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when we mention some of the books, authorities, and other matter gone over. For example, all the newspapers, from the first editions ever published in Baltimore to the last; all pamphlets published relating to Baltimore; all the laws of Maryland and the Colonial Government; Niles' Register; Metropolitan Magazine; Griffith's Annals; Lossing's Field-Book of the Revolution, War of 1812, and Civil War and Historical Record; Sparks's Washington; Baltimore, Historical and Biographical; Kennedy's Life of Wirt; Tuckerman's Life of Kennedy; Coggeshall's American Privateers; Bosman's, McMahon's, and McSherry's Histories of Maryland; Memoirs of Commodore Barney; Dunlap's History of American Theatres; Kilty's Landholder's Assistant; Holmes' and Chalmers' Annals of America; Memoir of R. B. Taney; Smith's Virginia; Botta's American Revolution; Marshall's Washington; Annals of Annapolis; Rebellion Record; Custis's Life of Washington; American Biography; American Archives; State Archives; different histories of religious denominations in Baltimore; Green's Maryland Gazette; Conventions of Maryland; Journals of the Senate and House of Delegates of Maryland; directories published in Baltimore since 1796; old and rare books out of print; old maps; early surveys; many valuable private letters and manuscripts obtained from friends; Land Office records; Congressional Library, etc., etc., etc.

We will here make our acknowledgments to Messrs. R. A. Reed and J. P. Des Forges, antiquarian booksellers, for the loan of valuable unpublished letters, rare books, etc., that must otherwise have escaped us. We have also been assisted materially by Messrs. Osmond Tiffany and William Jefferson Buchanan. Extracts from authorities used have been liberally made, and much original and interesting matter quoted.

Many old and valuable letters of eminent men, never before published, have been preserved in the book. Brief biographical notices, also, of prominent citizens of the past have a place, as well as many pleasing reminiscences and incidents in connection with the customs and habits of the people of Baltimore in the olden time. The ancient style of dress is fully described, with the

fashion of our ancestral dames flaunting its absurdities no less glaring than of to-day. The churches and their histories have a place. The time of formation of societies of different kinds and for various purposes is noted and their histories given. The rise of canals and railroads, with the account of their rude commencement and their subsequent wonderful expansion and the changes they have wrought since the days of post-roads and Conestoga wagons, is given; also notices of the public schools from their first establishment; records of riots, fires, meetings, and processions. The four revolutions or wars, and the part Baltimore bore in them-1776, 1812, 1846, and 1861.

A history of the newspapers of Baltimore, portraying the rise and development of the mighty agency of the press in our midst, has its appropriate space allotted it, together with such other matters, statistical, commercial, industrial, mechanical, professional, political, religious, private, and public, as makes the entire collection a book indeed of large instruction, of great use for ready reference as a repository of valuable knowledge not otherwhere to be obtained, and partly of almost romantic interest.

Whatever of profit and pleasure shall be drawn from its pages by the reader, it cannot exceed that profit and pleasure experienced by the author in his researches, amid the labors and difficulties of his undertaking. For with him his work has been a labor of love, of pride, of sympathy, of ambition, and one which he hopes will be received as a laudable, and he trusts not altogether unsuccessful effort, by such in particular as, like himself, are "native here and to the manor born." The preparation of such a book was felt by him to have become a public necessity and a benefaction, nothing of a similar character having been placed before the public since 1829, when Griffith's "Annals of Baltimore" was published,—a work regarded as authentic as far as it goes, but which does not embrace in an entirety the subject of which it treats.

The "Chronicles of Baltimore" embraces, in substance, all, and very much more that has been omitted in the "Annals," going back to the earliest beginnings, taking up the story where Griffith stops, and continuing it to the present day. In the volume are

collected and preserved historical materials, obtained from widely separated sources, from private libraries and individuals, from musty records on the brink of decay, from odd places and unexplored corners, which by the accident of fire or flood or time's hard touches, might otherwise have been forever lost to us.

The book, the author feels, will commend itself to the people of Baltimore chiefly on account of the immense, unusual, and various information to be found within its pages, and because of the pleasing minor matters with which it abounds as well. The map upon the wall, the directory upon the desk, the bible upon the table, the tools upon the bench, express, in their places, that appropriateness and utility which we would bespeak for the "Chronicles of Baltimore" in the place which may be given it as a household need and addition, in the libraries, the business offices, and homes of the city.

