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36
DOWN THE
HISTORIC
SUSQUEHANNA
A SUMMER'S JAUNT
Otsego to the Chesapeake
BY
Charles Weathers Bump
BALTIMORE: Press of The Sun Printing Office
1899.
TWO COPIES RECElVBDi
Library of CotlgPttflt Office of the
ljr.,5_1Roq
Register of Copyrights
48534
Copyrighted, 1899. All Rights Reserved.
For the author's circulation, reprinted in revised and enlarged form, through the courtesy of the proprietors of The Baltimore Sun, to whom this acknowledg- ment of their generosity is due.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE.
I. A Trip of Much Promise, ... 1 Cooperstown, N. Y., August 15.
II. In the Pages of History, ... 8 Cooperstown, N. Y., August 16.
III. Not Unsung by Pouts, 15
Cooperstown, N. Y., August 17.
IV. Cooper's "Glimmerglass" ... 25
Cooperstown, N, Y., August 18.
V. Two Modern Explorers, . . . 32 Richfield Springs, N. Y., Aug. 19.
VI. Thro' the Hop Country, ... 40 Afton, N. Y., August 20.
VII. Where Mormonism Began, ... 48 Binghamton, N. Y., August 22.
VIII. Along the Southern Tier, ... 57 Owego, N. Y., August 23.
IX. Legends of Two Hills, .... 66 Pittstou, Pa., August 24.
X. The Vale of Wyoming, .... 80 Wilkesbarre, Pa , August 25.
XL Beneath a Big City, 90
Wilkesbarre, Pa., August 26.
XII. The Home of Priestley, .... 97 Northumberland, Pa., August 28.
PAGE-
XIII. Down the West Branch, .... 107
Suubury, Pa., September 2.
XIV. The Passing of the Boats, . . .120
Sunbury, Pa., September 8.
XV. A Noble Water Gap, 126
Harrisburg, Pa., September 4.
XVI. In Busy Harrisburg, 134
Harrisburg, Pa., September 5.
XVII. Some Model Farms, 142
Columbia, Pa., September 6.
XVIII. The Story op Columbia, .... 149 Columbia, Pa., September 7.
XIX. The Land op Big Barns, .... 157 Columbia, Pa., September 9.
XX. Amid Charming Highlands, . .164 Port Deposit, Md., September 12.
XXI. At the River's Mouth, .... 172 Havre-de-Grace, Md., Sept. 14.
XXII. George Talbot's Caye, . . . .ISO Watson's Island, Md.,Sept. 15.
I. A TRIP OF MUCH PROMISE.
Cooi'EitsTowN, Otsego County, N. Y., Aug. 15.— The other day when I told a friend I proposed to spend a summer vaca- tion in a trip making the entire length of the Susquehanna river from Lake Otsego to the Chesapeake, he said to me, sort of apologetically:
"I have always considered the Susque- hanna such a useless river. It seems so big and lumbering, and it has not the charm of the Hudson for scenery or historic in- terest."
Before we parted, an hour later, I had so oppositely convinced my friend that I am sure he is now envying me the trip. As for myself I redoubled my enthusiasm over the summer scheme. So here I am at the head of the big river, looking forward with eagerness to a jaunt of many miles down stream and forearmed, as it would seem, from "reading up" on what I am to see in the way of fine scenery, of sites in- vested with historic interest, and moun- tains and vales replete with romantic legends and Indian tales.
A great many other persons are unde- niably in the same boat with my friend. Perhaps I myself might have been as igno- rant had I not had a grandfather who was familiar with every mile of the Susque- hanna and who repeated many of its most interesting incidents as we traveled to- gether along portions of its banks.
Casting about for a reason, it seems to me that the fame of the Susquehanna has two distinct setbacks which have led to its comparative neglect by travelers in search of the picturesque or fond of tracing the footsteps of American history.
One of these setbacks arose from the cir- cumstance that the river was peopled by three different Commonwealths— Maryland,
Pennsylvania and New York. The New Yorkers look eastward to New York city and Albany. Similarly the Pennsylvanians mostly find a commingling of interest with Philadelphia. And out of all this grows much ignorance on the part of one section in the doings of another. In Maryland, for instance, little is known of the prosperity and attractiveness of the river valley with- in the limits of New York. While contrari- wise I have at times found much apathy in Central New York about the history and development of the river in Maryland and Lower Pennsylvania.
Perhaps much of this isolation might have been overcome had the Susquehanna been regularly navigable by steamboats or had the railroads formed a single line from Cooperstown to Havre de Grace. Then a steady down-to-Maryland business would have ensued in big proportions and the charm of travel up and down the river would have been strong. , But the steam- boats could not come and the railroads mainly turned eastward and westward in their building, and so the Susquehanna has been passed by travelers.
The importance of this consideration is seen by comparing the Susquehanna with the Hudson, beyond doubt the most ad- mired of American rivers. Railroads on both banks and steamboats day and night carry tourists from New York to Albany through the entire region of beauty, legend and history. It is again made obvious by recalling the Potomac, the scenic portion of which is traversed by every passenger to or from the West over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Susquehanna river has not one, but half a dozen rail- roads. They follow every mile of its banks from Otsego to the Chesapeake, yet no less than eight changes of cars are required for a through journey.
And yet, in spite of such drawbacks, there is much of genuine interest to be found in a journey all the way along the Susquehanna. In its long and winding course from limpid Lake Otsego, its scenery is certainly as varied as that of any river. Sometimes through fertile val- leys teeming with busy farmers; then
again in narrow, rocky gorges, with moun- tains close by framing in views that are hard to excel, and contributing rushing cascades to swell the big stream; again past cities alive with industries and im- portant as railroad centres. In all its windings it never has the fault of being monotonous, and often justly earns the application of those much-abused adjec- tives, "romantic," "noble" or "grand." No more pleasing lake scenery can be found than on and around Otsego; no more beau- tiful vale entered than that of Wyoming; no bolder views laid bare than above Har- risburg, where the river forces its way with abruptness through a gap in the Kic- tatinny Mountains; no finer rocky gorges than from Columbia to Port Deposit.
The painters have not neglected the Sus- quehanna, especially the men who led American art in the generation just pass- ing away. Those who are familiar with the public and private galleries of our lead- ing American cities can easily recall can- vasses reproducing charming bits of river and mountain scenery from along the Sus- quehanna and the Juniata and other tribu- taries. In many instances these paintings are doubly valuable because they picture landscapes that have been greatly altered.
Statistics are dull sometimes, but then again they give much in short compass. It interests us to be told, for example, that in the country drained by the Sus- quehanna there are two millions and a quarter of inhabitants. When we ask what is included in this drainage area we are told by Government investigators that the Susquehanna drains 26,000 square miles, of which 6,000 are in New York, nearly 20,000 in Pennsylvania and a small fraction in Maryland. In other words, it comprises about one-seventh of New York State, in the southern and central portions, and slightly less than one-half of Pennsylvania, sweeping from beyond Scranton on the northeast almost to Johnstown on the southwest, and from beyond Lancaster on the southeast to the oil region of the northwest. Of course, the Susquehanna does not do this un- aided. It has many, many active branches.
the chief among which are the Chenango and the Chemung, in New York State, and the Juniata and the West Branch, in Pennsylvania.
Incidentally let me remind you of one other fact concerning the Susquehanna which is of importance. It is, without ex- ception, the longest river on the Atlantic seaboard, and is overtopped in size only by a few of the great broad Western rivers. Its length is counted as 420 miles. That of the West Branch is more than 200 miles.
The hundreds of towns found every few miles along the main river and its tribu- taries show how the two millions and a quarter of inhabitants are made up. It is true that there are no cities of the largest size, but there are many of the next size, the most conspicuous being Binghamtou, N. Y., at the junction of the Chenango river, which has 50,000; Elmira, on the Chemung, 33.000; Scranton, Pa., on the Lackawanna, 75,000; Wilkesbarre, on the main stream, 45,000; Williamsport, on the West Branch, 35,000; Harrisburg, on the main stream, 60,000; York, on Codorus creek, 30,000; Lancaster, on Conestoga creek. 40,000, and Altoona, 30,000.
We are told also by the Government ex- perts already quoted that there is a goodly amount of water power in the rapids and descents of the Susquehanna and its many feeders. For instance. Lake Otsego is 1,193 feet above tidewater, so that the river has to descend that considerable amount in getting to Havre de Grace. Much of this power is utilized, but much of it is not, and we are assured that there are valuable opportunities to get power for manufactures along a portion of the West Branch not yet developed by railroads.
That one gap on the West Branch is the only part of the entire river which has not a railroad on the one bank or the other, sometimes on both. Close students of American development long ago ob- served how the rivers helped make the rail- roads great by yielding their banks to furnish available routes. This is especially noticeable in the case of the Susquehanna. Four of the great through lines to the West make use of portions of the river
valley. They are the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western and the Erie.
The Pennsylvania comes in from Phila- delphia some miles below Harrisburg and leaves the Susquehanna at the mouth of the Juniata. The Lehigh Valley from New York enters the valley near Wilkes- barre and goes up stream to the mouth of the Chemung at Athens. The Erie approaches the river east of the town of Susquehanna and goes west with it to near Athens. Similarly the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western comes in at Great Bend and parallels the Erie to near Athens and beyond on the Chemung.
Indeed, if the Baltimore and Ohio may be considered as entering the valley when it crosses its mouth at Havre de Grace, it can, with propriety, be asserted that only one of the big routes from New York does not use the Susquehanna Val- ley. That one is the New York Central.
The first 16 miles of the river course be- low Lake Otsego is followed by the Coop- erstown and Charlotte Valley Railroad; then for 80 miles to Susquehanna, the Delaware and Hudson Railroad is there; then come the Erie and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western on both banks to Waverly and the Lehigh Valley from Waverly to AVilkesbarre; then from Wilkesbarre to Northumberland and Sun- bury both banks are again occupied, the right by a division of the Delaware, Lacka- wanna and Western and the left by a di- vision of the Pennsylvania Railroad; from Sunbury to York Haven, through Harris- burg is the Northern Central Railroad, part of the Pennsylvania system, and from Harrisburg to the mouth of the river at Perryville the east bank contains the Columbia and Port Deposit divisions of the Pennsylvania. At Perryville the Phila- delphia, Wilmington and Baltimore is tapped.
From which statements it is evident that the river is followed by railroads for each of its 420 miles, and that for nearly half of that distance there are tracks on both sides. Many other railroads come into the valley for a few miles here and there.
notably in the great anthracite coal belt around Wilkesbarre and to the east of the river below Sunbury. That coal belt is in a great measure responsible for the develop- ment of the Susquehanna Valley in popu- lation and wealth. Mines honeycomb it. railroads cut into it everywhere and an- nually there is dug out of it and trans- ported to domestic and foreign markets the enormous amount of 50,000,000 tons of hard coal.
As hard coal has put railroads along one branch of the Susquehanna so has soft coal intersected the headwaters of the West Branch with other railroads. The West Branch rises in Cambria county, Pennsyl- vania, not far north of Cresson. The re- markable thing about this source is that it is on the west slope of the Alleghany mountains and that in order to get through to meet the North Branch at Northumber- land it has to work its way through the mountains.
After it leaves Cambria county the West Branch enters the Clearfield coal region and running hither and thither in this re- gion are half a dozen different railroad sys- tems, including several divisions and branches of the Pennsylvania; the Penn- sylvania and Northwestern; the Pittsburg and Eastern; the Buffalo.. Rochester and Pittsburg, and the Beech Creek Railroad, which after leaving the river at Clearfield again swings alongside of it at Lock Haven and goes with it to Williamsport, where the Beech Creek road ends and where it has an important traffic exchange with the Philadelphia and Reading. All these rail- roads are comparatively recent, because mining in the Clearfield coal region has only become important within the last dec- ade.
From Clearfield to Karthaus is the one bit of the Susquehanna not yet taken up by railroads, but at Karthaus we again meet a ramification of the Pennsylvania system, the Philadelphia and Erie Road. On this line we may travel for more than a hundred miles down the river, through Williamsport and other flourishing towns and to the meeting place of the two big Susquehanna branches at Northumberland.
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From Willianisport to Northumberland the Pennsylvania is on one bank, while an im- portant division of the Philadelphia and Reading is on the other.
I nearly forgot to speak of the intimate relation of the Susquehanna to a greater city than any within its watershed. I mean Baltimore. When rafts and boats with flour and farm products began to go down stream in profusion, Maryland's metropolis was the natural market, though some of the traffic was diverted overland to Philadelphia. Then the latter city's merchants began to reach out, and the Baltimoreans, to keep the lead, first built a series of steamboats, which proved to be failures, then a canal and finally a railroad —the Northern Central. The canal is dead now, but the railroad still carries a goodly trade from the Susquehanna to Baltimore, though, of course, the manifold industries of the river towns are too great to be con- tent with a single market.
Thoughtful men in Baltimore see the day when that city will have to draw on the Susquehanna for a water supply. In- deed, the cost and the advantages were fully weighed when the present supply was enlarged 20 years ago, though the Gunpowder river was then found sufficient. Today Baltimore has more than half a mil- lion inhabitants; the limit of the Gunpow- der's capacity is foreshadowed and the Susquehanna will come next. Its water will have to be conveyed nearly 40 miles. Already the river is used in this way by cities further upstream, but none of them approach the magnitude of the Baltimore idea.
Were I interested in geology or in duck- hunting and river fishing, there would be other avenues to open up delights on the Susquehanna for me. For the geologist there is a wonderful opportunity in a trip such as we promise.
I am not a hunter of duck nor a student of rocks, and so I look for the interesting side of my jaunt to the natural beauty of the river valley, to the incidents of its past and the industries and achievements of the present. In them is the hope of this pil- grimage.
II. IN THE PAGES OF HISTORY.
Cooperstown, Otsego County, N. Y., Aug. 16.— So many pretty notions get frac- tured nowadays by heartless seekers for facts that it was really no surprise for me to learn yesterday that all our old ideas concerning the meaning of the name Sus- quehanna will have to be revised.
It has been dinned into my ears from childhood — and I guess the same in your case, dear reader— that Susquehanna meant "long, crooked river," or else "broad, shal- low river," or else "wide, muddy river," or "the river of rapids." All seemed ap- propriate to the big stream, and so you and I accepted the one or the other as be- ing the true Indian name.
Now we are told that all were guesses, made by men with only a half knowledge of native tongues. In their place we are asked to believe that the Susquehanna is "the river of the people with booty taken in war." And in the light of this assertion the following facts are recalled:
Capt. John Smith, engaged in exploring the Chesapeake bay above Virginia in 1608, entered the mouth of the Susquehanna and there encountered a different set of In- dians from those he had previously known. They were brave, noble-looking fellows of giant stature — decked out in war paint and evidently fresh from a fight, as they had much spoil in their canoes. The doughty Virginian was unable to talk with them directly, but he used as interpreter an In- dian whose tongue he knew. When he asked the name of his new acquaintances, the interpreter — unable, possibly, to get or to understand the real tribal designation — replied that they were the Susquehan- noeks. "the people of booty taken in war."
This, at least, is the theory of a recent scholar, who says that "sasquesa" meant "war booty," and "anough" meant "men." The older writers had maintained that "hanna" was "river," and that the first part meant either "crooked," "muddy," "shallow" or "rapids."
i'ou can take your choice among these theories and guesses. If you like the ones which are descriptive of the river, believe in them. Yet, if the latest be true, it is rather curious, is it not, that the acci- dental error of a not over-intelligent in- terpreter should have given such a pretty name to a big Indian tribe and, after them, to this great, majestic river?
I never reflect upon the name of the river without recalling how the truest of poets, Coleridge and Shelley, were both attracted by its sound and its suggestion of romance, and it was with positive pleasure that I read today what Robert Louis Stevenson said of the river when he crossed it in some of his travels through this country: "When I heard that the stream over which we passed was called the Susquehanna," wrote the English au- thor, "the beauty of the name seemed part and parcel of the land. As when Adam, with divine fitness, named the creatures, so this word Susquehanna was at once accepted by the fancy. That was the name, as no other could be, for that shining river and desirable valley."
There were other Indian names than the one now borne. The Onondagas, of the Six Nations, called the river Ga-wa-no-wa-na- neh, or "the great island river." Among the Indians of the West Branch that por- tion of the Susquehanna was known as Otzinachson, or the "river of demons," be- cause of some tribal superstition that seems to have been widespread. "Quen-ish-ach- gek-ki," the stream of long reaches, was another name for the West Branch.
It is often said that Capt. John Smith was the first white man to view the Sus- quehanna, but it is necessary to go earlier than that. There is even a belief that the famous Feruando de Soto penetrated to this river, but aside from such a tradition it is true that the first white men here
were Spaniards, and that they long ante- dated John Smith.
At an early day Spaniards were in the Chesapeake, and named it St. Mary's. From the bay they carried off a native to Mexico, where he was educated and bap- tized. This Indian returned to the Chesa- peake with several Spanish priests, and some distance up "a large river flowing into the bay" they founded a missionary station, which they called Axacan. This river was most probably the Susquehanna, and these priests the first white men to visit it. Their fate was a sad one. Their Indian protege turned on them and as- sisted in killing them.
It is odd that while Smith, the English- man, and these Spanish priests were the pioneers of the lower Susquehanna, it should be reserved for a Frenchman and three Dutchmen to be the first whites to see the upper portion. The Frenchman was Etienne Brule, a lieutenant of Sam- uel Champlain, the Governor of Canada, and a noted discoverer. Champlain, with the Huron Indians as allies, in 1615 planned an attack on the Iroquois in Central New York. With 12 Hurons Brule was sent to secure the aid of the Andastes or Caron- tonans, whose chief village seems to have been somewhere on the Susquehanna— possibly near Athens, possibly much farther down. After many hardships and several bloody fights Brule reached the Carontonan town and they started to join Champlain, but found he had returned to Canada. This caused Brule to return with the Carontonans and spend the winter in explorations. Among other things he descended the river to "its junction with the sea." a journey which was made, so he reported, "through a series of populous tribes at war with one another." Three years elapsed before this hardy explorer got back to Champlain. The narrative of his adventures has a strange fascination for us who live in the days of comfortable railroad travel through peaceful, populous towns.
About the same time three adventurous Dutchmen came into this wilderness from Albany, boated down the Susquehanna as
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far as the neighborhood of Wilkesbarre, crossed overland to the Delaware and thence on to New York. Quite a different trip from a similar canoe outing often taken now!
Nearly a century after the explorers came the traders, mostly established on that portion of the river now in Pennsyl- vania. Stories of them are fully retailed in the histories of that State. Many of them were French-Canadians. Some were noted characters, such as Conrad Weiser, who constantly served as the envoy of the Penns to the Indians.
In my last letter I mentioned that civ- ilization moved up the Susquehanna in- stead of down. This is plainly shown by the dates of land purchases from the In- dians. Maryland secured her portion in the seventeenth century. William Penn prompt- ly saw the moral value of making pur- chases from the Indians, and in 1683, the year after Pennsylvania was settled, he enlisted the aid of Thomas Dongan, Gov- ernor of New York, who secured from the Indians a deed to "all that tract of land lying upon both sides the river commonly called or known by the name of the Sus- quehanna." Dongan, in 1696, transferred the title to Penn for the consideration of £100. What a miserable sum this now seems for a region where at least a million persons dwell. It was, of course, limited by the grants of royal charters, but, as I read it, it included the entire Susquehanna Valley within what is now Pennsylvania.
Penn seems not to have been satisfied with this title, for in 1700 he had it rati- fied by the Susquehannocks, and in 1701 by other Indian tribes. Later his sons began to make fresh purchases. They bought everything south of Harrisburg in 1736; up to the neighborhood of Sunbury in 1749 and 1758, and to Towanda in 1768. The last purchase by Pennsylvania was in 1784, when the area north of Towanda and west • of the Susquehanna was ob- tained. New York's purchases of the Sus- quehanna Valley occured in the same dec- ade. Settlements in every case followed closely behind colonial purchases.
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The Indian history of the Susquehanna is remarkable. It was dominated by the Iroquois, or Six Nations, who from their stronghold in Central New York, by using the Susquehanna mainly, but also the Mo- hawk, Hudson and Allegheny rivers, had built up an empire big in extent and pow- erful in kind.
Many times a year tne Iruquois in their war canoes went down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake and compelled the submis- sion of tribes as far as the Carolinas. The Journey was apparently no more to them than it is now to a traveler by train. They bested the Susquehannocks so often that they finally were able to force the rem- nant to abandon their Maryland and Penn- sylvania haunts and take up an humble po- sition under the conquerors' wing in New York. They did the same to the Lenni Le- napes on the Delaware, to the Nanticokes on the Eastern Shore and to the Shawnees higher up the Susquehanna. They kept the white man from fully settling the up- per Susquehanna Valley for nearly a cen- tury after the lower part was peopled by whites.
