;in the western part it is soft.

Hundreds of thousands of men, called miners, work underneath the ground, where it is like night all day long, digging out the coal to run steam-engines and to heat our houses. They have been digging away for years and years, so that there are huge hollow places underneath parts of Pennsylvania.

Coal is in layers underneath the ground and between layers of rock like the chocolate in a chocolate layer-cake. But there are also iron mines in Pennsylvania, and iron is not in layers; it is all mixed through the rock under the ground and is called ore. To get the iron out of the ore, men build huge fires under the ore and the iron melts and runs out, like water, into troughs which they make in the ground to catch it. When the iron cools, the blocks of iron are called “pigs”—perhaps because they are about the size of pigs—or perhaps because a pig goes into a trough.

To get iron out of iron ore you must have heat, and to have heat you must have something to make heat with, like coal. Some places have iron ore but no coal, and some places have coal but no iron. It is as if some boys who wanted to play baseball had a ball but no bat, and some other boys had a bat but no ball. But Pittsburgh, in the western part of Pennsylvania, had both iron and coal near-by. That is like boys who have both a bat and a ball.

From the ore they make iron, and from the iron they make steel, and from the steel they make rails for railroad tracks and beams for tall buildings and bridges to cross rivers.

A name that is in the Bible is the name of a city, Philadelphia. It means the City of Brotherly Love. This name was chosen to give to the largest city in Pennsylvania, in fact, the third largest city in all the United States, but I don't know whether it suits or not. Philadelphia was the capital of the United States before there was any Washington, D. C., but now it isn't even the capital of its own State. Here in an old building, called Independence Hall, is the bell that rang out the news when the United States was first made a country. It is now cracked, so will not ring any more, but is more treasured than any bell in the United States that can ring.

The biggest bathtub in the World is not far from Philadelphia. It is an ocean bath called Atlantic City, on the coast of New Jersey. People from all over the World go there to take salt baths and sun baths and to be amused. There is a boardwalk miles long and as wide as a street close by the ocean, and along its side is every kind of thing to amuse you and your “stummick.” If you want to see a board “walk,” go to Atlantic City.