This country extends about 150 miles in length and 137 miles in breadth. The lands are low and flat next the sea; towards the heads of rivers they rise into hills, and beyond lie the Apalachian mountains, which are exceeding high. The air of this province is excessive hot some part of the summer, and equally cold in the winter, when the north-west wind blows; but the winters are not of so long duration here as in some other colonies adjoining to it. In the spring of the year, they are infested with thick heavy fogs that rise from the low lands, which render the air more unhealthy for English constitutions; and hence it is that, in the aforesaid season, the people are constantly afflicted with agues [1].

The produce of this country is chiefly tobacco [2] planted and cultivated here with much application and nearly the same success as in Virginia, and their principal trade with England is in that article. It also affords them most sorts of the grain and fruits of Europe and America.

1. Colds and fevers. The weaker tribes of the Susquehanna watershed had been forced south before 1600, were actively under assault by the Pennsylvania Indians when colonists arrived in the 1630s, and gladly sought to live under their protection. Maryland was such sorry real estate that it did not require conquest as its aboriginal Algonquin inhabitants sought protection against their Delaware cousins to the north and the Iroquois who raided from New York all the way to the Chesapeake [Shellfish-water] Bay.

2. Tobacco was only viable as a slave-cultivated crop, as one man could barely make enough harvesting tobaccos in a year to put food on the table, and if laboring as a free farmer would do so naked and homeless. On paper, Maryland had to be a slave colony, producing nothing but tobacco.