There is no telling to what period their remarkable confederacy might have ex- teuded had they not adopted the British cause against the colonists. Then the Iroquois power was broken as quickly as it had been formed. The terrible Wyom- ing massacre in Susquehanna Valley and the massacre in Cherry Valley, on a tribu- tary of the Susquehanna, caused the ex- pedition of Gen. John Sullivan in 1779. He went up the river with a strong military force and was reinforced at the mouth of the Chemung by Gen. James Clinton, who had brought New York militia overland to Lake Otsego and then down the Susquehanna on rafts. General Sullivan burned Indian villages by the wholesale and gave the Iroquois a thrash- ing such as they had never had. After that they were willing enough to sell the fairest part of Central New York to the whites.
The Wyoming and Cherry Valley mas- sacres are not the only dark stains of the sort in the Susquehanna Valley. After
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Braddock's crushing defeat in 1755 the In- dians, backed by French officers and sol- diers, descended the river and spread ter- ror in many promising Pennsylvania set- tlements. There were massacres at a num- ber of points near Northumberland and in Cumberland Valley, and many more women and children were carried into captivity in Canada.
The remembrance of the fiendish cruel- ties practised by the Indians led to the most horrible crime of all, the murder in 1763 of the remnant of Susquehannock In- dians, who had long made their homes near where the Conestoga creek empties into the Susquehanna in Lancaster county. A group of frontiersmen, known as ''the Pax- ton boys," in a wanton attack on the set- tlement and in a later fiendish charge upon a public building, to which the survivors of the first affair had been removed, made away with 20 Indians, many of them wom- en and girls and none able-bodied war- riors. It was a crime which cannot be justified.
As an echo of Indian occupation, stone weapons, utensils and implements are fre- quently found at every point of the river valley, many of them made from rocks which can only be traced hundreds of miles away. The skeletons of red men are also sometimes unearthed, some of them of giant type.
In addition to the Wyoming and Cherry Valley massacres, the Susquehanna figures in the Revolutionary War in other ways. Its lower fords and ferries were constantly crossed by armies and leaders going from North to South and South to North. And when the Continental Congress was driven out of Philadelphia by British occupation it removed first to York, then to Lancas- ter, both of them on tributaries of the river and not far from the latter.
In the contest of 1812 the mouth of the river again had a share of war. After terrorizing other towns at the head of Chesapeake bay the British fleet cap- tured and burned Havre de Grace and the village of Lapidum, a few miles tip the river.
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Again in the Civil War the Susquehanna was the "high-water mark of the Con- federacy," Wrightsville being the nearest point to Philadelphia reached by any part of General Lee's army during the invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863.
Nor should it be forgotten that this same section played a prominent part in co- lonial times in the border wars of Lord Baltimore and the Penns, both struggling to spread their boundaries. This con- test, frequently accompanied by blood- shed, developed a remarkable character in Col. Thomas Cresap, who upheld the Mary- land claims in York and Lancaster coun- ties with such courage as to make him one of the most interesting figures in American colonial life.
The varying origin of the families who peopled the different parts of the Susque- hanna Valley is in itself a study. Quite naturally we at once think of the Palati- nate Germans or Pennsylvania Dutch, who have for two centuries left the impress of their thrift upon the rich farming lands of lower Pennsylvania. Next below them, on lands more rugged and rocky, were thou- sands of Scotch-Irish families; and farther, in Maryland, families of English and Irish stock. In Central Pennsylvania the river banks were cleared by persons mostly of English origin, while from Wilkesbarre north there was a decided preponderance of New England immigrants, indirectly English. To these the last half century has added the Welsh slate-miners in the Peach Bottom region; the Italian, Hun- garian, Russian, Polish and other Slavonic types in the coal mines, and the people of still other nationalities in the growing cities.
Besides the actual history of the Susque- hanna, there is a wealth of interesting legend and folklore. I wish I had time to repeat it all.
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III. NOT UNSUNG BY POETS.
Cooperstown, Otsego County, N. Y., Aug. 17.— Yesterday I went into a book- store to get a recent novel. The man be- hind the counter was one of those whom a book-lover delights to meet, one who knew and prized the books he sold. It was easy to get into a chat with him about the litera- ture of the Susquehanna and the result will, I am sure, surprise you.
Cooper's name, of course, was first on our lips when we started to recall the poetry and novels in which the Susque- hanna is well remembered. Then I spoke of Nathaniel P. Willis, most graceful of American authors, whose happy years of life beside this river at Owego found full expression in his varied writings. My friend, the bookseller, soon reminded me of Thomas Campbell and his epic, "Gertrude of Wyoming," while I, in turn, thought of other Englishmen, and suggested Cole- ridge and Southey, who, with the enthusi- asm of youth, dreamed of placing their ideal colony of Pantisocracy upon the banks of the Susquehanna, which, like Campbell, neither of them had ever seen nor ever saw.
Wyoming's name brought to mind "The Death of the Fratricide," in which John Greenleaf Whittier has told in ballad form the fate of a hapless being who killed his own brother in the terrible Revolutionary tragedy. An echo of another massacre is found in "Jennie Marsh, of Cherry Valley," by George P. Morris, the editorial associate and friend of Willis.
Thus we discoursed for fully an hour, adding to our catalogue a goodly array of notable poets and romancers. It was a casual review, of course, and doubtless many were omitted whom you may now re- call. But I cannot refrain from repeating
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lor you some of the things which then came in mind or which we found by turn- ing to his well-stocked shelves.
The thread which binds Southey and Coleridge to the Susquehanna is a slender one, but it must be acknowledged that there is something deeply interesting in their dream of starting upon the Susque- hana a brotherly community where pri- vate property was to be abolished, where two hours a day were to be spent in pro- viding food and the rest of the time "in rational society and intellectual employ- ment." Biographers of both poets tell how the scheme was talked of in 1794, when Coleridge was 22 and Southey two years younger, and how it was never real- ized because no funds were forthcoming and because the two wedded sisters and had to be practical enough to earn a liveli- hood.
The reason why the Susquehanna was selected is in doubt. The fact that Dr. Joseph Priestley, founder of modern chem- istry and an eminent philosopher, had re- moved from England to Northumberland in the same year may have had something to do with it. But a letter from Coleridge to Southey, written at the time, adds an- other reason. The former, it appears, had met in London a suave American land agent, who recommended the Susquehanna "from its excessive beauty and its security from hostile Indians." The ease of farm- ing, the opportunity for literary men, the cheapness of land and of living and the credit obtainable were all duly impressed upon Coleridge, who, in his last sentence, says: "The mosquitoes are not so bad as our gnats; and after you have been there a little while, they don't trouble you much." Truly a most excellent land agent! Joseph Cottle, the British bookseller, whose after reminiscences add so much to the knowledge of his friends Coleridge and Southey, gives still more light. He says Coleridge would talk for hours at a time of the Susquehanna as "the only refuge for permanent repose." Then Cottle adds:
It will excite marvelous surprise in the reader to understand that Mr. Coleridge's friends could not as- certain that he had received any specific informa- tion concerning this notable river. "It was a
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I
grand river," but there are many other noble and grand rivers in America (the Land of Rivers!), and the preference given to the Susquehanna seemed almost to arise solely from its imposing name, which, if not classical, was at least poetical, and it probably by mere accident became the centre of all his pleasurable associations. Had this same river been called the Miramichi or the Irrawaddy it would have been despoiled of half its charms and have sunk down into a vulgar stream, the at- mosphere of which might have suited well enough Russian boors, but which would have been pestifer- ous to men of letters.
Cottle also quotes Coleridge's poem, "A Monody to Chatterton," written when Pantisoeraey was on tap. In it, after speaking of his vain aspirations for abso- lute liberty, he says:
Yet will I love to follow the sweet dream Where Susquehanna pours his untamed stream; And on some hill, whose forest-growing side Waves o'er the murmurs of his calmer tide.
It is so usual here in Cooperstown to hear of "The Deerslayer" as associated with Otsego Lake that it is rarely remem- bered that other novels by Cooper depict later phases of life on the lake and river. Deerslayer is such an ideal of chivalresque manhood and the descriptions of the re- gion, then In the primeval wilderness, are so fine, that the first of the Leatherstock- !ng Tales overtops the novelist's other In- dian stories. But in "The. Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna," Cooper drew upon the early recollections of his life and has described with minuteness affairs in- cident to the settlement of the region by his father, who figures in the novel as Judge Temple. It is an animated presen- tation of the vigorous and picturesque country life of its time and place and is equally successful in its delineations of natural scenery. Then in "Home as Found" we are introduced to the descendants of the characters of '"The Pioneers" and to Cooperstown about 1835. In its day it was most unpopular for its criticisms of Amer- ican faults as seen by one who had dwelt abroad for some years, and it is unfortu- nate also in being made the vehicle for an account of a squabble between Cooper and his townspeople. In "Wyandotte, or
17
the Hutted Knoll," Cooper again returns to the Otsego. It narrates the settlement of an English family in the vicinity of the lake about the commencement of the Revolution, and abounds in quiet scenes of sylvan beauty and incidents of a calmer character than are usual in Cooper's fic- tions.
The associations of Cooper with this pretty lake are well expressed in verse in a short anonymous poem which Henry W. Longfellow thought worthy of a page in his anthology, "Poems of Places." Some of its stanzas are as follows:
O haunted lake, from out whose silver fountains The mighty Susquehanna takes its rise;
O haunted lake, among the pineclad mountains, Forever smiling upward to the skies.
A master's hand hath painted all thy beauties;
A master's hand hath peopled all thy shore With wraiths of mighty hunters and fair maidens,
A master's heart hath gilded all thy valley With golden splendor from a loving breast,
And in thy little churchyard, 'neath the pine trees, A master's body sleeps in quiet rest.
Cooper's daughter, Susan Fenimore, who died here but a few years ago, inherited her father's love for Otsego and the Sus- quehanna, and in "Rural Homes," which was published in the year before her father died, she charmingly and without extrava- gances described the scenery around her home in Cooperstown. She is the author of other works showing her appreciation of country life. In Cooperstown she is esteemed for her charities.
The happy touch of Willis rechristened and made famous so many spots in the Highlands of the Hudson that "Idlewild" is more known as his home than "Glen- mary," near the Susquehanna. Yet some of the happiest years of his life were spent on the little place near Owego, which he poetically named for his wife. "Al Abri, or Letters From Under a Bridge," gives us an intimate sympathy with him at "Glen- inary," and contains descriptions of that portion of the Susquehanna which are writ- ten in his most graceful vein. He finds ma- terial where others would see nothing, and
18
so we get wonderfully interested in the little brook and the venerable toad and a dozen places and creatures that to others would seem commonplace. Similar delicate fancies characterize his petition "To the Unknown Purchaser and Next Occupant of Glenmary," written when financial troubles compelled him to return to New York and buckle down to steady labor. On the other hand, his "Revery at Glenmary" is the most sincerely devout of all his religious poems, while others of this kind, "A Thought Over a Cradle," "A Mother fo Her Child," "Thoughts While Making the Grave of a Newborn Child," let us see the sacreduess of his domestic life at Owego.
The neighborhood of Owego is also re- flected in various short poems by William Henry Cuyler Hosiner, who is, perhaps, better known as the poet of the Genesee than of the Susquehanna. "A Voice From Glenmary" is a tribute to the memory of the first Mrs. Willis. Other poems by him which I noticed were: "Fir-Croft," "The Deserted Hall," "Lament for Sa-sa-na," "A Hunting Song," "A Cascade Near Wyoming" and "Lake Wyalusing."
The satirical genius of James K. Paul- ding links him to the Susquehanna in a peculiar way. In 1813. when Admiral Cockburn and his British fleet burned and sacked the Maryland village of Havre de Grace, at the mouth of the Susquehanna. Paulding published "The Lay of the Scot- tish Fiddle," supposed to be written by Walter Scott. It is a free parody of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and is both a satire of the Scottish poem and of the British warfare on the Chesapeake. Some of its descriptive bits show a close famili- arity with the mouth of the Susquehanna. It is clever as a parody, and had the dis- tinction of provoking a fierce review from the London Quarterly.
The vale of Wyoming is peculiarly rich in its associations with literature. This is partly due to its tragic story, partly to its natural beauty. Many of the later poets have been attracted to it by the "Ger- trude" of Thomas Campbell, which, in these days of Anglo-American ententes, may be recalled as being a pioneer in caus-
19
ing international good feeling. These are his familiar opening lines:
On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild flower on thy ruined wall And roofless homes a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall,
Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore.
Sweet land! May I thy lost delights recall, And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore, " Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's shore.
Delightful Wyoming! beneath thy skies The happy shepherd swains had naught to do
But feed their flocks on green declivities, Or skim, perchance, the lake with light canoe. From morn till evening's sweeter pastime grew,
With timbrel, when beneath the forests brown, The lovely maidens would the dance renew;
And aye those sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town.
Unfortunately Campbell never saw the valley of Wyoming and his descriptions do not fit it. This is noticeable in the lines just quoted, but more so in the next stanza, where he says you "may see the flamingo disporting" in the Susquehanna. The American poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck, pointed out this defect in a poem which he wrote when he first saw Wyoming. Halleck says:
When thou com'st, in beauty, on my gaze, at last,
"On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!" Image of many a dream in hours long past,
When life was in its bud and blossoming, And waters, gushing from the fountain spring
Of pure enthusiast thought, dimmed my young eyes As by the poet home, on unseen wing,
I breathed, in fancy, 'neath thy cloudless skies. The summer's air, and heard her echoed harmonies.
Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power
Even of Campbell's pen hath pictured: he Had woven, had he gazed one sunny hour
Upon thy smiling vale, its scenery With more of truth, and made each rock and tree
Known like old friends and greeted from afar, And there are tales of sad reality
Tn the dark legends of the border war, With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude's are.
Two women writers who are warm in their poetic praises of Wyoming and the Susquehanna are Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney and Mrs. Elizabeth Fries Ellet.
20
Mrs. Sigourney wrote several poems about Wyoming. "Zinzendorff," one of her long- est, tells the story of that noble Moravian's visit to the Indians there. "The Lily" is the story of Frances Slocum, who was car- ried off by Indians in the Revolution and found half a century later as the head of an Indian family. In "The Meeting of the Susquehanna and Lackawanna" Mrs. Sigourney says:
Rush on, glad stream, in thy power and pride,
To claim the hand of thy promised bride ;
She doth haste from the realm of the darkened
mine To mingle her murmured vows with thine; Ye have met— ye have met, and the shores prolong The liquid notes of your nuptial song.
On, on, through the vale where the brave ones sleep.
Where the waving foliage is rich and deep,
I have stood on the mountain and roamed through
the glen To the beautiful homes of the Western men; Yet naught in that realm of enchantment could see So fair as the vale of Wyoming to me.
Mrs. Ellet, who is best known as the author of a "History of Women of the American Revolution," wrote these beauti- ful descriptive lines:
Softly the blended light of evening rests Upon thee, lovely stream ! Thy gentle tide, Picturing the gorgeous beauty of the sky, Onward, unbroken by the ruffling wind, Majestically flows. Oh! by thy. side, Far from the tumults and the throng of men, And the vain cares that vex poor human life, "fwere happiness to dwell, alone with thee, And the wide, solemn grandeur of the scene. From thy green shores, the mountains that inclose In their vast sweep the beauties of the plain, Slowly receding, toward the skies ascend, Enrobed with clustering woods, o'er which the
smile Of Autumn in his loveliness hath passed, Touching the foliage with his brilliant hues, And flinging o'er the lowliest leaf and shrub His golden livery. On the distant heights Soft clouds, earth-based, repose, and stretch afar Their burnished summits in the clear, blue Heaven, Flooded with splendor, that the dazzled eye Turns drooping from the sight. Nature is here Like a throned sovereign, and thy voice doth tell, In music never silent, of her power. Nor are thy tones unanswered, where she builds Such monuments of regal sway.
21
Alexander Wilson, the first American ornithologist, gained much information about birds during a walking trip from Philadelphia to Niagara in October, 1804. This journey he described in a lengthy poem, "The Foresters," which is com- mended for the ardent love of nature there- in revealed. He pasesd up the Susque- hanna from Wilkesbarre to Athens, and narrates many incidents along the way. It has been less than a century since then, but the valley has wonderfully changed since he described it, as these lines of his will show:
And now Wyomi opened on our view, And, far beyond, the Alleghany blue, Immensely stretched; upon the plain below The painted roofs with gaudy colors glow, And Susquehanna's glittering stream is seen Winding in stately pomp through valle5Ts green. Hail, charming river! pure, transparent flood! Unstained by noxious swamps or choking mud; Thundering through broken rocks in whirling foam, Or pleased o'er beds of glittering sand to roam; Green be thy banks, sweet forest-wandering stream; Still may thy waves with finny treasures teem; The silvery shad and salmon crowd thy shores, Thy tall woods echoing to the sounding oars. On thy swollen bosom floating piles appear, Filled with the harvest of our rich frontier; Thy pine-browned cliffs, thy deep romantic vales, Where wolves now wander and the panther wails; Where at long intervals the hut forlorn Peeps from the verdure of embowering corn; In future times (nor distant far the day) Shall glow from crowded towns and villas gay; Unnumbered keels thy deepened course divide, And airy arches pompously bestride ; The domes of Science and Religion rise, And millions swarm where now a forest lies.
A fine tribute to the Susquehanna is con- tained in Thomas Buchanan Head's "New Pastoral," which is a series of poetic sketches of the emigration of a family from middle Pennsylvania to Illinois. In it are these lines:
I have seen In lands less free, less fair, but far more known, The streams which flow through history, and wash The legendary shores— and cleave in twain Old capitals and towns, dividing oft Great empires and estates of petty kings And princes, whose domains full many a field, Rustling with maize along our native West,
22
Outmeasme and might put to shame! and yet Nor Rhine, like Bacchus crowned and reeling
through Hi* hills— nor Danube, marred with tyranny, His dull waves moaning on Hungarian shores— Nor rapid Po, his opaque waters pouring Athwart the fairest, fruitfulest, and worst Enslaved of European lands— nor Seine, Winding uncertain through inconstant France- Are half so fair as thy broad stream, whose breast Is gemmed with many isles, and whose proud name Shall yet become among the names of rivers A synonym of beauty— Susquehanna !
In his "Wagoner of the Alleghanies" Read also speaks in similar strain of Where queenly Susquehanna smiles Proud in the grace of her thousand isles.
Praise of the Susquehanna not unlike Mr. Read's is to be found in many sonnets of Mr. Lloyd Mifflin, whose home is at Co- lumbia, Pa., and who has recently attract- ed much attention. In "My Native Stream" he says:
To Vallambrosian valleys let them go, To steep Sorrento, or where ilex trees Oast their gray shadows o'er Sicilian seas; Dream at La Conca d'Oro, catch the glow Of sunset on the Ischian hills, and know The blue Ionian inlets, where the breeze, Leaving some snow-white temple's Phidian frieze, Wafts their light shallop languorously slow. Let me be here, far off from Zante's shore.
Where Susquehanna spreads her liquid miles, To watch the circles from the dripping oar; To see her halcyon dip, her eagle soar;
To drift at evening round her Indian isles, Or dream at noon beneath the sycamore.
And in "The Susquehanna From the Cliff," written from Chiquesaluuga Rock, near his home, Mr. Mifflin says:
Upon Salunga's laureled brow at rest With evening and with thee, as in a dream, Life flows unrippled even as thy stream.
Below the islands jewel all thy breast.
The dying glories of the crimson west Ave mirrored on thy surface till they seem Another sunset, and we fondly deem
The splendors endless, e'en as those possessed In youth, which sink, alas! to duller hue As years around us darken and but few
Faint stars appear, as now appear in thee. How softly round thy clustered rocks of blue Thou murmurest onward ! Oh ! may we pursue
Our way as calmly to the eternal sea.
