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49]
Chapter 3:
Voices from the
South.
May, 1774, continued.
hearts glowed more warmly on the banks of the
Patapsco.
That admirable site of commerce, whose river side and hill-tops are now covered with stately warehouses, mansions and monuments, whose bay sparkles round the prows of the swiftest barks, whose wharfs receive to their natural resting-place the wealth of the
West Indies and
South America, and whose happy enterprise sends across the mountains its iron pathway of many arms to reach the
valley of the Mississippi, had for a century been tenanted only by straggling cottages.
But its convenient proximity to the border counties of
Pennsylvania and
Virginia had at length been observed by Scotch Irish Presbyterians, and other bold and industrious men; and within a few years they had created the town of
Baltimore, which already was the chief emporium within the
Chesapeake Bay, and promised to become one of the most opulent and populous cities of the world.
When the messages from the old committee