“The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ from our women, in their habitt go loose, wear French muches which are like a Capp and headband in one, leaving their ears bare, which are sett out with jewells of a large size and many in number; and their fingers hoop’t with rings, some with large stones in them of many Coullers, as were their pendants in their ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as Young.” The jewels of one settler of New Amsterdam were unusually rich (in 1650), and were enumerated thus:— £; s. d. One embroidered purse with silver bugle and chain to the girdle and silver hook and eye 1 4 One pair black pendants, gold nocks 10 One gold boat, wherein thirteen diamonds &; one white coral chain 16 One pair gold stucks or pendants each with ten diamonds 25 Two diamond rings 24 One gold ring with clasp beck 12 One gold ring or hoop bound round with diamonds 2 10 These jewels were owned by the wife of an English-born citizen; but some of the Dutch dames had handsome jewels, especially rich chatelaines with their equipages and etuis with rich and useful articles in variety. When we read of such articles, we find it difficult to credit the words of an English clergyman who visited Albany about the year 1700; namely, that he found the Dutch women of best Albany families going about their homes in summer time and doing their household work while barefooted. Many conditions existed in Maryland which were found nowhere else in the colonies. These were chiefly topographical. The bay and its many and accommodative tide-water estuaries gave the planters the means, not only of easy, cheap, and speedy communication with each other, but with the whole world. It was a freedom of intercourse not given to any other _agricultural_ community in the whole world. It was said that every planter had salt water within a rifle-shot of his front gate—therefore the world was open to him. The tide is never strong enough on this shore to hinder a sailboat nor is the current of the rivers perceptible. The crop of the settlers was wholly tobacco—indeed, all the processes of government, of society, of domestic life, began and ended with tobacco. It was a wonderfully lucrative crop, but it was an unhappy one for any colony; for the tobacco ships arrived in fleets only in May and June, when the crops were ready for market. The ships could come in anywhere by tide-water. Hence there were two or three months of intense excitement, or jollity, lavishness, extravagance, when these ships were in; a regular Bartholomew Fair of disorder, coarse wit, and rough fun; and the rest of the year there was nothing; no business, no money, no fun. Often the planter found himself after a month of June gambling and fun with three years’ crops pledged in advance to his creditors. The factor then played his part; took a mortgage, perhaps, on both crops and plantation; and invariably ended