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Mr Mifflin's home town, Columbia, was the scene of some incidents in the excft
aom of Anglesey, whose story was firs* introduced into fiction by Smoflett in* "Peregrine Pickle.- and has sincTbeen re peated in "Florence Macarthy," in Scott s Guy Mannering," and more particularly m Charles Reade's well-known novel ^ "The Wandering Heir." ' xae
The boys of this generation who have a fondness for tales of adventures have had thelr mterest awakened in the Susquehan na and particularly the Wyoming district by the fiction of Edward S. Ellis a Trei ' on schoolmaster, who has written harf a hundred stories of Indian times. One se
calledyth^2w°mP^iSinf three flumes, fs called the 'Wyoming Series," and in an-
nesfserTe1 " X* ** "Ri™ ^ ™ld*r- setting Same region furnishes a
Had we gone further, this letter might be a day's job for you. Of local historians the Susquehanna has had a hundred £££
ir^liTi Wri°m are ^oxning's S- Col wm. AVChfPman, Charles Miner, Col. William L. Stone, George Peck Sten ben Jenkins, Hendrick B. Wright! StewS Pierce and others-Dr. William H Bgll 3 Harnsburg, and J. N. Meginness, of Wil hamsport, whose "Otzinachson" is a store- house of West Branch Indian lore. Many ballad writers and local versifiers might be added, and in the domain of fiction could be dug up many titles of historical
or TonTat ^V? bUt ^^ *»S or none at all. So, too, one could include the
whole literature of that noble Indian U
gan beginning with his speech as reported
unon t°hTS/effer>S°n- His °*rthplacPe was his M Hv ,SuSQUehanna,s banks and there ms eail.v years were spent. But in what I have quoted I am sure there is enough to convince you that poets love the sSfquS hanna and that this great river has not gone unsung. oc
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IV.
COOPER'S "GLIMMERGLASS."
Coopebstown, Otsego County, N. Y., Aug. 18.— If you dislike the novels of J. Feniinore. Cooper you may find it a sorry job to come here, for his genius made Cooperstown classic and Cooperstown is grateful.
We have not many of these shrines of lit- erary men in America and for that reason Cooperstown is rather unique. But the European traveler can surmise just what will be found here if he recalls his visits to the homes of Scott, of Burns, of Shakes- peare, of a score of other famous members of the authors' guild.
When we came by train we were driven down Leatherstocking street to the Feni- rnore House. The conversation of the others at our first meal dwelt upon the beauties of Otsego Lake as written up by Cooper. Upon the front porch we noticed many delving into the pages of some one or other of his novels, possibly reading them over to refreshen themselves upon the spot, but maybe secretly getting ac- quainted for the first time in order to join in the prevailing topic of conversa- tion.
Leaving the hotel for a stroll east on Main street, we observed the bookstores displaying Cooper literature and appropri- ate photographs, while the next-door mer- chant was trying to attract our attention to his souvenir china and his Cooper spoons.
Presently we crossed Pioneer street and a block farther turned through handsome marble gates into a pretty park whose centre is occupied by an exquisite statue of Cooper's noblest Indian mounted upon an immense bowlder of syenite. Upon this
25
spot, we were told, was Cooper's handsome home, Otsego Hall, which was burned soon after his death in 1851.
Passing out of the little park by its up- per gate, a few steps farther eastward brought us to the yard of Christ Church, where the distinguished novelist lies buried. I cannot exactly describe it, but some- how or other it reminded me of the yard of the famous edifice at Stratford, within whose walls Shakespeare rests. The Strat- ford church is a finer building, but this American one has its own merit and for picturesque surroundings is fully equal to the other. It stands near the green banks of the Susquehanna, as the Stratford church does near the banks of the Avon— but the banks of the Susquehanna are higher and bolder and more embowered, and it is placed in a landscape of greater variety than that of the Avon. The grounds about the church are shaded with noble and venerable pines, elms and ma- ples, and beneath them have been laid, side by side, five generations of the Cooper family. The novelist sleeps beside his wife under a flat marble slab turned dark with- in the half century.
A few feet away lies his father, William Cooper— the founder of Cooperstown— aft- erward judge of the county of Otsego and its first representative in Congress. The father was a New Jersey man who, having acquired a large tract in the valley of the Susquehanna and around the lower shores of the lake, came here in 1786 to reside and to improve his land. It was then a wilderness, still echoing the red man's tread and dwelt in by but few white men. An occasional trapper or colonial soldier had strayed this way. Then in 1779 Gen. James Clinton brought his army here to go down the Susquehanna to join General Sullivan. And in 1783 Washington made a special trip here from the Mohawk Valley to study the possibilities of the Susque- hanna for inland navigation.
The place which Judge Cooper founded early became the centre of a circle of cul- tivated and refined men and women, such as is rarely found in a village of its size. It has retained that tone through the cen-
26
tury and has added to it greatly in recent years by becoming an attractive summer resting place for city dwellers of wealth and culture. Many such have their homes here in these months and many others yearly rent cottages in order to find sweet retreat in a village beautiful for situation, healthy because high, pretty in its out- ward evidences, possessing historic inter- est, yet not ultra-fashionable nor "'loud" and stylish.
Next to Cooper's, the name most often heard here is that of Clark, or Clarke. The upper eastern end of Otsego's shores has been for a century a part of the big estate of a family of the latter mode of spelling, while the millions made by a resi- dent who spelt his name without the "e" have been generously used to promote the welfare and attractiveness of Cooperstown in many ways. The pretty park on the site of Cooper's home and its beautiful cen- tre statue are both a memorial to Cooper from Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark, whose handsome home is near by and who has also erected a series of fine gray stone buildings in front of the park. The most striking of these has been donated as a village li- brary, another as a home and gymnasium for the Y. M. C. A., while the third con- tains the offices of the Clark estate. The father of Mrs. Clark's dead husband was Edward Clark, who made his fortune by a sewing machine invention.
A minute's walk from Christ Church yard and we were beside the Susquehanna. Though only a few hundred feet from its beginning the bends and overhanging trees jealously hid the lake from us. As we stopped a short while admiring the placid beauty of the little stream that is destined to large things ere it loses its identity, I could not help recalling what Willis wrote after he had stood there in the same admiring frame of mind. "The Susquehanna breaks out of the lake just at Cooper's door," he said, "and it is a magnificent river as his is a magnificent mind. As a twin-fountain head of intellect that honors the country and waters that fertilize it, it is a spot that has a good right to be famous."
27
Presently we were upon the shores of the lake. We have been in Cooperstown for several days now and have taken every opportunity to see Cooper's "Glimmer- glass" from its many vantage points, but, though it has been intensified, I do not think I shall ever quite forget the beauty of the lake as I first saw it. It is a body of deep, clear blue water, about nine miles long and from three-quarters of a mile to two miles wide, extending from north to south and lying between rather abrupt and densely wooded low mountains on the east and gently sloping beautiful and gracefully rounded hills on the west. The almost unbroken forest of the eastern side offers combinations of color rarely equaled for beauty and variety and wonderfully heightened on this first view by the gold and red of the sinking sun. The west side's easier slopes were covered with a variety of farm crops, richly cultivated fields, meadows and pastures, among which are quiet farmhouses and more costly summer homes, forming in all a scene of great pas- toral beauty.
The north end of the lake bends to the west, and it was not possible to see the head, but in its stead we had a beautiful view of the bold wooded mountain which from its outline is often called "the Sleep- ing Lion," but whose true name is Mount Wellington, after a certain "Iron Duke."
Nearer at hand, on the east side, is a peculiar structure rising out of the water, apparently a stone lighthouse built regard- less of expense. This is "Kingfisher Tower," designed like a mediaeval castle and erected to a height of 60 feet. Its main windows are brilliant with stained glass, its roof glistens with red earthen tiles and on its land side is a drawbridge and portcullis. This odd "view-structure" was put up in 1876 by the late Edward Clark.
A cleared spot on the mountain side above Kingfisher Tower was the farm of Fenimore Cooper, "The Chalet," where he daily rode or walked to seek relaxation from mental labors by directing its tillage. Nearer to Cooperstown on the same side is Lakewood Cemetery, in which there is a
28
monument to Cooper, a slender marble shaft surmounted by a statuette of "Leatherstocking," in which the old "scout," clad in a hunting shirt, with deer- skin cap and leggins, leans on his long rifle and looks wistfully across the Otsego over the hills toward the West. His dog, "Hec- tor," is at his feet, looking up into the old hunter's face. The monument has va- rious emblems illustrative of Cooper's In- dian and sea novels.
You will recall Cooper's loving description of the lake in the first chapter of "The Deer- slayer." It is often quoted in full by later writers who describe their visits here. It was, in Deerslayer's day, "a broad sheet of water, so placid and limpid that it re- sembled a bed of the pure mountain at- mosphere compressed into a setting of bills and woods." Its most striking pecu- liarities "were its solemn solitude and sweet repose." "On all sides, wherever the eye turned, nothing met it but the mirror-like surface of the lake, the placid view of heaven, and the dense setting of woods. So rich and fleecy were the out- lines of the forest that scarce an opening cotild be seen, the whole visible earth, from the rounded mountain top to the water's edge, presenting one unvaried line of unbroken verdure."
It is easy for me now to comprehend the delight of Deerslayer when he first viewed this "glorious picture of affluent forest grandeur relieved by the beautiful variety afforded by the presence of so broad an ex- panse of water." And we feel satisfied, too, at the appropriateness of the name "Glimmerglass" when we gaze upon "the surface as smooth as glass and as limpid as pure air, throwing back the mountains, clothed in dark pines, along the whole of its eastern boundary, the points thrusting forward their trees even to nearly hori- zontal lines, while the bays are glittering through an occasional arch beneath, left by a vault fretted with branches and leaves."
Not only do we admire the lake when its surface is so mirror-like that it reflects the pines "as if it would throw back the hills that hang over it." For with the rip-
29
pies come new beauties, new brilliancies of coloring, wonderful tints, a sheen not single, but made of many pure colors.
For quiet beauty, for picturesqueness of form and outline, for charming atmos pheric effects, this highland lake is often truly compared to the famous lakes of Eu- rope. It can lay no claim to grandeur, as the novelist's daughter.. Miss Susan Feni- more Cooper, has written, "yet there is harmony in the different parts of the pic- ture, which gives it much merit and which must always excite a lively feeling of pleasure. The hills are a charming setting for the lake at their feet, neither so lofty as to belittle the sheet of water, nor so low as to be tame and commonplace; there is abundance of wood on their swelling ridges to give the charm of forest scenery, enough of tillage to add the varied in- terest of cultivation; the lake with its clear, placid waters lies gracefully beneath the mountains, flowing here into a quiet little bay, there skirting a wooded point, filling its ample basin, without encroaching on its banks by a rood of marsh or bog."
Around the whole the pen of Cooper has thrown a halo of romance of such power and such exactitude in description that when you begin by picking out the sites of the different incidents of "The Deer- slayer," you end by forgetting that the characters never lived and invest the spots with a real historic interest. Every little point has been portrayed with a wealth of detail that makes the story as real as the place itself. The brain of the novelist was most cunning with the spots he had loved and cherished from boyhood.
As we rode up the lake on one of its lit- tle steamers, with Mount Vision on our right, Hannah's Hill opposite, Mount Wel- lington ahead and round Council Rock be- hind at the Susquehanna's start, we seemed to see Natty Bumppo's skiff glid- ing along with caution for fear of hostile redskins: to hear Hurry Harry's voice; to catch a glimpse of brilliant, handsome, willful Judith, her gentler sister Hetty, and the wise, brave, true-minded Deer- slayer. Incident after incident of Cooper's novels came to mind and we looked with
30
eagerness for Leatherstocking's cave, on Mount Vision, where Chingachgook died; for Rat Cove, for Point Judith, for Leath- erstoeking Falls, for Wild Rose Point, where many exciting incidents were lo- cated; for Gravelly Point, where Deer- slayer killed his first Indian; for the canyon on Five-Mile Point, where he hid \mder a fallen tree from 40 Indians; for Hutter's Point, where he first viewed the "Gliin- merglass," and finally for the shoal spot supposed to be the site of the sunken is- land where Hutter and his daughters had dwelt in Muskrat Castle.
Thus to the pleasure of a ride upon a beautiful lake was added the charm of tracing the scenes of a great work of fic- tion. The boat passed by various costly country homes and stopped at many little landings in front of cottages peopled with outing parties. This part of the trip formed still another kind of diversion. Years ago Cooper predicted that Otsego would become a favorite summer resort. It seems to have come true.
Chance gave us the opportunity of seeing Otsego in another way \ipon the same day. In the morning our boat ride was taken, in the afternoon we drove around the lake— a rare pleasure. A constant succession of lovely vistas was encountered — but the finest part of the drive was in the long stretch of winding road beneath overarch- ing trees, which afforded a delightful sense of seclusion. It was the capstone of our edifice of charming memories of the "Glimmerglass." T shall ever love Cooper the more for having introduced this lake to fame, and to me.
31
V.
TWO MODERN EXPLORERS.
Richfield Springs, Otsego County, N. Y., Aug. 19.— Yesterday, when we were sit- ting on the porch of the Fenimore House, at Cooperstown, I said to my wife:
"How wouid you like to be an explorer?"
"I am willing," was her reply; "but is there anything left for us to discover?"
"Come with me tomorrow," I remarked mysteriously.
That is how we happen to be here at Richfield Springs today.
I can already hear you remarking that Richfield is not an unknown land, and that thousands and thousands have been here before me. That attitude is because I have not explained myself. Maybe when I get through you will be willing to rank me with Stanley and Peary and a few other men of equal renown. Maybe not. That is for you to decide.
You see, it all came about in this way: The geographers and the cyclopsedists in- variably tell you that the Susquehanna has its source in Otsego lake. I wasn't satisfied with that. "Why not get farther back?" said I to myself. Not that I wished to rob Cooper's beautiful lake of any of its glory. I admire it too greatly. But I was coached in school by a professor who was a great stickler for all the facts, and ;is my purpose is to tell everything about the Susquehanna, I determined to go on a hunt for the Susquehanna's farthest head- waters.
The other day, when we drove all the way around Otsego, we crossed several brooks that evidently emptied into the lake. "Possibly their source may be what I aim to find," said I to myself. So, when we returned to Cooperstown, I hunted up a detailed map of this region, and from
32
that map I made various deductions, which finally led up to our getting to Richfield to- day.
"Queer way to be an explorer!" I can hear you exclaim. "To have a map! The idea!" Well, wait a bit before you again east suspicions on my claim.
I found that three brooks of some length, but of small size, come into the upper end of Otsego lake. One is three miles long, another six, the third eight. I had about determined upon one of these streams, when the lake which lies here below Rich- field Springs caught my eye. It is just as truly one of the sources of the Susque- hanna as is its larger, more beautiful and more romantic rival back over the hills yonder to the east. Its outlet, Oak creek, meets the waters from Otsego Lake four miles below Cooperstown. It is not much of a meeting, because the Susquehanna is small and Oak creek smaller still.
Oak Creek is nearly if not quite fourteen miles long from Richfield's lake. The lat- ter, formerly known as Schuyler's lake from an early settler, but now repossessing its Indian name of Canadarago — is four miles long. Into its upper end, after flow- ing through the village of Richfield Springs, comes a stream whose length is eight miles, called Ocquionis by the In- dians and Fish creek by the whites.
If you will add up my figures, reader, and compare them, you will see that the source of Fish creek is the farthest headwater oi the Susquehanna. And you will begin to understand why two modern explorers drove today from Cooperstown to Rich- field and beyond. And why I feel a bit tickled at the idea of having added more than twenty miles to the generally ac- cepted length of the Susquehanna. Of course, carping critics would raise a "hue and cry," but what care I, serene in my own conceit.
We found the springs which give rise to Fish creek in a high, hilly country north of Richfield toward the beautiful Mo- hawk Valley. In fact, a mile or two beyond there was a fine outlook. There was the dividing ridge. The rainwater which
33
falls at one place passes into the Mohawk and so into the Hudson. The rain not far away reaches the Chesapeake by way of the Susquehanna. Those old maxims about "small beginnings" came into our minds as we realized just where we were. From there the mouth of the Susquehanna was nearly 450 miles away. By that route it was nearly 700 miles to the ocean. By the Mohawk 200 miles would bring the chance raindrop to the great sea. It is fan- ciful, I know, but I almost endowed the drops with feeling and felt pity for them that half should be borne by Nature's chance so far from their brothers.
A more odd evidence of this "parting of the waters" is found in Summit lake, which is four miles north of Otsego lake. In ordinary times it's outlet is one of the brooks which I have mentioned as flow- ing into Otsego. But in high water another outlet carries half of it north into the Mohawk.
The drive along Fish creek is one of the many popular ones in the neighborhood of Richfield. The stream runs between good hills, and is very generally bordered by steep banks. Two fine estates are reached by this drive— "Cullen wood," the home of Col. William Cullen Crain, and the Cruger Mansion, a fine antique stone structure overlooking the Mohawk Valley, and origi- nally the manor house of an estate of 26,- 000 acres. Jordanville is the name of a little hamlet near the spot where Fish creek begins. This, by the way, is in an- other shire than Otsego, for Warren town- ship, in which Fish creek rises, is in Her- kimer county.
It is a rather curious fact that, before the days of dams and other artificial obstruc- tions in the Susquehanna, shad in the spring actually reached Fish creek from the Chesapeake and were caught in abun- dance in these waters. In fact, lamenta- tions over the loss of the shad are common among the old inhabitants of the entire Upper Susquehanna.
The country about Richfield Springs is certainly a diversified one, with many hills of varied heights and quite a series of little lakes and blue ponds. We had a splendid
34
opportunity to grasp this fact this morn- ing, for, on our drive from Cooperstown, we climbed Mount Otsego and there had a beautiful panoramic view. Once this high summit was called Rum Hill, but that phase of culture and progress which gets in its work on ugly and queer names was successful here. The summit is 2,800 feet above sea level and 1,600 feet above the level of Otsego lake. It is easily the highest point in this region, and for that reason the observatory which lifts its head above the trees on the mountain crest has the advantage of being able to command an extensive view in every direction. I honestly deem it one of the finest out'ook points I have ever visited, though it has its limitations, as we discovered when we tried to rind Cooperstown, which we had left six miles behind, or Richfield Springs, which lay the same distance northwest. Both were hidden behind the ridges of jealous hills. This was the more notice- able because almost the whole length of Otsego lake reflected blue far beneath us. Northward the Adirondacks were clearly seen. To the northeast the Green Moun- tains of Vermont were dimmer. So, too, were the hills of Western Massachusetts. To the southeast the Catskills were plain. A ridge of the Alleghanies limned the hori- zon on the south, while on the west and northwest it was bounded by the hills of Chenango, Madison and Oneida counties. The two great mountain ranges of this State and that of another State were thus revealed, 60 to 80 miles away. The highest peaks of the Adirondacks were easily picked out.
We were much amused by the grandilo- quence of a man whom I may with pro- priety call the "view-expounder." We reached the top some minutes before him and thus had an opportunity to drink in the wonderful panorama before he broke in upon us. His first statement was that "the view from Mount Otsego comprehended 9 States and 40 counties." Then, with a general sweep of his hand, he indicated "the whole course of the Hudson, from the Adirondacks to New York city." Then he pointed out the "Alleghanies down inPenn-
35
sylvania," and presently, taking up a poor field glass, he picked out some forest fires in the Adirondacks. It was kind of him to thus retail an item which had been in yes- terday's papers, but unfortunately for his veracity these fires were upon the north side of the Adirondacks, fully 200 miles away.
Every minute I expected him to point out Canada, or Boston, or the monument at Washington. But he refrained.
Richfield, of course, is famous for its sul- phur springs, which are considered the strongest in this country. I echoed the idea when we entered the front room of the elaborate series of bathhouses. In a foun- tain in the centre the waters are made to bubble and sparkle until they really look tempting, but the odor of the place prompt- ly reminded me of a story of a countryman who was passing here when this spriug was being uncovered and enlarged, 80 years ago. Smallpox was prevalent in the neighbor- hood, and when the farmer got a good whiff of the bad-egg odor, he whipped up his horse and with a groan exclaimed: "Oh, God; I've ketched it!"
Sitting in the trim little park in front of the bathing establishment and opposite the leading hotel, the Earlington, I could not avoid contrasting the past and present of Richfield. The springs were noted for their healing qualities among the Mohawk In- dians, but it was not until 1820 that a young physician thought of booming the place as an invalid resort. Boarders came at $1.25 a week, and were then merely "outlanders" in a rich cheese-making coun- try.
Today living costs 20 times the sum named, and Richfield is famous and fash- ionable, its popularity largely due to the favor of that section of the "smart set" which prefers an inland watering place more select thau Saratoga. Its chief ave- nue is lined with hotels. There are in and near the town the summer homes of many wealthy folk. Golf links have made de- mands upon near-by fields. East Indian gymkhana races and a horse show hold forth at the fair grounds. Wheelmen and wheel women spin around Lake Canadar-
36
ago. Tallyhos and stylish traps dispute the roads with them and with those in the saddle. An orchestra plays many num- bers daily at the Earlington, and in other ways it is evident that wealth and ele- gance dominate, at least in the summer.
