divided by a morass. It has a single creditable public building, a number of fine private residences, and the polite society is reputed to be agreeable, refined, and cultivated, receiving a character from the families of the resident naval officers. It has all the immoral and disagreeable characteristics of a large seaport, with very few of the advantages that we should expect to find as relief to them. No lyceum or public libraries, no public gardens, no galleries of art, and though there are two "Bethels," no "home" for its seamen; no public resorts of healthful amusement; no place better than a filthy, tobacco-impregnated bar-room or a licentious dance-cellar, so far as I have been able to learn, for the stranger of high or low degree to pass the hours unoccupied by business.
Lieut. Maury has lately very well shown what advantages were originally possessed for profitable commerce at this point, in a report, the intention of which is to advocate the establishment of a line of steamers hence to Para, the port of the mouth of the Amazon. He says—
"Norfolk is in a position to have commanded the business of the
Atlantic sea-board: it is midway the coast. It has a back country of
great facility and resources; and, as to approaches to the ocean, there is
no harbour from the St. John's to the Rio Grande that has the same
facilities of ingress and egress at all times and in all weathers. * * The
back country of Norfolk is all that which is drained by the Chesapeake
Bay—embracing a line drawn along the ridge between the Delaware and
the Chesapeake, thence northerly, including all of Pennsylvania that is in
the valley of the Susquehanna, all of Maryland this side of the mountains,
the valleys of the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers, with
the Valley of the Roanoke, and a great part of the State of North Carolina,
whose only outlet to the sea is by the way of Norfolk."
In a letter to the National Intelligencer, Oct. 31, 1854,
after describing similar advantages which the town possesses,
to those enumerated above, Lieut. Maury, who is a Virginian,
again says—
"Its climate is delightful. It is of exactly that happy temperature
where the frosts of the North bite not, and the pestilence of the South
walks not. Its harbour is commodious and safe as safe can be. It is