J. THOMAS SCHARF.

BALTIMORE, April, 1874.

CHRONICLES OF BALTIMORE.

WE enter upon our arduous yet inspiring labor in gathering together the "Chronicles of Baltimore," with a feeling akin to that lofty spirit of enterprise which animates the navigator and explorer of new and unknown regions of the earth.

Pressing forward with eager hope and expectation, he sees the realm of discovery still apparently receding before him, yet continually rewarding his research and curiosity by the most valuable results; and he at length returns from the scene of his achievements with the records of his enterprise, anxious in his narrative that no historic foot-print may be lost. In the inexhaustible field of the old are mines of as deep interest and reward as are in the new; and it would be difficult to find in the history of America any page which offers a more varied attraction than that which treats of Baltimore, not alone to her own fond people, but to any people. He who will go over the track of her career, will seek her in company with those who first pressed her virgin soil with their feet ere she had risen from the wilderness, follow her as she has grown, and behold her as she is, cannot fail to be pleasantly and instructively impressed. Let us approach her with those who were the first to approach her, and stand with them, and see with them the then tangled, wild, unbroken site in the forest, now the proud, busy, palatial city. Let us make this approach through the quaint, yet clear and touching recital of Captain John Smith, who in his History of Virginia records the following, which we reprint in the original text:

THE SIXT VOYAGE.

1606.

TO ANOTHER PART OF VIRGINIA,

WHERE NOW ARE PLANTED OUR ENGLISH COLONIES WHOM GOD INCREASE AND PRESERUE:

DISCOVERED AND DESCRIBED

By CAPTAINE IOHN SMITH,

Sometimes Governour of the Countrey.

"By these former relations you may see what inconveniences still crossed those good intents, and how great a matter it was all

this time to finde but a Harbour, although there be so many. But this Virginia is a Country in America betweene the degrees of 34. and 45. of the North latitude. The bounds thereof on the East side are the great Ocean: on the South lyeth Florida: on the North nova Francia: as for the West thereof, the limits are vnknowne. Of all this Country we purpose not to speake, but onely of that part which was planted by the English men in the yeare of our Lord, 1606. And this is vnder the degrees 37. 38. and 39. The temperature of this Country doth agree well with English constitutions, being once seasoned to the Country. Which appeared by this, that though by many occasions our people fell sicke; yet did they recover by very small meanes, and continued in health, though there were other great causes, not onely to haue made them sicke, but even to end their dayes, &c.

"The Sommer is hot as in Spaine; the Winter cold as in France or England. The heat of sommer is in Iune, Iuly, and August, but commonly the coole Breeses asswage the vehemency of the heat. The chiefe of winter is halfe December, Ianuary, February, and halfe March. The colde is extreame sharpe, but here the Proverbe is true, that no extreame long continueth.

"In the yeare 1607. was an extraordinary frost in most of Europe, and this frost was found as extreame in Virginia. But the next yeare for 8. or 10. dayes of ill weather, other 14 dayes would be as Sommer.

"The windes here are variable, but the like thunder and lightning to purifie the ayre, I haue seldome either seene or heard in Europe. From the Southwest came the greatest gusts with thunder and heat. The Northwest winde is commonly coole and bringeth faire weather with it. From the North is the greatest cold, and from the East and Southeast as from the Barmudas, fogs and raines.

"Sometimes there are great droughts, other times much raine, yet great necessitie of neither, by reason we see not but that all the raritie of needful fruits in Europe, may be there in great plentie, by the industrie of men, as appeareth by those we there Planted.

"There is but one entrance by Sea into this Country, and that is at the mouth of a very goodly Bay, 18. or 20. myles broad. The cape on the South is called Cape Henry, in honour of our most noble Prince. The land white hilly sands like vnto the Downes, and all along the shores great plentie of Pines and Firres.

"The North Cape is called Cape Charles, in honour of the worthy Duke of Yorke. The Isles before it, Smith's Isles, by the name of the discover. Within is a country that may haue the prerogatiue over the most pleasant places knowne, for large and pleasant navigable Rivers, heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for mans habitation; were it fully manured and inhabited by industrious people. Here are mountaines, hils,

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