Yet with all this, the farmer has not been elbowed out. His hay wagon or his carryall jogs in review past the Earliug- ton's porch parties side by side with the fine coach or drag, while his hopfields and his cornfields are set over against the mil- lionaire's lawn or handsome home. In- deed, you are hardly out of sight of the hotels before you are in a land of farm- workers.
I might enjoy life here at Richfield were I a cottager, but I am not so sure about an extended stay at the hotels. The waters are so widely praised as of value in cases of rheumatism, gout, neuralgia and dis- eases of the blood and liver that many evi- dent sufferers are here. Even though they may be of one's own set and warm friends, their presence, it seems to me, cannot help but act as a damper upon the gen- eral gayety.
The bathing establishment affords an in- teresting study of the approved methods of treating these health seekers. There are pulverization, inhalation, douche, vapor and massage rooms, Turkish and Russian baths, sun baths, electric baths and a large swimming pool of sulphur water. So that, if you choose, you can get saturated with sulphur externally and internally be- fore you leave.
If you have a woman friend whom you have reason to believe employs artificial aids in her toilet, advise her to stay away from Richfield. Sulphur, you know, oxi- dizes metallic cosmetics and the appear- ance of the cheeks under such circum- stances is scarcely beautiful. Similar tricks are played with one's jewelry.
The estate of the late Cyrus H. McCor- mick, of Chicago, who made millions by inventing agricultural implements, is on the eastern slope of Sunset Hill, north of the town. Richard Croker has a stock farm near here, on which his family have been dwelling this summer while the Tammany
37
leader has been abroad or busy in fixing up political slates.
Lake Canadarago is a favorite place for drives, canoe and steamboat trips and fish and game suppers. It is a pretty sheet, though not to be compared with Otsego. In the centre is a wooded island. A legend saith that a corresponding island once stood a short distance away, but that the wrath of the Almighty suddenly sank it be- cause a Mohawk healing prophet who dwelt on it became so puffed with pride as to proclaim himself the "twin brother of the Great Spirit."
I have spoken of the drives to Cullen- wood, to Lake Canadarago and to Mount Otsego, but have said not a word of one of the most noted— that to the east past two pretty little "Twin Lakes," through the village of Springfield, at the head of Otsego Lake, over into the historic Cherry Valley and on beyond for seven miles to Sharon Springs. The road followed is the old State turnpike to Albany from the western counties. To Cherry Valley is 15 miles. Prom Cooperstown to Cherry Val- ley is about the same distance.
Sharon is a watering place whose glory as a summer resort has given way to popu- larity as a sanitarium. It has sulphur springs like those of Richfield, and also chalybeate and magnesia springs. It has all the water-cure treatments in vogue at Richfield and, in addition, one may take mud baths, pine needle baths and the Fa- ther Kneipp cure. These people the hotels with invalids. Formerly Sharon was a fa- vorite place for wealthy German and He- brew citizens and was known as "the Baden-Baden of America."
Half way between Sharon and Cherry Valley the road passes around the north or outer side of Prospect Mountain, and we got grand valley views. The Mohawk Val- ley lay spread out 1,700 feet beneath us for an east and west distance of fully 80 miles, shut in on the north by the Adiron- dacks. It was a panorama different from that of Mount Otsego, yet equally fine.
I never think of Cherry Valley without recalling the delicate compliment of Willis when he said it was "La Vallee Cherie." It
38
is, indeed, a pretty and romantically sit- uated valley, famed for the terrible mas- sacre on November 11, 1778, when Joseph Bryant and his Indians with fire and the tomahawk spread ruin and desolation through the infant settlement, killing in all 48 persons, many of them women and children. In the village cemetery the bones of the slain were later collected and there a small monument has been erected to their memory. In the centre of the vil- lage is another monument, put up to recall those of Cherry Valley who died, in the Civil War.
Cherry Valley was the first settlement in this whole region. It was started in 1740 by John Lindesay. a Scotch gentle- man of some fortune. In the first half of this century it was noted in New York State as the residence of a coterie of fa- mous lawyers and politicians. Prof. Sam- uel F. B. Morse worked out much about his telegraph here. The late Douglas Camp- bell the historian, was born here. Rev. Solomon Spalding, reputed author of the "Book of Mormon," and Rev. Ehphalet Nott, the distinguished president of Union College, were among the early principals of Cherry Valley Academy.
Two miles north of the village is Te-ka- ha-ra-nea falls, where a small brook falls 160 feet Cherry Valley White Sulphur Springs are not far away. Cherry Valley creek, after a southwest course of 16 miles, contributes its mite to the Susque- hanna. ! .
Our little excursions in this region are ended now. Tomorrow morning we return to Cooperstown to start down the Susque- hanna.
VI.
THRO' THE HOP COUNTRY.
Afton, Chenango County, N. Y., Aug. 20. — Before our departure from Coopers- town today a last visit was paid to the be- ginning of the Susquehanna, where the wa- ters of Lake Otsego glide into the narrow channel which by and by expands to be- come a mighty river.
So pretty was the spot that we were loath to leave it, though imagining well how much awaited us in the next 400 miles. Standing long on the bridge which is thrown across the stream a couple, of hundred feet from the lake, we gazed down upon as pretty a brook vista as can be seen anywhere. Leafy trees and bushes over- hung the water in profusion, and some grew quite in midstream, with their roots clinging to mossy rocks. The water was so calm and clear as to reveal, with the aid of a friendly sun, the charms of the river bottom, and the stream seemed to us to have a mood akin to ours, unwilling to leave the "Glimmerglass" for an onward hurry to the Chesapeake. The whole scene was one of sylvan quiet, especially appre- ciated by most visitors because only a minute's walk from the noise of Coopers- town's main street.
The river has the same placid beauty here at Afton, 54 miles below Coopers- town. We saw it grow as we traveled with it, saw it gradually spread from a width of 40 feet to- one of 300 feet. Yet, though it has frequently been stirred up by dams and millraces, and has received the waters of various turbulent and noisy brooks, it still seems content to be serene on a summer day and passes quietly beneath the white suspension bridge which is but a short walk from the centre of this pretty village. Prom
40
the bridge the banks present the same pic- ture of overhanging trees as at Coopers- town, though the wider river substitutes a lake background for the brook vista up above.
The river valley from Cooperstown has the same characteristics as the stream it- self. Hemmed in by high uplands on each side, it offered us a series of peaceful, pleasing scenes. The high, bounding hills leave an intervale of a mile to a mile and a half. The hillsides have been largely al- lowed to remain wooded, but often tracts have been "cleared" for crops or cattle, and we saw many cows browsing in the midst of tree stumps far above the river. The rich lands on the levels adjoining the river banks showed fine crops, and the general well-being of the farmers was evidenced by their neat homes and filled barns. The whole region is noted for its dairying and stock raising rather than for its farm products.
A succession of just such pretty villages as Afton broke in upon the farm scenery and made interesting stopping points for our train. Streets with arching trees gave glimpses of well-ordered lawns and pretty homes. Some of the latter showed us where modern ideas had brought in the Queen Anne type of dwelling, but mostly they were of the two-storied, comfortable- looking type general in Central New York, usually painted white, with green blinds.
These villages occurred with regularity every three or four miles— Milford, Port- landville, Colliersville, Oneonta, Otego, Wells Bridge, Unadilla, Sidney, Bain- bridge and Afton. They all have flour- mills, sawmills and small factories and are all typical villages save Oneonta and Sid- ney. These two have been pushed ahead by railroad industry, the former decidedly more than the latter.
Two railroads link these various Susque- hanna villages and towns, and have con- tributed largely to their growth in the last 30 years. From Cooperstown to Colliers- ville, 16 miles, we were carried by the Cooperstown and Charlotte Valley Rail- road, a small road whose building was due to the former progressive spirit of Coop-
41
erstown citizens. Then we met the Al- bany and Susquehanna division of the Del- aware and Hudson Railroad, which strikes the Susquehanna at Colliersville, where the river bends to the southwest, and runs with the river to Nineveh, below Afton, where it aims across to Binghamton. It is part of a short through route from Bos- ton to the West, and has frequent "flyers" and fast trains. Its course is mainly on the west bank of the river.
The trip from Cooperstown as far as Oneonta was emphatically a journey through the hop country. This is the hop- picking season and the groups at work amid myriads of tall poles added zest to our sightseeing. Sometimes hundreds of acres were given up to the picturesque hop vines, while every farm owner along the river had at least an acre or two.
The hopflelds were very inviting. During the summer the green and leafy vines had crept up the myriads of poles and across interlacing strings until the rows before being picked seemed like a vast festoon, an idyllic contribution to some great har- vest festival. They were so charming jis to make me appreciate the spirit of the writer who said there is "flippancy in the name and nature of the vine, as gay and debonair to the end it tosses its light sprays." All of which is quite foreign to the thought of another, a temperance mor- alist, who turned his head away when trav- ersing these fields and tried to avoid the "sleepy aroma of the sun-steeped hops," because it made him "ashamed" that such pretty vines should be intended for "the base uses of the makers of beer."
Five counties here in Central New York produce one-half of the 50,000,000 pounds of hop used in this country or exported abroad. Cooperstown and Oneonta are the chief trade centres for that part of the region around and below Lake Otsego. The time for picking is when the tiny cones i<n the vines lose their green and take on a yellow tinge that distinguishes them from the greW of the fig-like leaves. This usu- ally occurs in the latter part of August.
Hop-picking is a season for frolic as well as work. The hop-raiser needs much help
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to get his crops gathered before they get too ripe, and even if he has but one or two acres planted with the vines, he can make use of a score or more persons, while on some of the larger farms as many as 1,000 or 1,200 persons find temporary employ- ment.
Fifty years ago the country folk had the frolic to themselves. Harvesting was over and there was nothing to hinder the hop fields from becoming centres of merriment and neighborhood reunions. Nowadays the rustic workers find themselves elbowed b3* young men, young women or whole fami- lies from Albany or Troy, or even from New York. In fact, it has become as cus- tomary for working people of those cities to "go a hopping" at this season as for members of another section of society to go to seaside or mountains, and for similar reasons — relaxation and health.
The armies of hop-pickers live in rough barracks or tents on the farms of their employers, often bringing their own cook- ing utensils and bedding and having a genuine outing. The scenes which take place in and arotind these farm encamp- ments recall in many ways the large truck farms near great cities during the berry- picking season. Many restraints are thrown off and there is for the time being a perfect indifference to most of the usages and conventions of civilization. In fact, this gypsy life has led to many grave dis- cussions of morality and to various plans for attempting to check the coarser ele- ments of the frolic. Some hop-raisers have gone to considerable expense to provide adequate accommodations and prevent the crowding which so often prevails in these farm tenements. Others have laid down stringent rules for the conduct of their employes. I am informed, however, that the really disreputable class is a weak mi- nority among the hop-pickers, and is large- ly made up of "tramps."
When the day's work is done the en- campments are stirred with life. Many are busy getting supper, and camp fires or slender chimneys send up smoke against the sunset, while the clatter of dishes is intermingled with laughter and chaffing
43
and discussions of the day's work. When night falls the scene is still more pic- turesque, for the orange light of the out- door fires adds gorgeous color tints to the sun-browned faces. Presently the young- er folk begin a dance, usually in a vacant corner of the house used for drying hops. This is kept up until an hour when it is almost unnecessary to go to bed before be- ginning another day's work. The side- steps and flourishes and the style of waltz- ing would doubtless convulse the soul trained only in Professor So-and-So's select academy in a big city, but the merriment and good-nature of the dancers show how they enjoy it.
That is one side of the picture. A day in the fields shows the other. Men work ahead of the pickers down the long ave- nues of poles, cutting the vines to some feet from the ground and loosening them from the strings and poles, so that it will be an easy matter for the pickers, who work seated around boxes or bins, to get the hops from off the vines without letting the leaves and stems fall in. When the boxes or bins are full they are measured, credit given to the pickers, the hops emp- tied into huge bags and carted off to the drying house or kiln. Thus the whole field is an animated scene, the different groups vying with each other to work ahead in their particular rows, and laughing and chatting as they push onward, stripping the field. To keep off the noonday sun many sit beneath temporary canvas awnings.
A field picked over is probably a more dispiriting sight than any other harvest- ing picture. The poles and strings have been stripped of festoons, hop and leaf. The ground has been trampled down, and on it are many withered and withering branches and stems, torn down to pluck the only marketable bit, and entirely ruin- ing the charm of the field before the in- vasion.
The hop fields were not the only places to attract us in coming here from Coop- ei'stown. Five miles south of Cooperstown is Hartwick Seminary, a Lutheran theo- logical school in a little village, with a his- tory of 84 years. Its founder was Jobu
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Christopher Hartwick, a native of Saxe- Gotha, Germany, a man of much talent, but also of much eccentricity. Coming to this country to take charge of a Lutheran congregation on the Hudson, he soon gave this up and began a wandering life through several colonies. One of the results of his travels was his purchase from the Mo- hawk Indians of a big tract in and around what is now the seminary. When he died, in 1700, he left his property for the educa- tion of young men for the ministry. The bequest was used privately until 1815, when the seminary was started. The pres- ent value of its buildings is about $30,000, and of its endowment about $35,000, so that its sphere is necessarily much con- tracted.
Indian stories by the dozen are told by those familiar with this upper portion of the Susquehanna. Near Colliersville, for instance, was an Indian village. Where Schenevus creek joins the river Col. John Harper surprised a party of Indians about to attack his settlement of Harpersfield. Where Charlotte river and the Susque- hanna meet was the home of "Murphy, scout and Indian terror," a backwoods- man whose rifle made him a noted man. The town of Oneonta was once the Indian village of Onahrieton. Otego was an Indian orchard and burial place, and half a mile below Wells' Bridge there are still traces of a lead mine which was worked by the Indians.
A most important historical interest at- taches to Sidney, or Sidney Plains, 43 miles below Gooperstown, at the junction )f the Unadilla river. It was, during the Revolu- tion, the headquarters for the predatory incursions of that noted Indian leader, Joseph Brant, or Thayendeaga. Historians have proven that Brant was here when he was accused of directing the massacre at Wyoming, and here General Herkimer Had an important but fruitless conference with him in July, 1777. Brant had made de- mands for cattle and provisions upon the infant settlement which had been begun here in 1773 by Rev. William Johnston, the white pioneer of the Upper Susque- hanna. General Herkimer marched here
45
with a regiment of militia, was met by Brant, tried to persuade him to join the Revolutionists instead of the British, and was refused menacingly and curtly. A violent storm broke up the conference.
Near the town of Sidney is an old In- dian fort, about three acres in extent, in- closed by mounds of earth and surrounded by a ditch.
Sidney is the point where the New York, Ontario and Western Railroad crosses the Susquehanna Valley. This makes the town an important shipping centre for freight, especially dairy products. It is 200 miles from New York city.
Oneonta is a town of rapid growth. Thirty years ago it had 1,000 persons, now it has 10,000. The Delaware and Hudson Railroad has done this largely by locating its shops here and by making it a division headquarters where 500 trainmen start out on their work. Many manufactures have sprung up, among them a piano works, and the enterprise of its business men has won for the town a State Normal School, housed in a large brick pile at the west end of Maple street and now begin- ning its eleventh year.
The town bids fair to have more op- portunities for growth in the near future, as it is to become the western terminus of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad, which runs through the heart of the Catskills from Rondout. Its present terminus is Bloomville, but it is expected to be operating to Oneonta by December. Collis P. Huntington, the railroad mag nate, was born in Oneonta, and his sumptuously furnished private car, Otsego, was sidetracked at the station, as he is now on a visit to relatives residing there.
The high hills across the river from Otego used to be called "Johnson's Dream- land," and it is related that an Indian chief known as Hendricks was forced to give them to Sir William Johnson, the noted Indian agent, in this manner: Hen- dricks told Sir William one day that he had the night before dreamed that Sir William had given him a certain flashy suit of clothes. Sir William gave the clothes to the chief, but in a few weeks
46
he, too, bad his dream, and he told Hen- dricks that he had dreamed that Hendricks had given him a deed to this tract. The Indian grunted, signed the deed, and pres- ently said: "Me no dream no more."
Afton and Bainbridge were both what is known as "Vermont Sufferers' Lands," granted by New York to recompense those who had vainly upheld New York's share of the border warfare over the Green Mountain State. Descendants of many of the first settlers still live on the old farms.
Afton is a healthy place and has a oon- stantly growing stream of summer visit- ors. There are several pretty walks and drives from the village, as we found to- day. Four miles southeast on a stage road to Deposit is Vallonia Springs, whose hotel has many boarders in the "heated term." The waters contain sulphur, magnesia and iron, are strongly prophylac- tic and are efficient in cutaneous diseases. Personally we found the water much more palatable than that at Richfield, because less strong.
One mile north of Afton is Afton Lake, a circular sheet of water covering about 40 acres. It has no apparent inlet or out- let, but as it is near the Susquehanna and 30 feet above it, it probably drains underground into the river. Its wooded shore is a favorite place for picnics.
Glen Afton is a pretty spot, romantic but not requiring much exertion to sec its beauties. It is about half a mile long, with rocky cliffs rising from 40 to 60 feet above a little creek. In some places one has to step on rocks in the stream, in others to pass along a shelf in the side of the cliff. The creek is one which wanders through the upper end of the village, and is called Bump's creek, after a pioneer set- tler.
I have always thought Afton a romantic name, and mentally praised the Aftonians for selecting it. But an old lady today gave me a different story. "We used to belong to Bainbridge," she said, "and when we separated we determined to be ahead on all alphabetical lists by haviug a name beginning with an A." That's not so romantic.
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VII.
WHERE MORMONISM BEGAN.
BlNGHAMTON, BROOME COUNTY, N. Y.,
Aug. 22.— It is very easy for me to compre- hend now why people fall so naturally into the belief that the Indians named this river Susquehanna because that meant "long, crooked stream." We have just come around the so-called "Great Bend."
The Delaware and Hudson Railroad, which leaves the Susquehanna below Nine- veh and heads for Binghamton by a more direct path, gets here in 20 miles; while the river, continuing southward from Nineveh, enters Pennsylvania for a few miles, then suddenly sweeps around to the northwest, passes the towns of Susquehanna and Great Bend and to reach Binghamton re- quires 40 more miles than did the railroad surveyors.
If you will look at any map of New York and Pennsylvania you will see that there are two "greater bends" than the one which we have just traversed. After con- tinuing west from Binghamton for forty mikjs the Susquehanna is joined by its larg- est tributary, the Chemung, and there tutus sharply to the southeast, leaving New York State for good and making for the coal town of Pittston, where there is again a sharp bend to the southwest, after which the last sharp bend is made at Northum- berland, 80 miles from Pittston. North- umberland is the point where the West Branch comes into the main stream and below there the united river flows in a general southeasterly direction past Har- risburg and on to the Chesapeake bay.
From a point east of Binghamton across Pennsylvania to Pittston, as the birds ' would fly, is not more than 40 miles, while the wide western sweep of the river makes
48
its curve at least 150 miles. Again from Athens, at the coming in of the Chemung, south to Northumberland, at the coming in of the West Branch, is 70 miles by air line. By the river it is 150. These are broader bends than the one up above here, but were probably not as evident to the generation which named the first.
From Afton as far as the town of Sus- quehanna we were in a region abounding in scenes in the early career of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. At Afton he attended a district school and was later tried for fraud. At Nineveh he held the first meetings of those whom he had converted. Near Susquehanna was the home of the young woman whom he mar- ried, and in an outbuilding upon her father's farm he "translated" the Book of Mormon from his "golden plates."
The stories which have been handed down concerning his operations along the Susquehanna are not tinctured by any reverence for him or his creed. Most of them are centred around certain clairvoy- ant powers which he claimed to exercise in finding buried treasure. He operated by means of a mysterious stone, described as being about the size of an egg, of the shape of a shoe, and of an irregular green hue, with brown spots on it. This stone he covered with his hat and held in front of his face and in that way claimed to be able to see things denied to others. Many farmers in the Susquehanna Valley were deluded into spending considerable sums in digging for the gold which Smith pre- tended to see, but which was never found, either because of some "powerful enchant- ment" or because the diggers had vio- lated the prophet's injunction and not kept a still tongue.
On a farm on the north side of the river a little west of Susquehanna there is a big hole, perhaps 20 feet deep and 150 feet in circumference. This was the chief spot of Smith's digging, though he per- suaded other parties to work in other places. In this big venture he interested Oliver Harpur, a well-known farmer of Harpursville, N. Y. A straggling Indian
49
had told Smith, so he said, there was a treasure buried there, and with the aid of his "seeing stone" he so aroused Har- pur's cupidity that the latter "put up" liberally, and 14 men were employed to dig, working night and day in relays. After awhile Harpur became discouraged, but "Joe" declared there was an enchant- ment about the place which could only be removed by killing a perfectly white dog and sprinkling its blood over the ground. A white dog could not be found, so Smith suggested that a white sheep might do, and the digging was continued. Of course, nothing was found, but Smith plausibly got out of it by saying that he was sure the Almighty was displeased with them for trying to palm oif a white sheep as a white dog. When the digging stopped Har- pur had put in all about $2,000 into this "hole in the ground."
