May, 1918 
FOREST AND S T R E A M 
291 
CANOEING ACROSS SOUTHERN JERSEY 
SWAMPS, STREAMS AND TRACTS OF WILDNESS ARE FOUND WITHIN TOUCH OF 
AMERICA’S GREATEST CITIES BY CUTTING SOUTHERN JERSEY IN HALF WITH A CANOE 
By SYDNEY G. FISHER 
T HE great trouble with Philadelphians 
is that they do not appreciate their 
own city and its region. They neg¬ 
lect their fine river, the Delaware, although 
when closely known it is one of the most 
interesting rivers in the world in the rich¬ 
ness of its fertile scenes. The rush of its 
tides in shoal and island building, its tum¬ 
bling career through the mountains and 
the wonderful remains along its shores of 
the great ice sheet and glacier age, when 
the bergs, ice floes and floods brought 
down the stones, gravel and sand that built 
up New Jersey and Delaware, are an im¬ 
portant chapter in the geological history 
of the world. 
Not satisfied with ignoring their river, 
the Philadelphians are always making fun 
of New Jersey. We humble canoeists are 
about the only ones who appreciate Jersey, 
its beautiful forest-shaded streams of clear 
water, its mysterious cedar swamps and 
tracts of wildness and its fascinating geo¬ 
logical history since it first rose out of the 
sea a shoal, and later became islands. 
There are many easily negotiated canoe 
trips in the State of New Jersey. There 
is the famous one up the Rancocas, the 
wild and adventurous one of the Wading 
River, the Raccoon Creek, the Mantua 
Creek, the Mulica River and the Salem 
Creek routes. One of the best is the Tim¬ 
ber Creek route, completely across South¬ 
ern Jersey from the Delaware to the ocean, 
which reveals not a little of the structure 
and history of the region. You enter Tim¬ 
ber Creek, which flows into the Del¬ 
aware just below Gloucester, pass 
up it about 12 mile's to its head 
vaters at Turnersville, then haul 
/our canoe 8 miles to New Brook- 
yn on the main branch of Great 
fgg Harbor River and travel down 
hat stream to Ocean City on the 
edge of the Atlantic. 
Having often heard of this route 
started on it in my 14 foot single 
and canoe, early in the morning of 
•be 4th of August this year. I em- 
arked from the Corinthian Yacht 
lub at Essington on the Delaware 
fiver. Three hours’ run with the 
ood tide among the tramp steam¬ 
's and men of war brought me to 
ie mouth of Timber Creek, so 
died because a large part of the 
irsey forests w r ere floated out by it 
Colonial times. It is a deep 
ream about 30 yards wide, wind- 
g about through a very pretty 
arsh from a quarter to half a mile 
ide, bounded by heavily timbered 
:uffs on each side from 30 to 50 
feet high. The whole scene, though close 
to one of the great cities of the world, 
is as wild as when the first white man saw 
it nearly three hundred years ago. My 
only companions were the king birds, king 
fishers and crows. 
This waterway is evidently the remains 
of a powerful drainage system when the 
ancient Jersey Shoal was rising into an 
island or series of islands. This fact be¬ 
came more and more evident throughout 
the journey. I was passing through the 
remains of an old channel that once made 
Southern Jersey two islands, and this pas¬ 
sage way is still at a low level. 
Towards evening I passed through the 
little model village of 'Blackwood with its 
houses all freshly painted like new toys. 
It was a characteristic glimpse of Jersey 
life. The next morning, while Mr. W. H. 
Watson, an excellent type of the Jersey 
small farmer, hauled my canoe across the 
water shed, I had a chance to see how 
Timber Creek started in half a dozen or 
more trout streams, converging like the 
sticks of fan. It was not like the usual 
watershed; for the head waters of the 
two streams, the one I had ascended and 
the one I was to descend, overlapped. In 
fact the two streams both rose in the same 
somewhat level tract of country, of quite 
distinctive scenery, interspersed with 
old cedar swamps. It was a good 
instance of the usual formation of 
the middle of both South.ern Jersey 
and Delaware. The level tract had 
once been the shoalest part of the ancient 
channel between the two islands as they 
rose out of the sea. 
I 
Philadelphia 
Atlantic 
City 
Map showing route across Southern New Jersey 
T was only an eight mile haul across to 
the stream I was to descend, Great 
Egg Harbor River, just where it came 
out of a great cranberry bog. It was 
about 6 or 8 yards wide, averaging two or 
three feet deep, heavily overshadowed with 
trees and crossed by occasional log over 
which the canoe had to be dragged. I 
followed its labyrinthine windings all day 
through forests, swamps and thickets with¬ 
out a break except where two or three 
roads crossed on bridges. 
The, solitude and seclusion were perfect. 
I think I must have been the first canoeist 
down that reach since the spring floods. 
At one place the limb of a tree stretched 
almost entirely across the stream about a 
foot above the water. Balanced on it was 
a short piece of drift wood, left there I 
suppose by the subsiding of the last high 
water. My canoe touched the limb and 
shook the drift wood off. If any craft 
had preceded me, it could hardly ‘ have 
passed down the stream without touching 
that limb. 
The country passed through in that day 
and the next equalled in wildness and 
beauty anything I had ever seen in 
the wilderness of Maine or in the 
Adirondacks. It was a hot day 
ashore, but in the sombre light and 
shadows of that splendid forest it 
was cool and I did not need a hat 
to keep off the sun. 
Towards night I came to a break 
in the forest. It was a railroad 
crossing, one of the main lines by 
which both the Reading and the 
Pennsylvania haul the summer traf¬ 
fic to and from the seashore. Long 
trains, the engines with throttles 
wide open and quivering with steam, 
rushed by only five or ten minutes 
apart. It was the last few hours of 
the day when they must hurry the 
excursionists back to the great city. 
I had spent the day in a complete 
wilderness, and only an hour or so 
before had been examining the 
tracks of deer where they had 
crossed the stream; and to come out 
on this throbbing artery of iron civ¬ 
ilization seemed strange. But it was 
thoroughly like the mixture and 
make up of Jersey. 
It was strange too to camp there 
and fall asleep hearing the rush of 
those trains; but they grew fewer 
(continued on page 318) 
