Modern Business Geography
chians, it does not furnish a level path, like the Mohawk valley, through
the Allegheny plateau. Hence west of Altoona the Pennsylvania
Railroad must wind up the face of the escarpment over the Horseshoe
Curve and then twist and turn for many miles in getting down to
Pittsburgh. This is a disadvantage like that which the Berkshire hills
in western Massachusetts impose on Boston. Another disadvantage
is that the harbor of Philadelphia is not so deep or so easy to enter as
that of New York, and has much less space for docks. F inally, the
port of Philadelphia is 150 miles farther from Europe than is New
York. No one of these disadvantages is perhaps great, but all to-
gether they give New York a decided advantage.
Nevertheless, Philadelphia stands second in size among the seaports
of America, and among all the cities of the New World only New
York and Chicago are larger.
How Baltimore is helped by the water and hindered by the land.
The relation of Baltimore to Philadelphia is almost like that of Phila-
delphia to New York. Baltimore has a good harbor which has been
much improved by dredging. Incidentally the harbor permits Balti-
more to profit from a thriving oyster fishing business in Chesapeake
Bay. The city is also helped by the Potomac River, which gives a
nearly level route across part of the Appalachian Mountains. Here,
just as at Philadelphia, the main railroad follows a river that enters a
bay west of that which affords the city access to the ocean.
Baltimore's transportation facilities are hampered by the land. The
peninsula of Delaware, east of the bay, obliges ships bound for Europe
to go 160 miles south and then to sail an equal distance back toward the
northeast before they reach a position as good as that of a ship starting
from New York. On the inland side of Baltimore, the route up the
Potomac is more difficult than that up the Susquehanna and cannot
compare with the Hudson-Mohawk route. Thus Baltimore, although
it has a fine hinterland in its immediate vicinity, does not draw exten-
sively on the interior plains or the Great Lakes region. For shipping
soft coal to the South and for southern trade in general it has a fine
location, and this helps to make it one of the country’s chief cities.
The other end of Chesapeake Bay. The trade of Chesapeake Bay is
divided between the two ends. Philadelphia gets the most, but a good
deal passes through Norfolk and the neighboring cities of Portsmouth
and Newport News. By far the most important article of export here
is coal from the mines of West Virginia, more than a million tons a
month. Half of all the tobacco that we send abroad also goes from
here, and many ships carry fresh vegetables to New York.
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