Not far from the scene of the digging was the homestead of Smith's wife. Her father was Isaac Hale, who had settled there 'as early as 1787 and who for 50 years was noted as a hunter. Smith board- ed at the Hale home while directing Har- pur's digging, and not long after asked permission to marry Emma Hale. This was refused, but in February, 1826, the couple eloped, and for three years there- after Smith made his home with Hale, much to the latter's disgust.
Shortly after his marriage Smith showed his father-in-law a box which he said con- tained "a wonderful book on golden plates." He had not then, it appears, con- ceived his subsequent statements that an angel had appeared to him and revealed the place where the plates were buried, on a hill in Manchester, X. Y. He had brought the box to Hale's home from his former home in Palmyra, N. Y. To all who betrayed a curiosity to see the plates he explained that the first to look at them should be a young child. This angered Hale, who ordered Smith to remove the box from his house. It is said the box was then concealed in a woods on the farm. In a few months Smith began to translate the book. This was done in a
50
little building which Hale had used for dressing deerskins. It is now the rear end of an old farmhouse on the hillside op- posite Susquehanna. Smith sat behind a blanket to keep the sacred records from profane eyes and dictated to Oliver Cow- dery or to Martin Harris, who had come under his influence. Harris sold his farm to pay for the publication in 1829. This act reduced his family to beggary and aroused the ire of his more sensible neigh- bors.
It was said by some that Smith read his golden plates by his "seeing stone," held in his hat, just as when he was looking for buried treasure. But by others we are first told of those wonderful spectacles, the Urim and Thummim, transparent stones in silver bows, said to have been found with the plates.
Smith's first proselytes were gathered together on the farm of one of the most zealous of them, near the Susquehanna, and between Nineveh and Centre Village. The stock of Mormon bibles was kept in a nearby barn. The credulity with which his doctrines were received by some is shown by testimony given in his favor when he was arrested for fraud in Afton. Three witnesses said they had seen him cast out devils. They "saw a devil as large as a woodchuck leave the man and run across the floor like a yellow dog."
On a certain Sunday Smith announced that he would wralk on the waters of the Susquehanna near Nineveh. A large crowd assembled and to the amazement of the unbelievers the feat was accomplished. Smith announced a second performance for the following Sunday, started out boldly upon the water, but suddenly went down, to his great chagrin. A mischievous boy had removed one of a lot of planks which had been laid about six inches below the surface.
With Nineveh as his headquarters Smith continued active solicitations in various parts of New York for a year. In Janu- ary, 1831, directed, as he said, by revela- tion, he led the whole body of believers to Kirtland, Ohio, which was to be the
51
seat of the New Jerusalem. The subse- quent development of Mormonisrn is a part of this country's history.
When Smith and his followers became a political and religious issue in the West, his opponents came to the Susquehanna Valley and revived many recollections in order to procure affidavits showing how Mormonism had started here. Even now there are those weak-minded enough to put faith in his tales of buried treasure and within a few years diggings have been made.
Our trip from Afton to Binghamton was a broken one. A division of the D. and H. Railroad carried us amid an attractive farming country and through Nineveh, Centre Village and Windsor to the little village of Lanesboro, whence in a lumber- ing stage we passed around the river's really majestic bend and to the town of Susquehanna. There an Erie train was boarded for Binghamton.
The scenery about the bend is bold and romantic. The river, prevented by hills from continuing southward, turns around the base of a spur of the Alleghanies. Sus- quehanna is built upon the side of a steep hill, so abrupt that the town is sometimes called the "City of Stairs." On the oppo- site side the village of Oakland is similar- ly situated. A dozen other hills and peaks can be seen shutting in the valley. Most of them are steep and rugged and some are made even more forbidding by the exposure of their rocks through quar- rying. Two miles to the east is Lanes- boro, its houses quite overshadowed by the Starucca Viaduct, a noble work of stone masonry, built half a century ago to aid in bringing the Erie road down into the Susquehanna Valley from the high hills which lie between there and the Dela- ware. The tracks are laid upon 18 arches, supported upon 19 piers of solid masonry 110 feet in height and extending across Starucca creek and valley a distance of 1,200 feet. Near the viaduct an excursion resort has been located in a pleasant grove by the riverside, and thither the railroad brings many picnickers. The river is beau-
52
tiful there, and its charms are more fully set forth from a little steamer.
The town of Susquehanna— which now has 5,000 dwellers— is an outgrowth of the Erie road, which located immense shops there. These shops cost nearly .$2,000,000 and occupy eight acres. When the site was first selected, in 1848, it was a farm whose owner had hard work to prevent the encroachments of rattlesnakes. Today Susquehanna is a strikingly busy railroad centre, the great shipping point for the coal of extreme Northeast Pennsylvania. A dozen yard tracks parallel the main lines for a couple of miles and thousands of empty and loaded freight cars are upon them. Engines puff and snort all day long as they tug away at long trains, and black dirt abounds.
The valley from there to Binghamton has a rugged character, quite different from the fertile valleys in which we had trav- eled with the Susquehanna thus far. The hills close in upon the river forbiddingly, and their sides seem to say to the farmers, "Don't dare touch me!" This warning has been fairly well heeded. Of course, there is the village of Great Bend and several hamlets, but they are in favored spots.
The vicinity of Windsor village abounds in Indian memories. The rugged mountains on both sides of the river are known as Oquago or Ouaquaga. (There are 50 ways of spelling it.) Here the Six Nations had a village from the time they were first known to the colonists. It was a sort of outpost whence they could command the approach to their stronghold from south or southeast. A war colony was placed here at the outbreak of the Revolution and the spot was strongly fortified and fixed up. When it was learned that the Indians were collecting there in large numbers Col. John Harper was sent by ('(ingress to try to pacify them. He reached Oquago on Feb- ruary 27, 1777, and had a friendly confer- ence with the red men, who told him they did not intend to join the British against the colonists. Brant was not there then. When he did come there was a different tale to tell, for Oquago became and con- tinued a general rendezvous for Indians
53
and Tories. Most of the invasions into the Schoharie and Mohawk settlements, as well as those upon the frontiers of Ulster and Orange counties, were engineered from Oquago.
A couple of miles below Windsor, Tusca- rora creek recalled the interesting history of that North Carolina tribe which, after having been thrashed by the militia of that colony in 1722, migrated northward and for some reason was soon adopted into the Iroquois confederation, making the sixth nation. During their period of probation the Tuscaroras were assigned a residence almost in the big bend of the Susquehanna, where an eye could be kept on them by their new brothers.
The valley all through there abounds in Indian relics and trinkets, human bones, pits of charred corn, wigwam poles and an immense quantity of stone clippings. On the west side of the river piles of stones define an Indian trail across the hills to Binghamton.
In 1754 Rev. Gideon Hawley, a protege of the famous Jonathan Edwards, began a mission at Oquago under the patronage of Sir William Johnson. Edwards had a son of 9 years, named for himself, who had shown much precocity in mastering the language of the Housatonic Indians at Stockbridge, Mass. In 1755 the boy was sent by the father to join Hawley, that he might also learn the Iroquois tongues and become qualified to be a missionary among them. Owing to the disturbances of the French and Indian War, Hawley had to abandon this pioneer of Indian missions, and young Edwards returned to Stock- bridge. He became president of Union Col- lege.
Another noted New Englander is in a measure identified with the Susquehanna below Oquago, though much more of a prominent figure in the Valley of Wyo- ming. I refer to Col. Timothy Pickering, who was Washington's Secretary of State. He had large tracts of land where Lanes- boro now is, and in 1800 he settled a son upon them. The son aroused the ire of his father by marrying a girl of the then back-
54
woods, but Colonel Pickering so far relent- ed that in 1807, when the son died, he took the widow and her little children to his Massachusetts home. The son is buried in Lanesboro.
North of Colonel Pickering's land and in New York State 60,000 acres were owned by Robert Harpur. He was an Irishman, for some time a professor in Columbia Col- lege and from 1780 to 1795 New York's dep- uty Secretary of State.
In the vicinity of Great Bend there are many localities with Indian traditions- stories which serve to add a touch of ro- mance to the neighborhood. About two miles east of the village the river is quite narrow, with high rocks on each side. The pioneer settlers called the spot "the Paint- ed Rocks" because high upon the face of one of these cliffs and far above the reach of man was the painted figure of an Indian chief. The outlines faded with the years, but the red remained, and people of a later day who knew not the story of the figure called the place "Red Rock," a name wbich it still bears. How and when the painting was done on a rock apparently in- accessible has been the subject of much mystery and conjecture.
Nearer Great Bend the old inhabitant will point out a lot of gravel in midstream and tell you that once there was a pretty wooded island there, which was used by the Indians for picnics. The brave who could paddle most swiftly around the island was "king of the mummers" for the day, and all had to obey his incitements to sport. At a later period the whites used tne spot in the same way, but some mischievous boys in setting fire to driftwood destroyed the grove of trees on the island and the latter gradually sank.
A curious adventure with Indians hap- pened many years ago to a lad whose fa- ther had a farm on the river's edge just west of Great Bend. The boy was told by his father to plow up an Indian burying ground on the river flats. The boy obeyed in uneasiness, imagining how he should be tortured if discovered at this work by In- dians. There had been none in the neigh-
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borhood for many years, but suddenly he heard strange guttiiral sounds from the river and, peeping through the fringe of bushes, saw two canoes filled with red- skins. The fright which seized him may be pictured. It turned out that the Indians had been those who lived thereabouts and had come to demand the lands lying north of the Susquehanna and to the State line. They claimed that this tract of land had not been included in their sale to the Penns, but a copy of the deed, hurriedly procured from Harrisburg, soon proved them wrong.
Great Bend village is set amid many high hills. A mountain called "Manotonomee" or "Miantonomah" is within a few hun- dred yards. It is a part of the estate of James T. DuBois, Consul-General to Switzerland, who has built on it several quaint summer cottages. The wooded slope also affords a site for the home and studio of D. Arthur Teed, the artist.
George Catlin, the painter who gained fame by his Indian studies, lived in Great Bend in youth. In fact, his earlier years are closely identified with the Susquehan- na, for he was born at Wilkesbarre and spent his childhood near Windsor. His bi- ographers say that an inveterate propen- sity for hunting and fishing found full sway around Great Bend.
As it comes back into New York the river makes a curve of which an early surveyor took advantage in an original fashion. Six farms are in a fan, their outer edges coin- ciding with the river's curve and all com- ing to one point upon the State line above Great Bend.
Binghamton has surprised me. I was here a dozen years ago, and the difference is very similar to that which one feels when he meets, as a beautiful creature of 18, glorious in the first flush of woman- hood, a girl whom he last knew when she was 15, painfully thin and consciously awkward. For so has Binghamton grown.
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VIII.
ALONG THE SOUTHERN TIER.
Owego, Tioga County, N. Y., Aug. 23.— When the Susquehanna leaves Binghamton it comes west for 40 miles in a singularly beautiful and fertile valley.
The boundary line between New York and Pennsylvania is but a few miles to the south. The river gradually nears it and finally with a curve to the left sweeps across the border into Pennsylvania, tak- ing its final leave of the State which gave it birth. A short distance across the line it is joined by the Chemung, which for many miles has hugged the same State boundary, though in an exactly opposite direction to the Susquehanna, coming as it does from Western New York and North- ern Pennsylvania.
The people of the Empire State give the name of the "Southern Tier" to the coun- ties which embrace the valleys of the Chemung and the Susquehanna— Broome, Tioga, Chemung, and Steuben. They are spoken of with pardonable pride, for they are truly rich in resources and influential in the politics and life of the State.
With the valley of the Chemung I have naught to do, but for that portion of the Susquehanna within the "Southern Tier" there can be no other words than those of praise. The country is indeed beautiful. The valley is broad and the hills which bound it north and south, while of fair size, have soft slopes, terminating in wide, table-shaped ridges. The plain between tlie hills gives room for thousands of fine farms and dairies, while these in turn have made way for growing villages and towns, of which the chief are Binghamton, Owego and Waverly.
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The river has by this time attained a size where one may begin to call it majestic. Its water is clear and sparkling and in the sunlight has a silvery sheen, gleaming throiigh green fringes of trees and circling the bright islands which occasionally di- vide the current. It is, as another has said, "a swift river, singularly living and joyous in its expression." There are charms about it in this portion which make boating and camping delightful in the summer months, while the fishing in suitable seasons is of no mean quality.
The graceful pen of N. P. Willis, who for some years lived here at Owego, was long ago devoted to praising the attractiveness of the Susquehanna. In his "Letters Prom Under a Bridge" he made thousands fa- miliar with the stream, the fields, the farms, the scenery, the natives of the Owego of that day; he deplored the coming of the canal and of the railroad into the valley, and with especial fervor made pic- turesque the life of the lumbermen who used to float their rafts by hundreds past his farm.
If you will pardon me, I will quote from Willis his impressions of the Susquehanna on his first visit. With WTilliam Henry Bartlett, the English artist, he was pre- paring an illustrated work on American scenery, and of all the places visited Owego gave the greatest delight. It is evident in this quotation, and it was strong enough to bring him back here to make his home. Said Willis:
There are more romantic, wilder places than this in the world, but none on earth more habitably beautiful. In these broad valleys, where the grain fields and the meadows and the sunny farms are walled in by glorious mountain sides— not obtru- sively near, yet, by their noble iind wondrous out- lines, giving a perpetual and wonderful refreshment and an hourly changing feast to the eye— in these valleys a man's household gods yearn for an altar. Here are mountains that to look on but once "be- come a feeling"— a river at whose grandeur to mar- vel—and a hundred streamlets to lace about the heart. Here are fertile fields, nodding with grain; a "thousand cattle" grazing on the hills— here is assembled together in one wondrous centre a speci- men of every most loved lineament of nature. Here would I have a home!
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This town of Owego has a delightful situation. The little creek which Willis loved breaks through the hills on the north in such fashion as to further widen a val- ley already broad, and it is evident how the Indian name of Ah-wa-ga, said to mean "Where the valley broadens," came to be applied. The river trends to the north side, as if eager to absorb the smaller stream, and the town lies between the Susquehanna and the foot of a rugged cliff several hundred feet high.
The home of Willis is reached after a drive of two miles to the northwest. It is about a mile from the mouth of the creek. The glen to which he gave his wife's name of Mary is still there, but there have been many changes in 60 years. The bridge un- der which his letters were written has given place to another of more modern and possibly less picturesque construction. Upon the farther side of the creek is Glen- rnary Sanatorium, a retreat well known to medical men and invalids. The Willis prop- erty forms part of the Sanatorium grounds.
Owego has been the home of other fa- mous men. Senator Thomas C. Piatt, the noted Republican "boss," was born here and occupied, at different times, various residences in the town. The last, a sub- stantial cottage, was pointed out to me on Main street. Raphael Pumpelly, a distin- guished American geologist, was also born in Owego, and the Rev. Washington Glad- den, now widely known as a preacher and writer, set type in an Owego newspaper office in his youth. Pumpelly's father was an intimate friend of Willis and himself a writer.
In Evergreen Cemetery, which is on the hillside above Owego, there is a monument 17 feet high bearing this simple inscrip- tion:
Sa-sa-na Loft. By birth a daughter of the Forest. By adoption a child of God.
Sa-sa-na was an Indian girl, who, in 1855, with a brother and a sister, came through the "Southern Tier," giving entertain- ments to raise funds to translate the Bible into the Mohawk language. She was killed in a railroad accident at Deposit, N. Y..
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and the friends she had made here brought the mangled body to Owego and erected the monument.
Another incident of former times pre- served in Owego's annals was the reunion by the banks of the river of a father and a son who had been stolen in boyhood from a town on the Hudson and had been adopt- ed by his Indian captors and lived many years with them in the West. The son was brought to Owego by his adopted par- ents, and it is said he parted from them with much grief.
Owego in itself is an attractive place, with pretty streets and homes. It is the county town of Tioga county, and the courthouse stands in a green park near the river. There are about 5,000 inhabitants, a goodly trade with the surrounding coun- try, a public library with 5,000 volumes and a number of manufactures. The town also rejoices in a little steamboat, which runs up the river several miles to Big Island, which is beautifully fringed with trees, and so makes a fine picnic spot.
You must not suppose for an instant that Owego in any way rivals Binghamton, which is the metropolis of this tier of counties and which has hopes of control- ling the trade of an even wider territory. Binghamton's position, at the junction of the Chenango and Susquehanna rivers, on a plain surrounded by high hills, made it a favored place even in the days of Indian trails, while in later times both turnpikes and railroads were compelled to seek the spot. It is, therefore, an important rail- road centre, lying on the Lackawanna and Erie roads, from New York to Buffalo, con- nected with Albany by the Delaware and Hudson, with Syracuse and Oswego by an important branch of the Lackawanna sys- tem and with Utica by another Lacka- wanna line which traverses the beauti- ful valley of the Chenango. Formerly a canal by this last route joined the Erie Canal at Utica.
An early start was given to manufactur- ing enterprise by the water power of both rivers, and as this has been superseded by
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steam, the close proximity of the Pennsyl- vania coal fields still gives the city decid- ed advantages. Hard coal being the fne! used, Binghamton does not have the smoke and dirt so characteristic of other manu- facturing places, and for this cleanliness has come to be known as "the Parlor City." This is a sobriquet which to us yesterday seemed applicable in more ways than one. A hundred miles of streets are for the most part broad, beautiful^ shad- ed and lined with attractive homes and fine business blocks. Evidences of thrift, prosperity and a buoyant commercial con- dition were noticed on every hand. Im- provements of all kinds have kept pace with the city's rise within the last 25 years; miles and miles of asphalt and brick pavements have been laid, and a large number of business edifices and public buildings have been erected during a com- paratively recent period.
Notable among these is a costly and really handsome county courthouse, built of a light-colored stone, which renders it doubly attractive in its newness. It stands on a slight knoll in the centre of a green square in the heart of the city, and in front of it is a monument to the soldiers of Broome county who fell in the Civil War. The new courthouse replaced a stone and brick edifice of fair size, put up 40 years ago, and in a way the change excellently typifies the alteration of Binghamton from a county town into a bright, modern, ac- tive and progressive city, destined, ac- cording to its friends, to become the chief purveyor of the United States in certain kinds of manufactures.
The making of cigars is the city's lead- ing industry. Millions are invested and several thousand hands employed. I was told that in this trade Binghamton is now surpassed only by New York and Key West. There is also a large beet sugar refinery, and manufactories of leather, boots and shoes, combs, sewing machines, carriages and various kinds of machinery.
The rapid growth of Binghamton may be fancied from this statement of its popu- lation. With less than 10,000 when it was incorporated as a city in 1867, it
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bad 17,000 in 1880 and in the next census decade more than doubled itself, reaching 35,000. Possibly next year it may be 60,- 000. At any rate, it deserves such fig- ures. The city has grown on both sides of both rivers and, like the very modern city it is, has developed a group of sub- urban villages and towns which are linked to their parent by trolley lines controlled bj' a large street railway company.
One of the ways of gauging the inter- est shown in Binghamton by the sur- rounding country is the frequency of ex- cursions to the city. In these excur- sions a point of special attractiveness is Ross Park, which is a tract of upward of 100 acres on the hillside south of the Sus- quehanna, donated by Erastus Ross, a prominent business man, who became financially involved subsequently to his public-spirited gift. The park possesses pretty drives and walks, romantic ravines and secluded woods, a herd of deer, a menagerie and various amusements for pleasure-seekers. From its highest points it is possible to obtain a panorama of Bing- hamton and vicinity, a view which is only rivaled thereabouts by that from a tall tower which S. Mills Ely, a wealthy whole- sale grocer, has built on the ridge north- west of the city, where it is a conspicuous feature.
Forty-five years ago Binghamton was se- lected by the New York authorities as the site for an interesting experiment — a State Asylum for Inebriates, where habitual drunkards could be treated and restrained. Friends of the plan claim that the experi- ment was a success, but at any rate about 20 years later the buildings were converted into a State Asylum for Chronic Insane. They form an imposing group on a hill two miles east and overlooking the Sus- quehanna at a point near where the city's Avater is obtained from the river. The chief edifice is 365 feet long, designed in the Tudor castellated type of architecture, with many towers. There are 400 acres of grounds about it.
