DELAWARE

See also:

• RIVER

RIVER  , a stream of the Atlantic slope of the United States; meeting tide-water at Trenton, New Jersey,130 M. above its mouth . Its total length, from the head of the longest branch to the capes, is 410 m., and above the head of the bay its length is 36o m- It constitutes in part the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, the boundary between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and, for a few miles, the boundary between Delaware and New Jersey . The main, west or Mohawk branch rises in Schoharie county, N.Y., about 1886 ft. above the sea, and flows tortuously through the plateau in a deep trough until it emerges from the Catskills . Other branches rise in Greene and Delaware counties . In the upper portion of its course the varied scenery of its hilly and wooded banks is exquisitely beautiful . After leaving the mountains and plateau, the river flows down broad Appalachian valleys, skirts the Kittatinny range, which it crosses at Delaware Water-Gap, between nearly vertical walls of sandstone, and passes through a quiet and charming country of farm and forest, diversified with plateaus and escarpments, until it crosses the Appalachian plain and enters the hills again at Easton, Pa . From this point it is flanked at intervals by fine hills, and in places by cliffs, of which the finest are the Hockamixon Rocks, 3 M. long and above 200 ft. high . At Trenton there is a fall of 8 ft . Below Trenton the river becomes a broad, sluggish inlet of the sea, with many marshes along its side, widening steadily into its great estuary, Delaware Bay . Its main tributaries in New York are Mongaup and Neversink rivers and Callicoon Creek; from Pennsylvania, Lackawaxen, Lehigh and Schuylkill rivers; and from New Jersey, Rancocas Creek and Musconetcong and Maurice rivers . Commerce was once important on the upper river, but only before the beginning of railway competition (1857) . The Delaware division of the Pennsylvania Canal, running parallel with the river from Easton to Bristol, was opened in 183o .

A canal from Trenton to New

Brunswick unites the waters of the Delaware and Raritan rivers; the Morris and the Delaware and Hudson canals connect the Delaware and Hudson rivers; and the Delaware and Chesapeake canal joins the waters of the Delaware with those of the Chesapeake Bay . The mean tides below Philadelphia are about 6 ft . The magnitude of the commerce of Philadelphia has made the improvements of the river below that port of great,importance . Small improvements were attempted by Pennsylvania as early as 1771, but apparently never by New Jersey . The ice floods at Easton are normally 10 to 20 ft., and in 1841 attained a height of 35 ft . These floods constitute a serious difficulty in the improvement of the lower river . In the " project of 1885 " the United States government undertook systematically the formation of a 26-ft. channel 600 ft. wide from Philadelphia to deep water in Delaware Bay; $1,532,688.81 was expended—about $200,000 of that amount for maintenance—before the 1885 project was superseded by a paragraph of the River and Harbor Act of the 3rd of March 1899, which provided for a 3o-ft. channel 600 ft. wide from Philadelphia to the deep water of the bay . In 1899 the project of 1885 had been completed except for three shoal stretches, whose total length, measured on the range lines, was 41 M . The project of 1899, estimated to cost $5,81o,000, was not completed at the close of the fiscal year (June 30) 1907, when $4,936,550.63 had been expended by the Federal government on 'the work; in 1905 the state of Pennsylvania appropriated $750,000 for improvement of the river in Pennsylvania, south of Philadelphia .