66 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATl-: Ml'SEUM. 



It was mail}' years later before the railroad was built to Cape 

 May. which had always been rather inaccessible except by water. 

 Indeed, prior to 1707, there was no wagon road out of the 

 peninsula, merely horse paths through the dense cedar swamps 

 which stretched away from Cedar Swamp Creek to Dennis 

 Creek, forming an effectual barrier to traffic and making Cape 

 May virtually an island.* 



With the advent of the railroads traffic on the old stage roads 

 practically ceased and with it went the taverns and forges, so 

 that the latter ])art of the nineteenth century found the remote 

 parts of the Pines more of a wilderness than they were before. 



Within the past decade several botanical trips have been made 

 across the Pine Barrens which have been recorded in print. 



Mr. C. F. Saunders has a charming account of a wagon trip 

 from Tuckefton to Atsion, July 3-5, 1899,1 ""* company wdth 

 Mr. W. N. Clute. His picture of the country is very vivid. 

 He says, after leaving Tuckerton : "Mile after mile of oak and 

 pine barrens were passed without sign of human habitation, and 

 when five miles were registered we came to the spot wdiich is 

 marked upon the maps as Munyon Field. Here, in old tim^^' 

 had been a house, and a family had lived here, scratching some 

 sort of a living from the sand and fattening hogs on the abundant 

 mast which strewed the ground under the little chinquapin oaks. 

 Now no vestige of human occupation remains save a little clear- 

 ing, which is rapidly filling- up with wildings from the surrounding 

 forest. * * * Two or three miles more of a similar wilder- 

 ness, and the forest growth thinned out and dwindled down to 

 dwarf proportions as we emerged upon the rolling heathlike 

 expanse of the east or lower plains. * * * Nothing could 

 be more restful to the eye than this rolling expanse of green 

 plain, melting away in everv direction into the misty distance, the 

 Avhite sand gleaming out here and there like whitccaps on an 

 emerald sea. * * * 'j^j^g luxuriant vines of the bearberry 

 lay spraw'ling everywhere in the sun, their dry, astringent berries 

 not yet tinged with the crimson that makes them so conspicuous 



* Cf. Dr. Maurice Beesley's Early History of Cape May, in the Geology of 

 the County of Cape May, 1857. 

 t Proc. Acad. Nat. Sciences, Phila., vol. 52, 1900, pp. 544-549. 