Binghamton is also the site of the home recently established by the National Asso- ciation of Commercial Travelers for the
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veterans of their class who have no other place to rest in their declining days. The building is nicely situated. Another of the city's charitable institutions is the Sus- quehanna Valley Home, which has long guarded and educated indigent children.
In its history Binghamton has had three names. The Indians called it O-chenang or Otsiningo, and the first white settlers Chenango Point. Its present name is due to the fact that large tracts of land, in- cluding the city's site, were owned by Wil- liam Bingham, a prominent Philadelphia!!, and an early Senator from Pennsylvania, whose daughters married the famous Eng- lish bankers.Henry Baring and his brother, Alexander Baring, afterward Lord Ash- burton. The first settlers, who were from New England, had located farther up the Chenango on the west side, but Bingham, largely by liberality in the matter of ground for public buildings, induced a transfer to the tongue of land in the inter- section of the two rivers.
In Indian times Binghamton was for some years the site of an alliance of the remnants of several tribes, calling them- selves -'The Three Nations," and compris- ing Nanticokes, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland; Mohicans, from Connecticut, and Shawnees, from Pennsylvania. But the region round about was mainly in the possession of the Tuscaroras, who, in 1785, after a long treaty conference at Fort Herkimer, sold it to the State of New York. Together with a great portion of Cenrral New York it was claimed by Mas- sachusetts in virtue of her royal charter, which embraeed all the territory between 44° and 48° north latitude "from sea to sea."' Massachusetts yielded her claims at the Hartford Convention of 178G, receiving among other things a tract of 230,000 acres near Binghamton, which was shortly sold for $7,500, about 3 cents an acre.
Daniel S. Dickinson, the statesman and lawyer, was Binghamton's most eminent citizen. He died there in his rural home, called "The Orchard," and is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, which is in the northwestern suburbs. The New York State Bar Association erected a monument.
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over his grave. Porl Dickinson, a suburb, was named for him.
Many villages dol the Susquehanna Val- ley from Binghamton to Owego and be- yond to where the river leaves New York. Those on the soul li hank may be called newei' than those opposite, for the Lacka- wanna Railroad on the south side was
built many, many years alter the old Brie. Both roads cross the Chenango near each other, and stay together as far as Lestershire, three miles from Bingham- ton. Then the Erie sticks to the north hank, while the Lackawanna crosses to the south side. The Erie passes through Union, 9 miles from Binghamton; Camp- ville, 15 miles, and Hiawatha, lit. Then comes Owego, T2 miles. Beyond to Waver- ly are Tioga Centre, Smithboro and Bar- ton. The Lackawanna touches Vestal, op posite Union; Apalachin, 14 miles from Binghamton, and Lounsberry, Nichols and Litchfield, beyond Owego. The villages mentioned on the smith hank are shipping points for the farmers of Pennsylvania across the border, while those on the north hank serve a similar purpose for farming communities hack of them.
From Owego west there are really three railroads along the Susquehanna for 15 miles, as the Lehigh Valley's line from Sayre to Auburn and on to Lake Ontario Closely parallels the Erie tracks on the north hank, touching Barton, Smithlx.ro. Tioga ( lentre and Owego.
In addition to the merit of being pleas- antly situated in a delightful valley and beside a noble river an advantage shared by all -there are special points which at tract the traveler to several Of these vil- lages. At Lestershire is what is said to be the largest shoe factory in the world, a huge brick building where L,200 persons are employed. Union, whose charm is en- hanced by a picturesque Bound Hill on the river hank, was the scene of a skirmish be- tween Imlians and the army of General Clinton when he was on his way to join General Sullivan. Vestal was the birth- place of David B. Locke— "Petroleum V. Nashy," the humorist — whose father had a tannery there. Apalachin gave rise to still
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greater celebrities, among them Gen. B. F. Tracy, the New York lawyer and for- mer Secretary of the Navy, and also the Rockefellers, the Standard Oil magnates, among the wealthiest of America's multi- millionaires. Lounsberry is the centre of a country where many sugar beets are raised.
In the plain between the Susquehanna and the Chemung, above their point of union, are three lively towns. Athens, the oldest and one of much historic importance, lies right in the tongue of the peninsula. North of Athens is Sayre, founded by the Lehigh Valley Railroad and pushed ahead because it is a junction point and the site of large railroad shops. Then farther to the northwest is Waverly, on Cayuta creek. While not exactly a railway town, Waverly owes its being to the Erie road. It is the only one of the trio within the limits of New York. Were it not for this political separation the three towns could easily unite and form a city of no mean size that might in time give Binghamton a push for the supremacy of the "Southern Tier." There are close relations between the peo- ple of Athens, Sayre and Waverly; they are linked by trolley and by pleasant drive- ways; and in their variety of factories they have other sympathetic bonds, as well as business rivalries.
Willis, whom I have before quoted, gives a capital description of the junction of the Chemung and the Susquehanna. His imag- inative fancy caused him to picture it thus:
"A!" Imagine this capital letter laid on its back and pointed south by east, and you have a pretty fair diagram of the junction of the Susquehanna and the Chemung. The note of admiration de- scribes a superb line of mountains at the back of the Chemung Valley, and the quotation marks ex- press the fine bluffs that overlook the meeting of the waters at Athens. The cross of the letter (say a line of four miles) defines a road from one river to the other, by which travelers up the Chemung save the distance to the point of the triangle, and the area between is a broad plain, just now as fine a spectacle of teeming harvest as you would find on the Genesee.
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IX.
LEGENDS OF TWO HILLS.
Pittston, Luzerne County, Pa., Aug. 24.— There are two hills beside the Susque- hanna which have each been invested with a wealth of legend through Indian tradi- tion and the superstitions and tales of early white dwellers.
Even the Catskills, with their Rip Van Winkle stories, can scarcely rival the mystery of "Spanish Hill," near Athens, nor the romance of Campbell's Ledge, which towers high above Pittston here at the beginning of the Valley of Wyoming. Both offer unusual opportunities for the genius of an Irving, and for their sakes it seems a pity that some one with an imag- inative fancy and humor such as his has not recalled their past.
Spanish Hill lies northwest of the town of Athens, nearer the Chemung than the Susquehanna. It stands alone, rises about 200 feet above the plain of the two rivers, is about a mile in circumference, easy of access, and affords a delightful view. The boundary of New York and Pennsylvania runs through its northern side. Willis fancifully described the hill as a round mountain "once shaped like a sugar loaf, but now with a top of the fashion of a schoolboy's hat punched in to drink from." Around the rim of the hill are the remains of fortifications that were old a century ago and whose exact age is the object of much speculation.
A dread of this hill seems to have been universal among the Indian tribes in colo- nial days, and nothing could induce a red man to ascend it. Their traditions say that a sachem once ventured to the top, but was enveloped in clouds and smoke
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and returned with a solemn command from the Spirit of the Mountain that no Indian should dare set foot on it again. It is also said that another chief, a Cayuga, who dis- obeyed the injunction, was seized by his hair and whirled away by the Great Spirit.
A reasonable theory of the old earth- works is that they were the scene of some terrible bloody battle, possibly between the Iroquois and the Susquehannocks. But Spanish coins are said to have been found there and the hill was known to the red men as Spanish Hill, which would seem to indicate a visit there by whites in America's earliest history. In fact some antiquaries have advanced the theory that Fernando De Soto, the discoverer of the Mississippi, in some way penetrated to this neighborhood in 1540, that Otsego or Onondaga was his "silver-bottomed lake," and that the land of "Saquechama," where he experienced such intense cold, was none other than the Upper Susquehanna.
If not De Soto, why not the buccaneers of the Spanish Main? Other early tradi- tions point their way. It is said when they were driven out of Florida they came up the Chesapeake and the Susquehanna, where they were met by Indians, who drove them to the top of this hill. There they defended themselves by fortifications for months, but were finally starved to death. Tradition, usually prettier than fact, also says they did not perish, but saved themselves in the end by the sacri- fice of a Spanish maiden to a Cayuga chief, who guided them to the prairies of the distant West. To make this complete we certainly ought to know the lady's name. Doubtless she was the stolen daughter of some noble Don.
And if not the Buccaneers, why not be more reasonable and fit Spanish Hill in with the adventures of M. de Nonville, a French Governor of Canada, who in 1687 led an army into the Genesee Valley 10 whip the Iroquois, but was badly beaten, and finally retreated? These fortifications may have been of his construction.
Even the redoubtable Captain Kidd did not dodge Spanish Hill. His buried treas- ure found shelter there, as well as a thou-
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sand other places. In the time of Willis a man hired to plow on the hillside suddenly left his employer and purchased a large farm by nobody-knows-what windfall of fortune. Other men have at various times dug for Spanish gold or buried treasure.
Campbell's Ledge is a bold mountain, commencing here from the union of the waters of the Susquehanna and Lacka- wanna, and continuing rather abruptly to a rocky, scowling summit, from which there is a splendid view of the Valley of Wyoming to the southwest, that of the Lackawanna to the east and of the Susque- hanna to the northwest. At the base of the mountain, nestling close to it, is tin's thrifty small city of Pittston, a thoroughly genuine coal town.
The Delaware Indian village of Asser- ughny once stood at the foot of Campbell's Ledge, and the hill was used not only to shelter their wigwams but to kindle their beacon fires in the night hours, as they were wont to be kindled on the Scottish highlands in the days of Bruce and Wal- lace.
The old inhabitants called the ledge Dial Knob because the exact location of its face north and south enabled noon to be told miles away on a sunlit day. How the designation of Campbell's Ledge came is in doubt. Some say it was named for Thomas Campbell after his poem made Wyoming famous, but others say that the name existed before Campbell's verse was published. Another of the name of Camp- bell was, it is said, pursued by Indians and ran out on the ledge without knowing where he was. When he saw no way to es- cape his pursuers, he leaped from the rock rather than allow himself to be taken by them.
It has been handed down from father to son for the last century or more that away in the deep recesses of some glade of Campbell's Ledge is a silver mine of incom- putable wealth that was known and oper- ated by the aborigines. The legend runs that a farmer with a family of 14 children was brutally murdered by Indians and only one child, a boy of 14 named David, was spared. He was carried away and
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after traveling all night found himself on the summit of a lofty mountain overlook- ing Wyoming and presumed to be Camp- bell's Ledge. A temporary halt was made and an old Indian chief, to whom all paid reverence, arose and, advancing a few rods, stooped down and removed a large flat stone, exposing to view a spring. The waters of this were conducted away by a subterranean aqueduct so constructed that if accidentally discovered the waters would seem to come from the reverse di- rection rather than that from which they really flowed. At the mouth of the spring a roll of bark was placed so as to form a spout and under this the old chief held for some minutes a handkerchief which had belonged to David's mother. The old spring was stirred so as to render it turbid and sandy and when the chief removed the handkerchief it was seen to be completely covered with flue yellow particles resem- bling gold. These were placed in a stone jar, and after incantations, to prevent any but the rightful owners from discovering the hidden spring, the Indians replaced the rock and continued on their journey, which was only ended six days later at Kingston on the Hudson, where the sub- stance was bartered.
David was ransomed, and in after years related the incident to his children, one of whom, in company with several men, dug out a considerable portion of Campbell's Ledge without finding the secret channel.
Other traditions sa,v that the secret of the mine was obtained by some of the set- tlers from the Indians by bribery, and the Pennsylvania archives have on record a complaint from the Indians in 1776 that "persons had dug a trench, 44 feet long and 6 feet deep, from which three boat- loads of silver ore were taken away."
The 90 miles of the Susquehanna's course through Northern Pennsylvania from Ath- ens to Pittston is a journey that well re- pays. Not only is there much of historic importance to be recalled; the scenery is fine. The river pursues a winding course, so much so that it wastes many miles in its tortuous channels. Between Vosburg
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and Mehoopany the Lehigh Valley Rail- road saves five miles by a single tunnel under a high hill. But there are many river bends which cannot be so avoided and to these the railroad sticks closely, having the beautiful river near at hand and offering a constant succession of pic- turesque rock and forest views, sometimes merely pleasing by their rustic charm, but more often wild, as becomes the moun- tainous country.
Instead of following a natural valley, like most rivers, the Susquehanna here breaks through successive ranges of hills, the northern ridges of the Alleghanies. Precipitous escarpments tower hundreds of feet above the stream, while slightly farther back mountains of real grandeur lift their heads. This sort of scenery is entered upon almost as soon as the train crosses the Chemung from Athens, but it finds its boldest expression around Tunk- hannock, 23 miles above Pittston. The alternate sections of hills, with their inter- vening valleys, afford a charming variety of landscape. The rich bottom lands be- side the river, especially where the moun- tain streams come in, are fertile farms. Towns with their white spires occur every half-dozen miles — To wanda, Wyalusing and Tunkhannock are the largest— but when they are out of sight there are many wilder scenes than the fancy would picture in a region settled for more than a centurj-. In fact, with the prevalence of Indian names, it was almost possible to imagine one's self a hardy pioneer, were it not for the fact that one was traveling at the rate of 50 miles an hour on a luxurious train of the Lehigh Valley Road.
This portion of the river has an especial charm for those fond of boating, fishing and camping. We saw several dozen white tents along the banks from Athens to Pittston, and upon the river during the day counted no less than 300 small boats. Most of their occupants were busily en- gaged in fishing, but some were canoes heading down stream in a way to indicate that they were being used for more than an afternoon's outing. I also saw two com- fortable houseboats with jolly parties
70
aboard. I am told that from Binghamton to Pittston or to Wilkesbarre is a favorite jouruey for canoe or houseboat. The scen- ery is certainly beautiful and the river more free from rapids than farther down. I envied the travelers by water.
For the fishermen the river abounds in black bass and Susquehanna salmon or wall-eyed pike, while the trout fishing of the mountain streams is commended. For the man with a gun the hills back of the river furnish rabbits, quail, woodcock, squir- rels and grouse. In the wilder portions an occasional deer, bear or wildcat is seen, while those who enjoy fox hunting will find sufficient numbers of these crafty ani- mals to give their hounds plenty of runs.
The Indian history of this part of the river has many singular features. When the white people first began to visit it Athens— then called Diahoga, later Tioga Point— was the foretown of the Iroquois, the southern gate of the Confederacy— its south door, through which, or by the Mo- hawk, all strangers must apply to enter or be treated as spies and enemies. The Sen- ecas guarded it, and here was stationed a sachem whose business it was to examine visitors. To that point all paths led.
The Indian and Tory forces which were to raid the Valley of Wyoming had Tioga Point for their rendezvous and returned there a month after the massacre. Queen Esther, who figured so notoriously in the massacre, ruled a village on the present site of Mi- lan, three miles below Athens, and many of the Indians in the raiding force came from there. In the autumn of that year Colonel Hartley, with 400 soldiers, went overland from Muncy, on the West Branch, by way of Lycoming and Towanda creeks, and burned the Indian villages at Tioga Point, Queen Esther's Town, Sheshequiu and Wyalusing.
In the following summer Tioga Point was the headquarters for Gen.. John Sullivan's famous expedition against the Iroquois. Marching up the river bank, from Wilkes- barre, with boats in midstream carrying supplies, he threw up an elaborate breast- work at Tioga Point. Presently he was joined by a brigade under Gen. James Clin-
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ton, who had come from Albany by way of Otsego Lake. The united force started up the Chemung. A single battle was fought where the city of Elmira now stands. This was such a signal victory that General Sul- livan had little trouble in devastating the Indian strongholds in Central New York. On the return to Tioga Point, where a small force had been left in charge, the en- tire command embarked on boats and went down to Wilkesbarre. This expedition wTas important in American history because of its results. It broke the backbone of the Iroquois' power.
In 1790 Tioga Point was again the scene of an interesting historical event. The Indians, true to their alliance, continued to harass the pioneer settlers long after the British had retired into Canada. Col. Timothy Pickering, who figures so promi- nently in other pages of the Susquehanna's story, was sent to Tioga Point by President Washington. Five hundred Indians ac- cepted his invitation to a conference, among whom the most noted were Red Jacket and Cornplanter. Joseph Brant did not attend and used his influence against the conference, but Colonel Pickering was so far successful in conciliating the In- dians that a formal treaty was entered into the following year at Elmira. The site of the big pow-wow in Athens is point- ed out behind an Episcopal Church.
Colonel Pickering was greatly aided in pacifying the Indians by the exertions of Matthias Hollenback, subsequently a judge in Wilkesbarre, but most widely known as a trader with big interests. Hollenback had a chain of trading posts or stores up the Susquehanna and across to Niagara, in- cluding a large depot at Athens. He had the esteem of every Indian and white pioneer of the then vast wilderness, and even after a fortune had been made he pre- served the same simplicity in his habits. He was an intimate friend of that other great American trader, John Jacob As- tor, and it is said that a trip which Astor took with him in 1786 up the Susquehanna fiist opened Astor's eyes to the possibili- ties of the fur trade of Canada and the Northwest. It is also said that Hollenback
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saved Astor's life on this journey. The two were fording a stream, when Astor became dizzy and would have gone under had not his companion hit him under the chin, and cried: "Look up, Astor!"
Other well-known men are associated with Athens. Charles Carroll of Carroll- ton, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, owned much land there. Stephen Foster, the writer of plaintive ne- gro melodies, attended the Athens Acad- emy. Col. Ethan Allen, the Green Moun- tain hero, lived there for some months, hav- ing been persuaded by Col. John Franklin to take a hand in the later stages of the bloody contest which was waged by Penn- sylvania and Connecticut for the posses- sion of Wyoming Valley and all this part of the Susquehanna. Colonel Franklin, who was the leader of those who held Connecti- cut tities, actually dreamed of making a separate State out of Northeastern Penn- sylvania and induced Allen and other mak- ers of Vermont to settle with him for that purpose. After the struggle was ended, Franklin, who had taken part in many ad- ventures and had been in prison in Phila- delphia, settled down on his property at Athens and lived in quiet to a good old age.
The appropriation of classical names for American towns leads sometimes to amus- ing results. Thus it is possible, in 10 miles, to travel from Athens to Milan and from Milan to Ulster. Further down the Siisquehnnna, below Sunbury, it is possi- ble within an hour to cross the water from Liverpool to Halifax. The latter is a joke my grandfather never failed to repeat when traveling by the two towns.
Ulster is the centre of the old Indian dis- trict of Sheshequin. The present village of Sheshequin is on the east side of the river, but the Indian wigwams were on the Ulster side. Sheshequin, or Sheshequa- nink, means "a place of rattles," which gives an inkling of the vast number of rattlesnakes which formerly infested the entire region. General Sullivan's army had a pleasant camp here, and many of his sol- diers returned to settle the neighborhood after the Revolution. Dui'ing the war the wild nature of the region' made it a fairly
73
secure place for Tories, but the many who flocked there were gradually weeded out by the patriots.
At Ulster we first began to see fine fields of tobacco, which is becoming a leading crop of Northern Pennsylvania. There we also noticed the first of a long series of bluestone quarries (for sidewalks and steps). Similar quarries occurred in the valley every mile or so of the 50 to Tunk- hannock. It is an important industry of the river towns and villages.
Near the mouth of Sugar creek, a few miles above Towanda. are the remains of what appears to be an ancient fortification, which, from its construction and from the relics found in it in former times, would indicate that it was made by a people prior to the Indians, and probably the mound- builders. There were formerly traces of similar fortifications in Wyoming and Lack- awanna Valleys. One of them had a tree growing on it at least 700 years old. In other words, this fort was abandoned be- fore Peter the Hermit began the Crusades.
I said of Binghamton the other day that its prosperity was, in a measure, indicated by the erection of a fine new courthouse. The same is true of Towanda, which is the county seat of Bradford county. The dome of a handsome new building of light-col- ored stone rises near the river and is the most conspicuous object in the town, which lies mainly at the base of a bluff on the west side of the river, where the latter makes a broad bend. The Lehigh Valley's main line crosses to the east bank, just above Towanda, and continues on that side to Pittston, but another branch strikes off from Towanda through the mountains, near Ganoga and Harvey's Lakes and down to Wilkesbarre.
Towanda is a thriving as well as a hand- some place. It has superior advantages for manufactures, as hard and soft coal of the finest quality are both abundant in the mountains a few miles back, while depos- its of iron ore are not far away. Millions of tons of coal are shipped annually from the Barclay, Leroy and Bernice and other mines of Bradford and Sullivan counties. There ore foundries, planing-mills, an ex-
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tensive toy factory and piano, carriage and furniture factories. There is also a large trade with the farming sections of these counties in poultry and dairy products. Stages run to a number of inland towns. In these and other ways Towanda has had attractions sufficient to give it a population of 5,000.
The Susquehanna Valley Institute, in To- wanda, is a flourishing school, founded in 1850 by Presbyterians.
