This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...of this territory, washed by the tides in these two majestic streams. The northern neck seems to have been named by way of distinction from the peninsula, beginning farther down the bay between the York and the James, and from the "south side" of the James. The term "neck" is doubtless due to the fact that at one point ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...of this territory, washed by the tides in these two majestic streams. The northern neck seems to have been named by way of distinction from the peninsula, beginning farther down the bay between the York and the James, and from the "south side" of the James. The term "neck" is doubtless due to the fact that at one point the waters of the Potomac are divided from those of the Rappahannock by a narrow neck of land onty a few miles wide. Lancaster County is bounded on the east by Chesapeake Bay, on the northeast by Northumberland County, on the north by Richmond County, and on the west and south by the Rappahannock River, which is from 3 to 5 miles wide the entire length of the county and covers some of the finest oyster beds in the country. The banks of the Rappahannock are for the most part several feet above the surface of the water, rising in many places to low bluffs. The fertile lowlands extend some distance back from the river, and then the country rises somewhat to the low central plateau, where there are considerable hills in the watershed, formed apparently by the erosions of small streams. This central plateau is still spoken of as the " forest" by the country people, a name that carries its own suggestion of the limits of former settlement and cultivation under the old tobacco regime, when the wealthy planters lived gayly along the water front; a name, also, that in more recent years, until the rise of the oyster industry, marked probably the chief source of wealth to the county. For it is only within the very recent past that the valuable forest has been stripped from the face of the country. There is still a little lumbering going on, but the industry has been ruined for years to come. According to the record in the c...
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