to be on her way to Sunday School. She said, "Yes, but what can 
I wear that Jesus hasn't seen?" So I'm a little in that situa¬ 
tion this morning. What can I tell you that you don't know? 
Well, the first thing it seems to me in dealing with an 
estuary is to comprehend what an enormous, complex system it 
really is. In the case of the Chesapeake, it is, of course, a 
very large estuary which draws from an enormous territory. That 
creates political and economic consequences that have to be 
taken into account in practical terms. You're looking at a 
drainage basin that begins in the North in Southern New York; 
includes most of Central Pennsylvania; and all of Maryland 
except for just a very small portion of the northwest corner of 
Maryland which drains into the Ohio and Mississippi system. It 
includes great territories in West Virginia and Virginia, all of 
the District of Columbia, and parts of drainage from Delaware. 
So it's a very big system that we're talking about and that 
has consequences that go beyond the political and the economic 
issues. It has consequences that deal with citizen behavior. 
If some teenage kid is draining his crankcase in Harper's 
Ferry, West Virginia, just pulls the plug and lets the crankcase 
oil drain off the street, that oil is going to end up in the 
Chesapeake Bay sooner or later. So what happens in remote 
places can have a direct and consequential impact on the 
Chesapeake Bay. 
A real estate developer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, can 
have an impact on the silting of the Bay, because the 
Susquehanna, which flows through Harrisburg, provides more than 
half of the freshwater to the Chesapeake Bay. It carries 
enormous amounts of freight other than water into the Bay, 
including silt and some polluting elements. So if that 
contractor in Harrisburg isn't conscious of the impact of his 
actions, he becomes a problem for Chesapeake Bay even though 
he's miles and miles removed from it. 
Well, one of the places to start with the Bay, of course, is 
at the very beginning. One of the most fascinating descriptions 
of the Bay ever written was one of the first. An intrepid 
British explorer, Captain Gabriel Archer, explored the reaches 
of the Bay in June of the year 1607. Of course that was the 
time of extensive exploration and adventure on the coasts of 
America. Captain Archer wrote down what he saw. I would 
recommend his journal to you. I will just quote very briefly 
6 
