The estuary of Delaware Bay is about sixty miles long and thirty miles broad in the widest part, contracting towards the north to less than five miles. The capes at the entrance are about fifteen miles apart. As a protection to shipping, the Government began, on the Cape Henlopen side, in 1829, the construction of the famous Delaware Breakwater. It consists of a stone breakwater about twenty-six hundred feet long facing the northeast, and an icebreaker about fourteen hundred feet long, at right angles, facing the upper bay. These were completed in 1870, there being an opening between them of about sixteen hundred feet width, which was afterwards filled up. The surface protected covers three hundred and sixty acres, and the whole work cost about $3,500,000. It was estimated in 1871 that fully twenty thousand vessels every year availed of the protection of this breakwater, the depth of water being twenty-four feet behind it--sufficient for most of the shipping of that day. But as vessels have become larger and of deeper draft, they have not been able to use it, and the Government has recently begun the construction of another and larger breakwater for a harbor of refuge in deeper water adjoining the regular ship channel, some distance to the northward. Delaware Bay divides the States of Delaware and New Jersey. The first settlement in Delaware was made by the Dutch near Lewes in 1630, but the Indians destroyed the colony; and in 1638 a colony of Swedes and Finns came out under the auspices of the Swedish West India Company, landed and named Cape Henlopen, and purchased from the Indians all the land from there up to the falls at Trenton, finally locating their fort near the mouth of Christiana Creek, and naming the country Nya Sveriga, or New Sweden. The Swedes and Dutch quarrelled about their respective rights until New York was taken by the English in 1664, after which England controlled. The first settlement in New Jersey was made by Captains Mey and Jorisz in 1623, who built the Dutch Fort Nassau a short distance below Philadelphia; but it did not last.