At that point a creek carrying a
depth of over fourteen feet for ten miles from its mouth flowed
into the Delaware. The Dutch had called this creek Minquas, after
the tribe of Indians; the Swedes named it the Christina after
their infant Queen; and in modern times it has been corrupted
into Christiana.
They sailed about two and a half miles through its delta marshes
to some rocks which formed a natural wharf and which still stand
today at the foot of Sixth Street in Wilmington. This was the
Plymouth Rock of Delaware. Level land, marshes, and meadows lay
along the Christina, the remains of the delta which the stream
had formed in the past. On the edge of the delta or moorland,
rocky hills rose, forming the edge of the Piedmont, and out of
them from the north flowed a fine large stream, the Brandywine,
which fell into the Christina just before it entered the
Delaware. Here in the delta their engineer laid out a town,
called Christinaham, and a fort behind the rocks on which they
had landed. A cove in the Christina made a snug anchorage for
their ships, out of the way of the tide.
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