THE NORFOLK TRUCKERS IN MID-WINTER. 



THE seasons are deter- 

 mined by the calendar 

 alone, it was winter 

 when I visited Norfolk, 

 for it was between Christ- 

 mas and New Year's ; 

 but, if they are deter- 

 mined by the weather, 

 it must have been April 

 or May. I left two feet 

 of snow and a month of "old fasliioned winter," 

 as the old settlers called it, to find myself, a few 

 hours later, in gardens where peas were sowing, 

 crops growing, and the fields busy with the harvest- 

 ing of spinage and kale. My own Christmas kale 

 had been dug from out the snow, but the Norfolkers 

 picked it from the soft earth in the sunny fields. 



Although Norfolk lies as far north as the thirty-sev- 

 enth parallel, its climate is peculiarly mild. A glance 

 at the map (Fig. i) suggests the reason. The place 

 is nearly surrounded by broad and open waterways. 

 It lies upon an irregular branch of the Chesapeake, 

 known as the Elizabeth river. It is nearly fifteen 

 miles across the bay from St. Charles to Fortress 

 Monroe and Old Point Comfort, and the noble 

 stretch of Hampton Roads lies between the old fort 

 and Norfolk. The region surrounding Norfolk is 

 intricately intersected with broad arms of the Ches- 

 apeake. Elizabeth river itself breaks into three 

 broad portions, one of which sets off the city ol 

 Portsmouth, which is but an important tributary to 

 Norfolk. Beyond Hampton Roads, James river 

 stretches away, a broad and majestic stream ; and 

 less than fifty miles away is Jamestown, the site of 

 the first successful European colonization, a ruin, 

 without railroad, and practically unknown to the 

 world to which it gave birth. 



The position of Norfolk not only insures it a good 

 climate, but gives it unsurpassed transportation fa- 

 cilities. There is constant water communication 

 with New York and Boston, and this competition 

 lessens the tariff by rail. A barrel of kale goes by rai 

 from Norfolk to New York for seventeen cents, 

 while a basket of peaches of five-eighths bushel 

 must pay twenty-one cents from southern Delaware, 

 some 150 miles farther north, over the same road. _ 

 This inequality of tariff has been the subject of much 

 controversy, but, however it is eventually adjusted, 

 the rates from Norfolk must remain low because of 

 water competition. And the rail facilities, in themselves, 

 are excellent. Railroads are plenty, and across Hamp- 

 ton Roads, upon the southernmost point of the penin- 



sula which lies beyond James river, is Newport News, 

 whose rail connections with the north and west give an 

 immediate outlet for the produce of the truckers. And 

 the minor arms and inlets round about Norfolk afford 

 good water communication with Norfolk and Ports- 

 mouth harbors, to which many of the truckers bring 

 their crops in sloops. 



It is not strange, therefore, that Norfolk should have 

 become a great vegetable garden for supplying northern 

 markets. The origin of this trucking interest is not 

 recent, yet it is only in the last ten or fifteen years that 

 it has assumed such enormous proportions as to easily 

 lead all trucking centres of the New World. Jerseymen 

 first saw the possibilities of the country. About 1840 

 Hugh Bates went from New Jersey to Norfolk and 

 began truck gardening in a small way. He brought 

 with him the Jersey methods, and, of course, made 

 hot-beds. The people made sport of him, and even 

 declared that a man who would construct a glass box in 

 which to grow plants would surely bring up at the poor 

 house. But Bates succeeded, and in 1842 he was 



Surroundings. 



followed by W. J. Bishop. In 1844 Richard Cox came 

 from New Jersey. He now owns and resides upon the 

 place where Bates first began his operations, and he is 



