For those who wish to avoid the hard work of breaking woodlands, the eastern and western shores offer abundant well-cultivated lands with buildings, orchards, and woods, in the immediate vicinity of navigable rivers and railways, on good roads at from twenty dollars per acre upwards.  That seems cheap.

For settlers who are accustomed to mountainous regions, western Maryland has land for sale at even cheaper rates.

“There are many large tidal marshes in Maryland, as might be expected in a territory watered like this state.  They are of the richest soil to be found, because the Chesapeake Bay is a great river valley, receiving the drainage of a vast area of fertile land, comprising nearly one third of New York and nearly all of the great agricultural states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.  Every year this drainage brings down a black sediment, called oyster mud, which is deposited on the marshlands and enriches the soil, making it, with proper cultivation, of productivity like that of the rice and wheat fields of Egypt.  These unreclaimed lands are used chiefly for grain.”

Proper drainage of small tracts of this land would bring unsurpassed and absolutely untouched fertility.

The Chesapeake River valley is not so large as that of the Nile or Ganges, but is of enough consequence to play an important part in human affairs and to support in comfort and prosperity a population as large as that of many famous states.

“The eastern shore is uniformly level, with good roads.  The proximity of the ocean and the bay greatly modifies the temperature.  It has a great trunk railway, with connections along its entire length, called the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania railroad, which furnishes direct transportation to Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities.”

“On the eastern shore there are many thousand acres of land devoted to garden truck, and the strawberry crop has of late years become of importance.  Over one hundred carloads of strawberries are shipped daily during the season to the Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston markets.”

Land properly cultivated will yield four thousand quarts of strawberries to an acre.

The canning of various fruits and vegetables has grown to be larger than that of any other state and is one of the most profitable of the industries of Maryland.  The principal articles canned are peaches, peas, and tomatoes.

The tomato crop is also profitable to the grower.  The young plants are set out in the spring; many do this with a machine, but two persons can easily plant seven acres in a day by hand.

An acre will produce from six to eighteen tons of tomatoes, according to the quality of the soil.  All such products bring better prices now in Maryland markets than they did before canning was resorted to.  The Maryland tin can is known wherever civilization reaches.

Tobacco is extensively produced only in southern Maryland, although it can be raised in any section of the state.