mined; and although the south fork is sixty miles the longer, and the terri- tory lying between the forks is estimated at half a million of acres, Maryland has been compelled to establish her boundary upon the north fork. Upon the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, the precise location of the boundary between Maryland and Virginia is unsettled to the present day.[1]
Provided with a charter upon such favorable conditions, Lord Baltimore immediately commenced preparations for sending a colony to his new possessions. He at first intended to accompany the expedition in person, but abandoning this plan, he confided the leadership to his brother, Leonard Calvert, whom he appointed Governor of the Province, with the title of Lieutenant-General. On the 22d November, 1633, the colonists, to the number of about two hundred, many of them gentlemen of fortune, and most of them Roman Catholics, set sail from Cowes in the Isle of Wight. Taking the old route by the Azores and West Indies, and having stopped for some time at the Island of St. Christopher's and Barbadoes, they arrived off Point Comfort in Virginia on the 24th February, 1634. Letters which Governor Calvert brought from the King of England, secured for the colonists a favorable reception by the government of Virginia, and on the 3d of March they proceeded up the bay to the Potomac. Entering the river, they effected a landing and made their first settlements upon its banks. On the 25th of March, having erected a cross and celebrated mass, they took formal possession of the country "for our Saviour, and for our sovereign lord, the King of England." On the 27th the whole company landed and occupied an Indian town that had been ceded to them by the natives, and which, under the name of St. Mary's, continued to be the capital of the Province until 1692.
Thus the colony was first established almost at the southern extremity of the Province, and for some time after, the settlements upon the western shore of the bay were chiefly confined to that portion of the country. Various causes contributed to hinder the extension of settlements into the interior, in places remote from the more thickly settled portions of the Province. Wars occurred, both with the Indians and the Dutch settlements in the northeastern portion of the Province, upon the Delaware Bay, and the Province itself was not exempt from internal commotions. In 1644 occurred the formidable insurrection known, from the name of its leader, as the "Ingle rebellion," the effects of which are felt to the present day by reason of the loss of many of the early records of the Province, which were carried away from St. Mary's by the insurgents and destroyed. The Proprietary government too was twice interrupted from without during the first hundred years of its existence. During the time of the Commonwealth in England, the government of the Province was usurped by commissioners appointed by Cromwell. And after the revolution which resulted in the establishment of William
- ↑ There is now a joint commission appointed from the two States, for the purpose of adjusting the boundary line between them.
