House & Garden 
HOMESTEADS OF THE EASTERN SHORE 
By E. N. VALLANDIGHAM 
M APS of Maryland show a tiny stream 
flowing southward through the county 
of Worcester, on the Eastern Shore, and 
between that county and its neighbor Somer¬ 
set, and emptying itself finally into an arm 
of the Chesapeake. This little stream is 
the Pocomoke, doubtless originally “ Poco- 
mico,” since “ ico ” is the characteristic ending 
of the Indian names 
of Eastern Shore 
streams. The arm of 
the bay that receives 
the Pocomoke River 
is Pocomoke Sound, 
a broad shallow estu¬ 
ary, interrupted by 
reefs and islands and 
perplexed with cross 
currents and treach¬ 
erous shoals, but 
beautiful with soft 
skies and far pros¬ 
pects bounded by the 
blue of pine forests. 
Up and down the 
Pocomoke, and away 
to Baltimore with 
many stops at inter¬ 
mediate ports, plies a 
flat-bottomed steam¬ 
boat. It is a long 
voyage, the 175 miles 
from Baltimore to 
Snow Hill (the 
farthest port on the 
Pocomoke) for what, 
with rather slow steaming, and many hours of 
loading and unloading freight at busy little 
ports, and frequent groundings in the shallows 
of the Sound, the steamboat, leaving Balti¬ 
more at four o’clock in the afternoon, does 
not reach Snow Hill until six or eight o’clock 
on the following evening. 
Long though the voyage is, it is not 
tedious to those who 
have leisure to enjoy 
its curious and inter¬ 
esting sights. The 
boat, from time to 
time, leaves the 
Sound to explore 
some narrow tidal 
stream, and with each 
new direction taken 
by the prow, some 
odd or charming sight 
is revealed ; now it is 
a quaint, deep-roofed 
cottage characteristic 
of the region, now it 
is a noble file of 
cypress trees,—their 
wide-spreading boles 
bathed in the salt 
water,—nowit is some 
noble old homestead 
such as that of the 
Wise family of 
Virginia (for part 
of the voyage is in 
the Old Dominion), 
a vast old house 
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