Towanda is said to signify the "place of burial." This name arose from an act per- formed by the Nanticoke Indians. Some years after they had been driven up the Susquehanna by the encroachments of Maryland colonists on the Eastern Shore they returned to those ancestral homes, brought away the bones of their fore- fathers and reinterred them here at To- wanda. Their burying ground is a little above the mouth of Towanda creek.
David Wilmot, author of the famous Wil- mot proviso, forbidding slavery in the ter- ritories acquired from Mexico, was a law- yer and judge of Towanda, where his partner was Galusha A. Grow, another eminent son of Pennsylvania. Wilmot lies buried in a pretty cemetery on the bluff overhanging the town, and on his tomb is inscribed the words of his celebrated sug- gestion: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory except for crime, whereof the party shall first be duly convicted."
John T. Trowbridge, the novelist, in a little record of travel humorously called "A Carpet Bagger in Pennsylvania," speaks with delight of Towanda, calling it "a bright, brisk child of the hills, lying in the lap of a lovely valley." Continuing, Mr. Trowbridge says:
Mountainous bluffs confront it, mirroring their precipitous lichen-tinted crags and clinging for- ests (many-hued in autumn) in the river, which here spreads out in a lake-like expanse above the dam and tumbles noisily and foamingly down into a wide-sweeping shallow flood below. Mountains rise behind the town also, with long lines of boundary fence curving like belts over their ample shoulders. The checkered farms, dark squares of plowed land and brown pastures and gray stub-
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ble fields, contrasting with the delicate green squares of tender young wheat-clothe their giant forms in true highland plaids. Agriculture has shaven these hills to their very crowns, leaving only here and there a tuft of woods for a scalplock.
Mr. Trowbridge also tells a marvelous snake story. Back on Rattlesnake Moun- tain, he says, there lived an old man who became convinced that rattlers could be sold at a profit to menageries, and so col- lected a large number of them in the attic of his hovel. One dark night he and his wife were awakened by sounds, and be- came convinced that the snakes had found a crack in the ceiling and were dropping down into his bedroom. Their lamp was some distance from the bed, but bv push- ing his bare feet carefully, so as not to an- ger the reptiles, the man made a light and saw the floor full of the slimy things, while others were each moment dropping from above. The rest of the night was spent in collecting and securely penning the assort- ment, and the next day they were shipped down the Susquehanna in a big box labeled "Glas Handl With Cair." Strange to say the old man had shrewdly hit upon a goo'd thing and got a large price for the lot.
Wysox, which is five miles below To wan- da, and the name of which is said to sig- nify "canoe harbor," was the scene of an exploit prominent in the pioneer annals of the Susquehanna. Moses Van Campen had been captured at his home, near Danville, by a party of nine redskins. When they were encamped for the night, at Wvsox, Van Campen freed himelf from his bonds released three fellow-captives— two boys and an Irishman— and, with their aid, tom- ahawked and scalped four savages, badly wounded thiee and forced the other two to flee. Subsequently, Van Campen brag- gmgly enlarged upon the exploit and to such an extent that by some the storv was pronounced a lie and Van Campen an Amer- ican Munchausen.
After passing Standing Stone, near a great stone in the river, which was a land- mark for the Indians, and Hornet's Ferry, where our attention was attracted to 'a horse disporting in midstream with water up to his neck, we were soon in the midst
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of a region of much interest to students of history. On a large fertile plain at Wya- lusing was the famous Moravian Indian mission Friedenshutten (Huts of Peace), and some miles above, on the west bank, was a colony of French noblemen, driven from their country by the excesses of the revolution of 1792.
A large tract of land was bought there for these emigres by Matthias Hollenback, at the request of Robert Morris, the emi- nent financier, who was a friend of many distinguished Frenchmen. The exiles soon had a lively settlement in the wilds, with a bakery, a. brewery, other stores and shops, and steady communication with Philadelphia. It was their hope and am- bition to provide a suitable home for Louis XVI and his unfortunate Queen, Marie Antoinette, and for this purpose large buildings were put up some distance back from the river, near the present vil- lage of New Era. But, alas! no sooner was the work done than news came that King and Queen had both been guillotined.
The leaders of the colony were: Omer Talon, a Parisian banker, and Louis, Vi- comte de Noailles, a brilliant representa- tive of that ancient French family and a brother-in-law of Lafayette, under whom he had served in this country and who se- lected him to conclude the capitulation of Yorktown. Louis Philippe, subsequently King of France, visited the colony with his brothers, the Duke de Montpensier and the Comte de Beaujolais. Talleyrand, the fa- mous prime minister, spent some time there, as did also the Due de la Rochefou- cauld-Liancourt, who gave an entertaining account of the colony in his volumes of travel.
A romantic story might be told of the privations and sufferings of these exiled noblemen. They were willing enough, but they were not inured to hardships and could not plant a permanent colon# in the forests. Some moved to Philadelphia and nearly all went back to France as soon as they believed their heads would not have to pay the penalty. Noailles fought nobly at Mole St. Nicholas against the British and died at sea after a battle. The few
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compatriots who remained on the Susque- hanna became assimilated with those of An- glo-Saxon blood and their descendants fill a creditable niche in local annals. French- town still exists in name and the township is called Asylum.
The praying Indians of Friedenshutten have a granite monument erected to their memory by the Moravian Historical So- ciety in a field near the railroad tracks, be- low the village of Wyalusing. But this monument does not embrace the whole story. It does not tell how Papunhank, a Delaware sachem, who had settled about 20 families of his tribe at Wyalusing, in- terested them in some of the truths of Christianity, which he had imbibed at Philadelphia. It does not tell how these Indians decided to accept the first teacher that came to them, were he Moravian or Quaker. Nor does it describe how David Zeisberger, the celebrated Moravian "apos- tle to the Indians," having heard of the awakening at Wyalusing, passed John Woolman, a Quaker evangelist, who was also hurrying there, and so was hailed as the divinely appointed teacher. All these are incidents of the beginnings of Frie- denshutten.
Pontiac's war interrupted Zeisberger's labors. His charges were removed to an island in the Delaware below Philadelphia, but in 1765 they returned with others and a village was built in orderly fashion with bark huts, log cabins, a mission house and a church of bark logs. The bell of that edifice was the first church bell in the up- per Susquehanna.
Zeisberger made his Indians industrious, cleanly and well behaved. But the en- croachments of Pennsylvania land survey- ors and the sneers and taunts of other In- dians hampered his work, so in 1772 he de- cided to move his colony to Ohio. The last service was held in the rude church on June II. Then the bell was put into a ca- noe and tolled for two miles down the river. One party went across country to the West branch, where they were joined by the other half, who had gone down the Susquehanna. This was the final chapter of Friedenshutten.
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Wyalusing, or, better, "M'Chwihilusing," means the "beautiful hunting ground." At least a century before the days of Pa- punhank it was an Indian village called Gahontoto, the people of which were ex- terminated by the Cayugas, who called them Tehotilachsae and said they were neither Delawares nor Iroquois.
During the 33 miles from Wyalusing to Tunkhannock we saw a number of rope or chain ferries, where a man hauling away on a cable moved a flatboat capable of carrying quite a load, and this without danger of being carried down stream in a rather swift current. At Laceyville work- men were finishing a new bridge, the only one for many miles.
Tunkhannock deserves a paragraph as a lively town, the county seat of Wyoming county, with a narrow-gauge railroad to Montrose, several factories and a good trade in bluestone and in farm products. It has a population of 1,500, and is 54 miles below Towanda and 23 above Pitts- ton. Its situation is beautiful.
The Indian name describes it— a place where two smaller streams empty into a large one, opposite each other. The neigh- borhood abounds in high mountains of the Alleghany ridge, known as the North Mountains. These peaks have Indian names— Solecca, Chodano and Matchausing —but the two most conspicuous are known as "The Triangle" and "The Knob." Lake Carey, a picturesque little sheet sur- rounded by tall hemlocks and pines, is three miles from Tunkhannock. Six miles away is Glen Moneypenny.
My last memory of today's ride is that of a beautiful high cascade, immediately alongside the railroad track a few miles above Pittston. It is called Palling Spring. The waters of a copious fountain head pour over a bluff a couple of hundred feet high, and fall with a grace deserving of a poet's praise.
X.
THE VALE OF WYOMING.
WlLKESBARRE, LlTZERNE COUNTY, Pa.,
Aus:. 25.— I may as well bo frank with you and confess that my first impression of the famed valley of Wyoming was one of dis- appointment. But it is different now.
You see, our entrance into the valley was made on a low level. When our train passed through the mountain gap above Pittston we were almost immediately in proximity to vast coal refuse heaps and great black, grim-looking breakers. There was nothing to suggest the tragedy or ro- mance of history or beauty of scenery. Mountains and high hills completely sur- rounded the valley, but while they were noble and picturesque, the only niche which they then seemed to fill was that of making a big amphitheatre, within which thousands and tens of thousands toiled hard to make money from the abundance of the earth's hidden treasure.
It is necessary to climb one or more of these surrounding mountains to get a true notion of the beauty of Wyoming. When the valley is spread out in lovely perspec- tive before you. you begin to comprehend why Indians were loath to leave it; why Connecticut Yankees and Pennsylvania militia fought for its possession a quarter of a century, and why poets and travelers have alike sounded its charms in more than one language.
You will get niany suggestions as to the best high outlook on the inclosing hills. From Campbell's Ledge, which is an ath- letic climb above Pittston, there is a view down the length of the valley inspiring and sublime, rather than intimate. The same is true of the view up the valley from the mountain above Nanticoke, at its lower
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end— a height called the "Honey Pot," be- cause wild bees were abundant there when it was first ascended. Other persons com- mend the view from the mountain bound- ing the north side of the valley, but the outlook most often visited, because most easily accessible, is Prospect Rock, which juts out boldly upon the rugged southern mountain wall, near Wilkesbarre. This is nearly in the centre of the valley, and from here the eye can sweep up and down and can, on a clear day, look far up the Lack- awanna and catch a glimpse of Wilkes- barre's thriving rival, Scranton.
For my own part, I must recommend the views which I obtained from a Lehigh Val- ley train in coming down this same moun- tain from a point near Prospect Rock. We had been to Glen Summit, a fashionable hotel and cottage resort, high up, but back from the valley. The train suddenly swept through Solomon's Gap and we found our- selves upon the outer edge, with the valley spread out nearly a thousand feet beneath us. The train swerved to the left to begin its descent to the plains, and from the car windows on the right we drank in the panorama for many minutes. Wilkesbarre was only four miles away, but to get to it 17 miles of raili'oad grades were necessary. Rounding the ridge, we first ran south- west for half a dozen miles by a route cut out from the side of the mountain and de- scending 96 feet to each mile. Then we re- versed our course, and coming northeast through the coal town of Ashley, drew up at the station at Wilkesbarre. The last half of the ride served to dish up more closely some of the places we had seen in panorama from the ridge.
From above, the valley was green with cornfields, meadows and gardens. The breakers and coal heaps were mercifully lost to view in the ensemble. Wilkesbarre looked like a toy village upon a nursery floor, and with the imagination playing such tricks it was hard to believe 50,000 persons had their homes there. Other large towns dotted the beautiful plain— Pittston, miles up; Kingston, across the river from Wilkesbarre: Plymouth, below Kingston, toward the west, and Nanticoke. farther
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west, at the valley's end. Smaller villages and clusters of homes were there, too nu- merous to count as we rushed down the mountain side. Coal towns, all of them, I knew, yet the knowledge thus forced upon me did not detract from the pleasure afforded by the smiling perspective and the general beautiful contour.
I began to fancy myself the first white man who had spied out the land, and I understood how the report which he gave to his Connecticut neighbors made them eager to settle in such a charming spot. To him, used to the stony hills of Connecti- cut. Wyoming must have seemed the fair- est place on earth. The valley covers a magnificent stretch of 20 miles northeast and southwest. The plain between the hills averages three miles and is spread out in flats and bottoms of luxuriant soil. Through the centre of this great sunlit valley the Susquehanna winds in gentle curves, seemingly wearied with its swift flow from Otsego and apparently anxious to linger here so as to refresh itself with the charms of nature before passing on to the sea. From a high outlook it is not always visible. Such are its windings and such the variety which characterizes its banks that it is seen only in sections and often hides itself among bowers of willow, sycamore and maple or beside low, green islands.
The mountain panorama is magnificent from an altitude. To the north and west is a threefold tier of ridges that rise one above another, one of them near at hand bounding the valley, while the other two peer from above with their blue tops, as from some other world. The farthest is the North Mountain, 2.000 feet above the Susquehanna. The slopes nearer at hand average about 800 feet to the top. The east- ern range upon which we were speeding is precipitous and strikingly diversified with clefts, ravines and forests.
Such was the valley's intrinsic loveliness when the white men first came here. Think what a charm it has now, with its beauty reinforced by thrilling recollections of some of the most tragic scenes in our na- tional history, by sweet imaginations of the
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poets and by memories of its sudden and giant-like growth when the wealth that lay beneath the ground first became ap- preciated. Wyoming is. indeed, a classic and household name, "suggestive the world over of romance and fact, beauty and hor- ror, fascinating traditions and wonderful feats of modern enterprise." Or, as an- other writer has put it, it is "the label of a treasured packet of absorbing history and winning romance," as well as the name of a valley of "sunny skies, rustling trees, dancing waters and frowning hills." This valley, nestling "by Susquehanna's side," was named b.v the Indians "Maugh- wau-wame" ("The Big Plains"). The ear- liest whites dropped the first syllable and rendered the name "Wau-wau-mie," which still retained the Indian sweetness. Then the native melody was lost in "Wyomie," but was finally restored in "Wyoming."
It is not my purpose to recall at length the battle of Wyoming and the subsequent massacre. The nation's historians and many local writers of ready pen have made the world acquainted with the tragedy and a thousand and one bloody incidents. The whole story is condensed in the following beautiful inscription upon the tall granite obelisk, which was erected half a century ago upon the spot which was the scene of the hardest fighting:
Near this spot was fought, on the afternoon of the 3d of July. 1778, the battle of Wyoming, in which a small band of patriotic- Americans, chiefly the undisciplined, the youthful and the aged, spared by inefficiency from the distant ranks of the republic, led by Col. Zebulon Butler and Col. Na- thaniel Denison, with a courage that deserved suc- cess, boldly met and bravely fought a combined British, Tory and Indian force of thrice their num- ber. Numerical success alone gave success to the invader, and widespread havoc, desolation and ruin marked his savage and bloody footsteps through the Valley.
This monument, commemorative of these events and in memory of the actors in them, has been erected over the bones of the slain by their descend- ants and others, who gratefully appreciate the serv- ices and sacrifices of their patriotic ancestors.
This monument is about five miles above Wilkesbarre, upon the north or opposite bank of the Susquehanna, and near an at-
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tractive village known as Wyoming. The various sites of Revolutionary interest are now conveniently and quickly visited by a trolley line running upon a broad highway connecting West Pittston with Kingston, which I have mentioned as being across the river from Wilkesbarre. The trip, of course, enabled us to understand the battle by go- ing over the ground, but in addition it in- troduced us to a succession of Wyoming's attractive villages, so built up by the elec- tric cars that between the suburbs of any two the distance is so short there is really no country seen for the entire ride, save at a distance. The streets of the several towns are broad, well shaded and lighted by electricity: the schools and churches in them indicate a progressive community, m while the homes show a comfortably sit- uated people.
West Pittston, where we started, on the right bank of the Susquehanna, directly opposite Pittson, is a cultured community, in which are found the homes of many of Pittston's wealthy business men. Many of the dwellings are handsome and some of the churches are costly edifices. As a resi- dence town it has the advantage of having not a single place for the sale of liquor.
The villages and towns between West Pittston and Kingston are Exeter, Wyo- ming, Forty Fiirt, Vaughn's Corners and Dorranceton. In these places live descend- ants of those who managed to escape the fury of the red men. Wyoming is on the battle field and near the monument. To the north and through a mountain valley is the beautiful camp-meeting ground of Wyo- ming Conference. Forty Fort bears its pe- culiar name because its neighborhood was originally settled by that number of Con- necticut immigrants. In the old Methodist Church there, erected in 1807, Francis As- bury and Lorenzo Dow did much to spread Methodism in what is now a stronghold of that religion.
At Kingston is located the Wyoming Conference Seminary, which, since its foundation in 1843 by Methodists, has graduated many men prominent in church and public circles. Its large buildings
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were mainly erected through the generosity of wealthy men of the Wyoming Valley. Kingston, like West Pittston, is chiefly a residence town, through its nearness to Wilkesbarre, and many of the hitter's best known men have fine homes there. On the outskirts of the town are several large collieries and large ear shops of the Dela- ware, Lackawanna and Western Road, which also has extensive yards where coal trains are made up.
Let lis now go back to the battle held. West Pittston includes the site of the Revolutionary Fort Jenkins, the tirst place taken by the Tory and Indian forces when they entered the valley after coming down the Susquehanna. Fort Wintermoot was a mile west and not so near the river. The men who built it and whose name it bore professed to be Americans, but were really Tories, and promptly yielded the stockade to the invaders. The two forts are long since gone, but in the river near Fort Win- termoot we were shown Monocacy Island, to which many brave patriots were pur- sued when defeat had occurred, and where much terrible slaughter ensued. It was on the shore of this little island, now so pretty and green, that a Wyoming resident who had turned Tory is said to have slain his own brother under revolting circumstances, crying out as he murdered him, "No quar- ter, for you are a d rebel."
We were also shown Queen Esther's Rock, where the notorious half-breed Seneca woman, infuriated by the recent killing of her son, is said to have slain 14 Americans on the night of the battle. Six- teen prisoners Avere brought before her, seated one by one on the stone, and the old woman dashed out their brains. Two managed to break away from their Indian captors and make their escape. The bowl- der is not an especially large one, but it stands in full view in a field not far from the monument. A portion of it is of a red- dish hue, and the credulous see in this discoloration the ineffaceable stain of hu- man blood. Around another similar stone the bodies of nine victims were found, but no one escaped to narrate the details of the tragedy there enacted.
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Forty Fort was the stockade from which the patriots had inarched forth to give battle and to which the survivors had re- turned in defeat and flight. It was sur- rendered to the Tories on the following d;iy. and was the scene of many acts of violence and plunder, for the Tory leader was unable to restrain his white men and red men. Hundreds of Wyoming's people fled down the Susquehanna or toward the Delaware, through the swampy region which has ever since been known as "The Shades of Death."
The site of Forty Fort stockade is in- tersected by the highway over which we rode. There are no remains of it. I was told that the old log house in which the surrender was arranged and signed is still standing, but I was unable to find it.
The Indian and pioneer history of the Wyoming is not so well known to the gen- eral reader, but has great interest and has given many places in the valley a charm of their own.
The "Big Plains" were a favorite spot with the Indians. The mountains abounded with game. The streams swarmed with fish at all seasons, and in the spring were filled with the migratory shad of a size and flavor unknown nearer the sea. Wild fruits and grapes covered the hills ana river banks, whose fertile soil gave a rich return to the rude husbandry of the red men.
About the year 1750, which was prior to the white settlements, there was a curious assortment of Indian tribes here. ISear the site of Wilkesbarre, on the south side of thf river was Maugh-wau-wanie, a village of the Dela wares, who had been moved there by the haughty Iroquois. Far- ther up, on the same side, was another Delaware village on a flat place known from the name of the chief as Jacob's Plain. On the north side, in this upper end of the valley. Conrad Weiser, a famous Indian interpreter, says he found a rem- nant of Mohicans. A clan of the Shawnees, "that restless nation of wanderers," had a large village in the lower part of the valley, on the site of Plymouth, while the
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Nanticokes, from Maryland, lived on a spot which has ever since borne their name.
In 1742 Count Zinzendorf— the famous founder of the Moravian religion, a man whose nobility of birth was as assured as his nobility of character— came into Wy- oming to establish a mission. He was re- ceived with suspicion by the Shawnees, who thought he had come to obtain land. They planned to kill him, and one night crept to his tent. Inside, the Count, uncon- scious of lurking danger, was writing by a fire. A rattlesnake, attracted from its hole by the warmth, was crawling lazily over the feet of the good man, who was too deeply engrossed in his pious task to no- tice the dangerous intruder. The Indians were awed by this sight, and stole away, believing that their visitor was, indeed, a ward of the Great Spirit.
Two events led to the departure of the red men from Wyoming. A curious combat in 1755 known as the "Grasshopper War"' compelled the Shawnees to leave, and the massacre, in 1763. of the earliest white set- tlers, at Mill creek, caused the Delawares to flee. The Mohicans had dropped out of notice and the Nanticokes had moved up the Susquehanna.
