Black & Jenkins Award,1877,
msa_sc_5330_8_12
, Image No.: 36
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Black & Jenkins Award,1877,
msa_sc_5330_8_12
, Image No.: 36
   Enlarge and print image (45K)          << PREVIOUS  NEXT >>
erers. IN ALL THESE PLACES and the furthest we came up the rivers we cut in trees so many crosses as we would, and in many places made holes in trees, wherein we writ notes, and in some places crosses of brasse, to signifie to any, Englishmen had been there." It is agreed that Smith gave the name of `1 Limbo " to the straits known as 1, Hooper's straits," about twenty miles north of Cedar straits; and the proof is conclusive that the angle at Cedar straits is, and always was, a low, marshy point on which no trees ever grow, and which has none of the elements of a promontory. The southernmost angle of it lies south of and is hidded from the view of navigators on the Chesapeake bay by the northern point of Fox Island, which is, and always has been, a part of Accomac county, in Virginia. Fox Island lies near to and west-southwest of the southern point of the main shore at Cedar straits, and was granted by Virginia in 1678, Watts Island, South of it, having been granted in 1673. They were both islands then ; and there being no evidence to show that they were not both islands in 1608 and 1632, the presumption is that they were. A straight line cannot now be drawn, and I assume never could have been drawn, from the southern extremity of the main shore at Cedar straits either to Cinquack or Smith's Point, on the west- ern side of the bay, without running across Fox Island. My colleagues have been compelled to run through it, as the line on their map shows, in order to reach their so- called Watkins Point. It would be hard to explain how Maryland became entitled to it. It is not contended that any land has been made at this point since the charter was granted; and whatever washing away has taken place only renders the fact less certain now than it was two centuries ago. The facts will appear by an examination of any map of the United States Coast Survey, and such examination will show that -the southern point of the mainlaind at Cedar straits never was in any sense a promontory or head- land on the Chesapeake bay. The Maryland commissioners in their statement to this