With the
Brandywine so admirably suited to the water-power machinery of
those days and the Christina deep enough for the ships,
Wilmington seemed in colonial times to possess an ideal
combination of advantages for manufacturing and commerce. The
flour mills were followed in 1802 by the Du Pont Powder Works,
which are known all over the world, and which furnished powder
for all American wars since the Revolution, for the Crimean War
in Europe, and for the Allies in the Great War.
"From the hills of Brandywine to the sands of Sussex" is an
expression the people of Delaware use to indicate the whole
length of their little State. The beautiful cluster of hills at
the northern end dropping into park-like pastures along the
shores of the rippling Red Clay and White Clay creeks which form
the deep Christina with its border of green reedy marshes, is in
striking contrast to the wild waste of sands at Cape Henlopen.
Yet in one way the Brandywine Hills are closely connected with
those sands, for from these very hills have been quarried the
hard rocks for the great breakwater at the Cape, behind which the
fleets of merchant vessels take refuge in storms.
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