The "Grasshopper War" grew out of a quarrel between the women and children of the Shawnees and the Delawares over rival claims to the ownership of a large grasshopper caught by one of the children. The men of both tribes were hunting at the time upon the mountains, but on their return the Shawnees attacked Maugh-wau- wame, but were repulsed by the Delawares with great slaughter, and finally driven from the valley.
Thirty white pioneers were massacred by the Delawares at Mill Creek, which is a couple of miles above Wilkesbarre, near the river bank. The settlement had been made from Connecticut and was only a year old. Tadeuskund. the Delaware chief, had been murdered by a party of Iroquois, who fathered the crime upon the new im- migrants and incited the massacre of the whites. The Delawares fled from the val- ley after the massacre.
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Several times I have referred to the con- flict between Pennsylvania and Connecti- cut for the possession of Wyoming Valley. It was a long and wearisome, often bloody, series of fights— not creditable to the good sense of the masters of either colony. Ar- bitration and compromise might have cut the quarrel short in the beginning, as it did after Wyoming's dwellers had been afflict- ed for 20 years with battles, sieges, barri- cades, stratagems, truces, ill-treatment of women and children, and capture and mur- der of the heads of many families. Penn- sylvania's fight was a governmental one, never popular with the people of the Com- monwealth, who sympathized with the Connecticut settlers.
The conflict was due to the Connecticut charter, which gave the State "from ocean to ocean" within certain latitudes, and which was, indeed, a royal gift had men but known its value, for it included the coal mines of Wyoming, the oil regions of Pennsylvania, the fairest corn lands of many prairie States and a goodly share of California's gold and Colorado's silver.
When Wyoming was found to be a "para- dise amid bleak mountains" the Susque- hanna Company was formed in Connecti- cut to purchase the Indian title and occu- py the valley. Pennsylvania resisted the Yankee claim, and in 1769 began the so- called "First Pennamite War." The great- er happenings of the Revolution interrupt- ed the conflict, but from 1780 to 1789 the "Second Pennamite War" went merrily on. An arbitration tribunal decided against Connecticut's claim, but tne Pennsylva- nians embittered the struggle by insisting upon the ejectment of all Yankees. Better counsels prevailed and the talents of the noted Col. Timothy Pickering, of Massa- chusetts, were enlisted. He was given all the public offices of the newly created Pennsylvania county— a sort of colonial "Pooh Bah"— and after many years the Yankee settlers were secured in their ti- tles on condition of yielding allegiance to Pennsylvania. But this did not happen un- til a party of fiery Yankees, angry at the capture and imprisonment of their leader, Col. John Franklin, abducted Pickering
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and kept him for several weeks in a little hut many miles up the Susquehanna. After peace came, Pickering returned to Massa- chusetts, selling for .$5,r>00 possessions in Wyoming now said to be worth .$2,000,000.
The chief points in the valley associated with the Pennamite War were Forts Wy- oming and Durkee, which were on the Sus- quehanna's banks in what is now the heart of Wilkesbarre. These were taken and re- taken many times by one or the other party. The people of Wyoming also refer with pride to the narrow mountain defile on the west bank above the rapids at Nan- ticoke. There a party of 700 Pennsylva- nians, inarching up from Sunbury, were ambuscaded and repulsed with severe 'oss.
The New England form of local govern- ment prevailed when the Yankees held power. The source of authority was the town-meeting. The townships were part of Litchfield county and had representatives in the Legislature at Hartford.
No recollections of Wyoming's history are complete without a mention of Frances Slocum, the lost captive. When she was a little girl her father was a Quaker farmer where Wilkesbarre now stands. She was carried off by a party of Indians, and for many years her family vainly searched for tidings of her. In 1833 a traveler who met Mocanaqua, an old Indian squaw, in a Miami village in Illinois, was told by her that she was of white blood; that she re- membered her father as wearing a broad- brimmed hat, and that her childhood home had been somewhere on the Susquehanna. She had married a chief among her ab- ductors, had spent a happy life and was a widow with considerable property. The traveler wrote to a Pennsylvania news- paper, and two brothers of Frances, now gray-haired men, went to Illinois to re- claim her. She was suspicious of them at first, but at last the recognition was mu- tual.
The brothers begged Mocanaqua to re- turn with them, but she refused. "I've been an Indian all my life," she said. "My ways are those of red men, not of white. I would not be happy with you. Here I wish to die."
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XI.
BENEATH A BIG CITY.
WlLKESBARRE, LUZERNE COUNTY. PA.,
Aug. 26. — Some writer has fancifully pointed out that the coal fields of Penn- sylvania are shaped like a huge mastodon, the body being the great bituminous beds of the central and west portions of the Statp. and the jaws rudely represented by the hard coal district of Wyoming.
It is a monster whose clutches Pennsyl- vanians are proud of and would sacrifice great things rather than shake off. For God has truly given wondrous prosperity to the people of the State, and to the peo- ple of Wyoming, in these glorious anthra- cite deposits.
A chain of cities, towns and villages, nearly 50 miles long, with Wilkesbarre, Pittston and Scranton as the chief points, and with a combined population of a third of a million, shows in brief measure what old King Coal has done to give wealth in his kingdom. They are all his subjects here. Those who do not mine, manufac- ture; and manufacture because the fuel is beside them. Tradesmen and merchants who neither mine nor manufacture depend upon those who do for custom, and so— wheel within wheel— all depends upon the "black diamond." Coal makes the mare go.
It is said that the coal strata underneath Wyoming Valley average 56 feet in thick- ness, and that every acre, at a conserva- tive estimate, should yield 1,000 tons for each foot of depth. In other words, two billions of tons of anthracite are here wait- ing to be dug up to keep the world warm. Millions of tons are annually brought out, and the surface of Wyoming Valley is
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thickly marked with huge mountains of black ' waste and scores of great, grim- looking breakers, which to some poetic mind suggested a fierce-looking Rhenish castle, but to me, a dweller in a grain- handling city, seems more nearly akin to a high elevator, only 20 times as dingy.
The problem of waste is a serious one with the people of this coal land. The great heaps of dust and slate refuse rise 150 to 200 feet high beside the older mines and extend for half a mile. They have broken up farming on the surface, have ruined many pleasant homes, have marred the beauty of Wyoming and have become a loafing place for unruly men and boys and for dogs, hogs and goats. Often the piles catch afire and burn for months, endangering life and property and throw- ing off noxious gases. To a visitor these burning heaps are at night a beautiful sight, but to the dweller they are a menace. Moreover, it is being realized that the recklessness of earlier mining threw away much small coal that could have been burned and the piles are being turned over to get this out. The mine boilers and plant are fed with it, even though it is not put on the market. There is a feeling among thoughtful men that Wyoming's coal will not last forever and that it is best to be prudent.
Many of the mines are directly beneath cities and towns. This is a never-ending amazement to the unthinking, some of whom are so ignorant as to walk the streets of Wilkesbarre quaking in their boots for fear the earth may literally swallow them up, and much relieved when the day's visit is over. Yet the bowels of the earth are honeycombed with gang- ways, galleries and passages best adapted to enable the miners to attack the coal with the most ease. Ttjese excavations are of course far beneath the streets and have been planned with much science and calculation. Some of the mines run under thf Susquehanna to the other side from the opening, and, as an instance of en- gineering skill, I was told of a mine at Pittston which was started directly be- neath another which had to be abandoned
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because about 20 acres of it caught on fire and burned for years.
The courtesy of a mine superintendent today enabled me to go down into a mine which is being worked under Wilkesbarre I had planned the trip because I wanted to imagine how I would feel hundreds of feet beneath a big city, but to tell the truth, I almost forgot this prearranged notion in the interests of the depths. Halls and chambers "of Cyclopean proportions" were found after we had descended the shaft. The tiny safety lamps in the min- ers' caps— I had one, too— looked like will- o'-the-wisps as they moved about, and no sound was heard but the miners' tools or the report of a blast in some distant gallery. I felt awed in these midnight chambers and even a bit uneasy when the superintendent was called away for a mo- ment. My remembrance of cave-ins was particularly strong for the instant, and I was startled when a little car full of freshly mined coal loomed upon me, with the aid of a mule and a boy. Presently my guide returned, and with him I went farther into the recesses, "gloomy as the tomb of Thebes." The digging was being done in "breasts." or galleries at right angles to the main gangway, often not level, because pitched with the slope of the strata. Between each of these "breasts" a pillar of coal several yards thick is left to support the roof.
When hauled up to the surface and to the top of the breakers, the coal is first dumped upon a large platform, where the big pieces of slate are picked out. Then the best lumps of large coal are selected and the others shoved between breaking tools, or crushers— heavy iron cylinders, with sharp teeth. Sieves of varying dimen- sions then come into play to pick out the coal of different sizes.
Wyoming was the seat of the first dis- coveries of coal in America, though the Lehigh Coal Company, of Mauch Chunk, was the first mining company. The In- dians seem to have known the use of coal. In 1710 two of AVyoming's chiefs were taken to England and saw coal burning there for domestic purposes. They had
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some sort of a mine in this valley, for in 1776 they complained that white men were working the vein. In 1769, Obadiah Gore, a blacksmith from Connecticut, burned coal in his forge, the site of which was a short distance above Wilkesbarre on the river flats. In 1776 an arsenal forge of the Continental government at Carlisle was supplied with coal taken from a sur- face outcropping on the banks of the Sus- quehanna at Mill creek, above Wilkes- barre. Near the old mine the Lehigh Val- ley Company has now two shafts in full operation, more than 600 feet beneath the surface, and from which several hundred thousand tons are annually raised.
On account of the difficulty of ignition beeause of the need of a draft of air and of a prevailing belief that anthracite was useless coal, it was slow to be appreciated, Some which was shipped from Mauch Chunk to Philadelphia could not be sold, was a miserable failure when used beneath the boiler of the city waterworks and was finally broken up and used as gravel on sidewalks. At last, in 1808, Jesse Fell, a Wilkesbarre hotel-keeper, afterward a county judge, discovered that hard coal would burn if put in a grate with a good draft of air. The site where this val- uable discovery was made is now in the centre of Wilkesbarre, at Washington and Northampton streets. It attracted much attention, resulted in the general use of coal in Wyoming's homes and started min- ing and the vast trade now enjoyed. Coal laud brought $5 an aere when Fell made his experiment. Now it is cheap at $1,000.
Wilkesbarre in early times was supplied from a now historic mine, the old Balti- more, about a mile southeast of the then village. It was opened in 1814 by Gen. Lord Butler, who sold its product for $3 a ton. In 1829 Baltimore capitalists, head- ed by Thomas Symington, bought the mine for $14,000—410 acres for less than $35 an acre— organized the Baltimore Coal Com- pany under Maryland laws and began ship- ping hard coal to Baltimore in river boats. The Baltimore mine is considered to have been one of the finest veins of anthracite in the country. A stone forest was long
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visible in its depths, the trunks and roots of immense trees being plainly evident. The stump of one was placed in the vesti bule of the courthouse at Wilkesbarre.
At an early day, it is said, when the Bal- timore mine was still rudely worked at its outcropping*, a party of Quakers visited the place. The light from without re- flected many hues in the sparkling an- thracite, and the impressiveness of the place so affected one of the number, Rachel Price, that she broke out into utterances of gratitude to the great Supreme Being for having "placed such storehouses of fuel amid the wilderness of this cold Northern clime to be preserved for the benefit of His people when the forests should be swept away and their need should be sorest."
The history of coal mining is, unfortu- nately, replete with terrible disasters. Of these one of the worst was on September f), I860, at the Avondale mine, near Plym- outh, on the north side of the Susque- hanna, some miles below Wilkesbarre. The breaker burned, and there being but one outlet, and that through the breaker, 208 men were suffocated. By this acci- dent 72 widows and 153 orphans were left. Relief committees were organized in many cities, and $155,825 was subscribed. A new breaker was erected at once, and the mine has been operated ever since.
Wilkesbarre was a straggling country village for two-thirds of a century after its foimdation, and might have remained so forever had not coal wealth transformed it. It has a fine situation beside the Sus- quehanna, which is here about five or six hundred feet wide. As at Harrisburg, the street next the river has always been the choice residence avenue, containing fine and costly homes in pretty grounds and the leading hotels. The bluff between the street and the water is public property and has been parked, so that the dwellers on River street can look across green lawns, over the river and the plains of Kingston, at the blue walls of Wyoming Mountain.
When Wilkesbarre was laid out by Col. John Durkee he made a diamond-shaped
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square the centre of his town of 200 acres, and that has been the heart of Wilkesbarre ever since, though the city extends back for three miles southward and about two miles east and west. In the diamond stands the Luzerne County Courthouse, a large brick and stone structure of peculiar Romanesque architecture. It is one of a number of fine large structures. Among the others are the City Hall, one block from the courthouse, the jail, the armory of the Ninth Pennsylvania Militia, two excellent theatres, two hospitals, a num- ber of business blocks, the Osterhout Free Library and 35 church edifices, 11 of which are Methodist Episcopal. A conspicuous edifice in the suburbs is the Mallinckrodt Convent, founded in 1878 by Miss Paulina von Mallinckrodt, a member of a noble German family. It is the mother house of the Sisters of Christian Charity in the United States and is popular as a noviti- ate and academy for girls.
Wilkesbarre has had but few vicissitudes since its troubles in infancy. Founded in 1772, named for two energetic defenders of American liberty in the British Parlia- ment—John Wilkes and Col. Isaac Barre (as Pittston was named after William Pitt)— it was made a borough in 1806 and a city in 1871. Its municipal activity is shown in a mountain water supply, a Daid fire department, a steam heating system, 31 miles of sewers and 75 miles of streets, paved with asphalt, vitrified brick or wood.
The street railway system is a remark- able development, for there are a dozen lines, all starting from the courthouse square, radiating like arteries north, east, south and west, linking every town and village hereabouts to Wilkesbarre and bringing a population of more than 100.000 within half an hour of Wilkesbarre's stores and amusements. The longest lines are up the valley to Scranton and across moun- tains northward to Harvey's Lake.
Of still greater magnitude are Wilkes- barre's railroad advantages. Coal has at- tracted no less than seven railroads. Four of them— the Lehigh Valley, Central Rail- road of New Jersey, Delaware, Lacka- wanna and Western and the New York,
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Susquehanna and Western— run to New York and, combined, give 16 trains daily to New York. The Susquehanna and West- em is the former Wilkesbarre and East- ern line, which runs by way of Delaware Water Gap and parallels the D., L. and W. Wilkesbarre is the southern terminus of the Pennsylvania Division of the Delaware and Hudson system and the eastern termi- nus of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Sun- bury Division. The seventh road is the Erie and Wyoming Valley, which taps the Erie road at Lackawaxen and is a valuable coal feeder.
Au interesting survival of pioneer trans- portation methods is a series of planes at Ashley, a few miles south of Wilkesbarre. They were built in 1839 to carry loaded canal boats across the mountains to the Lehigh river and so to Philadelphia. The three planes aggregate an ascent of 1,150 feet. Cars hauled by strings of horses pulled the boats to the foot of the planes. Coal cars are now run up and down the planes.
Wilkesbarre's manufactures cannot be forgotten. Two large lace manufactories are worth a visit, and there are silk mills, four foundries, axle works, three locomo- tive and engine shops, wire-rope works, gun works, cutlery works, two immense breweries and many manufactories of iron, steel, wood and leather. There will be a larger array soon, with Wilkesbarre's ad- vantages.
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XII.
THE HOME OF PRIESTLEY.
Northumberland. Pa., Aug. 28.— As our train came into Northumberland yesterday from the Wyoming Valley our conductor, pointing to a long frame house beside the railroad track and between it and the canal, said:
"There is where Dr. Priestley lived and died."
I had asked him about the home of the famous discoverer of oxygen and founder of chemistry, and I turned eagerly as he pointed. The railroad track now runs very close to the front door of the mansion, which was built by Dr. Priestley. In his day neither railroad nor canal was there, and he was by the river side. His house is two stories high, with a one-story exten- sion on either side, one of which has al- ways been a kitchen, while in the other was the chemist's library and laboratory.
You will recall that in 1794, after he had been assailed by riotous Britishers for his advanced views on the French Revolution, the English scientist and philosopher came to Northumberland and dwelt here until his death in 1804. His life here, while placid, was also busy. He corresponded with Adams and Jefferson., and with the American Philosophical Society, wrote against Paine and Volney and a number of French freethinkers, upheld Biblical insti- tutions in comparison with those of Orient- al antiquity, completed his church history and annotated the whole Bible. His lit- erary work was usually done in shorthand beside the fireside in this house, though he often thought out his writings while tak- ing long walks in the neighborhood.
Priestley rests in an old burying ground on the slope of Montour's Ridge, back of
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Northumberland, a comparatively neg- lected spot. Descendants of his name live in the town, a grandson of the identical name having been a physician. In 1874 American chemists assembled here to cele- brate the centennial of the discovery of oxygen.
Another prominent man here a century ago was Thomas Cooper, Priestley's friend and fellow-immigrant. He practiced law and became a strong Democrat and a local judge. Subsequently he was a professor of chemistry in Dickinson College and the University of Pennsylvania, and president of South Carolina College, a man emineut for his versatility.
The scenery about Northumberland is as pleasing today as it was when Priestley and Cooper found delight in it. The West Branch meets the main stream of the Sus- quehanna in a majestic way. The main stream is parted by an island upon which John B. Packer has a widely known model farm. A century ago this island was owned by Edward Lyon, another who came with Priestley. The united river is almost a lake for a couple of miles, as it has been dammed at Shamokin to feed the canal. The waters are still and mirror-like, re- flecting the beauties of Blue Hill, which rises perpendicularly from the farther side of the West Branch. Northumberland, which has 2,500 inhabitants, is between the two streams. Its more ambitious rival, Sunbury, which lays claim to 10,000 souls, is on a level plain on the bank of the united river two miles south of Northumberland. Hills are back of both towns, some with gentle slopes, some as abrupt as Blue Hill.
Many of the traditions of the neighbor- hood cluster around Blue Hill. In a cer- tain line of vision it is possible to see in the rocky bluff a clear outline of the face of an Indian chief. It is, they say, a good likeness of Shikellimy, one of the most famous Indians of the Susquehanna, a sachem who was stationed at this point to act as viceroy of the Six Nations over the subsidiary tribes of Pennsylvania and farther south. Shikellimy was an Indian of noble mind, a man worthily the father of an even more famous Indian, Logan,
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"the Mingo," who was born here and who later moved to the Juniata and thence to Ohio. Every schoolboy knows his famous speech against the white man's misdeeds, as reported by Thomas Jefferson.
Shikellimy governed here from about 1728 until his death in 1749. He was the friend of many influential men of the colony, in- cluding Count Zinzendorf and David Zeis- berger, who founded a Moravian mission here in 1745, and maintained a smithy where the red men's guns were repaired. The name "Shamokin" is said to mean "where gun barrels are straightened."
The Indian village of Shamokin was a little north of the present town of Sunbury and near the river. It was a place of some size and had an extensive burial ground, in which many Indian beads, utensils and implements have been found. About 40 years ago there was uncovered the grave <>f one who had evidently been a chief of high rank, and it is concluded that this was Shikellimy.
Northumberland and Sunbury were laid out about the same time, the former in 177~>, at the instance of Reuben Haines, a wealthy Philadelphia brewer, who had ex- tensive land holdings in the vicinity, and the latter in 1772, at the instance of Wil- liam Maclay, who was the first United States Senator from Pennsylvania, and whose old stone house in Sunbury, built in 1773, is still standing. Maclay married a daughter of the founder of Harrisburg ami his late years were spent there.
In early times there were many predic- tions of the future greatness of Northum- berland, based upon its situation, but to- day its chief industry is a nail factory and the town has a more or less decayed, though genteel, look, while in Sunbury there is abundant evidence of thrift and of a variety of manufactures. There are rail- road repair shops, a rolling mill, an organ factory, a saw and planing mill, coffin, table, sash and door factories. Moreover, as the outlet of the Shamokin coal district, back in the hills and connected by a railroad, Sunbury handles at least a million tons an- nually. Its railroad yards are big.
In Northumberland's quiet streets it is
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L,tra
not easy to believe that the town onee came within a single vote of being tne State capital.
We took in the sights of the neighbor- hood in a few hours by first riding to Sun- bury on one of a number of little steam- boats which ply upon the river here, and then returning by a trolley route which crosses Packer's Island and passes a pic- nic grove known as Island Park. As we putted along on the river the profile of Shikellimy was clearly outlined, though it soon faded with our progress. We saw the several bridges that span the two rivers, our attention being especially directed to the old one across the West Branch used