THE STORY OF CAMDEN AND AMBOY.
The great memory of Bordentown, however, is of the famous railroad, originally begun there, whose managers for nearly a half-century so successfully ruled New Jersey that it came to be generally known throughout the country as "the State of Camden and Amboy." In the little old Bordentown station, which still exists, set in the bottom of a ravine, with the house built over the railroad, were for many years held the annual meetings of the corporation; and its magnates also met in almost perpetual session, to generally run things, social, political and financial, for the State of New Jersey, and semi-annually declare magnificent dividends. Not far from this station a monument marks the place of construction of the first piece of railway track in New Jersey, laid by the Camden and Amboy Company in 1831. Upon this track the first movement of a pa.s.senger train by steam was made by the locomotive "John Bull," on November 12th of that year.
This granite monument, erected in 1891 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary, stands upon a foundation composed of the stone blocks on which the first rails were laid, and two of these original rails encircle it. A bronze tablet upon the monument represents the old "John Bull," with his primitive whisky-cask tender, and the two little old-time pa.s.senger coaches which made up the first train he drew. Thus began the great railroad highway between the two chief cities of the United States.
The original method of transport between Philadelphia and New York was by steamboat on the Delaware to South Trenton, stages from Trenton to New Brunswick on the Raritan River, and then by steamboat to New York. This was the "Union Line," which for many years carried the pa.s.sengers, and of which John Stevens was the active spirit. He conceived the first idea of a railway, and in 1817 procured the first railway charter in America for a railroad upon his stage route between Trenton and New Brunswick. In subsequent years there were advocates both of a railway and a ca.n.a.l across New Jersey, his son, Robert L.
Stevens, being the railway chieftain, while Commodore Robert F.
Stockton championed the ca.n.a.l, the rival projects appearing before the New Jersey Legislature in 1829-30, and causing a most bitter controversy. It is related that the conflict was ended in a most surprising manner. Between the acts of a play at the old Park Theatre in New York, Stevens and Stockton accidentally met in the vestibule, and after a few minutes" talk agreed to end their dispute by joining forces. The result was that on February 4, 1830, both companies were chartered--the "Camden and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company"
and the "Delaware and Raritan Ca.n.a.l Company." In furtherance of this compromise, what is known as the celebrated "Marriage Act" was pa.s.sed a year later, creating the "Joint Companies," their stock being combined at the same valuation, though each had a separate organization. They were given a monopoly of the business, paying transit dues to the State of ten cents per pa.s.senger and fifteen cents per ton of freight carried, and this afterwards practically paid all the expenses of the New Jersey State Government. The railroad was completed between Bordentown and Amboy in 1832, and on December 17th the first pa.s.sengers went through, fifty or sixty of them. It was a rainy day, and the cars were drawn by horses, for they could not in those days trust their locomotive out in the rain. The next year regular travel began, galloping horses taking the cars from Bordentown over to Amboy in about three hours, there being three relays. Later in the year the locomotive "John Bull" took one train daily, each way. In 1871 all the railway and ca.n.a.l properties of the two companies, which had become very extensive, were absorbed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which pays as rental 10 per cent. annual dividends on the stocks.
The line of the Delaware and Raritan Ca.n.a.l begins at Crosswick"s Creek in Bordentown, and is constructed alongside the Delaware River up to Trenton, and thence across New Jersey to the Raritan River at New Brunswick. This is a much-used "inside water route," and it had one of the old lines of the railroad constructed on the ca.n.a.l bank all the way. It was in former times a very profitable route, and is said to have made most of the dividends of the old monopoly, as it carried the greater part of the freight between the cities. It was originally projected in 1804, but the scheme slumbered for years. When the route was surveyed through Princeton, where Commodore Stockton lived, he became interested, and he induced his father-in-law, John Potter, of South Carolina, who had over $500,000 in the United States Bank, to withdraw the money and invest it in the ca.n.a.l, he being the chief shareholder. Thus his fortune was not only saved from the bank"s subsequent collapse, but was increased by the profitable investment.
The ca.n.a.l is forty-three miles long, with fourteen locks in its course, having an aggregate rise and fall of one hundred and fifty feet. Its enlargement to the dimensions of a ship ca.n.a.l is suggested.
THE TRENTON GRAVEL.
In journeying up the Delaware and approaching Trenton, we have pa.s.sed through a region of most interesting geological development. All along are evidences of the deposit of the drift from above, which is popularly known as the "Trenton gravel." The Delaware flows southeast from the Kittatinny Water Gap to Bordentown, and then, impinging against the cretaceous stratified rocks of New Jersey, abruptly turns around a right-angled bend and goes off southwestward towards Philadelphia. The river has thus deposited the Trenton gravels, composed of the drift of most of the geological formations in its upper waters, throughout its course, on the Pennsylvania side from Trenton down below Philadelphia. This deposit is fifty feet deep on the river bank in Philadelphia, and underlies the river bed for nearly a hundred feet in depth. At Bristol the deposit stretches two miles back from the river, and at Trenton it is almost universal. The material, which in the lower reaches is generally fine, grows coa.r.s.er as the river is ascended, until at Trenton immense boulders are often found imbedded. We are told by geologists that at the time of the great flood in the river which deposited the gravel, the lower part of Philadelphia, the whole of Bristol and Penn"s Neck and almost all Trenton were under water. The gravel has disclosed bones of Arctic animals--walrus, reindeer and mastodon--and also traces of ancient mankind. The latter have been found at Trenton and on Neshaminy Creek, indicating the presence of a race of men said to have lived about seven thousand years ago. The river has also made immense clay deposits all along, which was done at a time when the water flowed at a level more than a hundred feet higher than now.
In the early geological history of the Delaware it is found that all southern New Jersey lay deep beneath the Atlantic, whose waves broke against the ranges of hills northwest and north of Philadelphia, and an inlet from the sea extended into the great Chester limestone valley behind them. This whole region, then probably five hundred feet lower than now, was afterwards slowly upheaved, and the waters retreated.
Subsequently the climate grew colder, and the great glacial ice-cap crept down from Greenland and Labrador, forming a huge sea of ice, thousands of feet thick, which advanced on the Delaware to Belvidere, sixty miles north of Philadelphia. Then there came another gradual change; the land descended to nearly two hundred feet below the present level, and again the waters overflowed almost the whole region. This was ice-cold, fresh water, bearing huge icebergs and floes, which stranded on the hills, forming a sh.o.r.e on the higher lands northwest of Philadelphia. The river channel was then ten miles wide and two hundred feet deep all the way down from Trenton, and a roaring flood depositing the red gravel along its bed. As the torrent, expending its force, though still filled with mud and sand from the base of the glacial ice-cap, became more quiet, it laid down the clays, the stranded icebergs dropping their far-carried boulders all along the route. This era of cold water and enormous floods is computed to have occupied a period of about two hundred and seventy thousand years, and then the "Ice Age" finally terminated. The land rose about to its present level, the waters retreated, and elevated temperatures thawed more and more of the glaciers remaining in the headwaters, so that there came down the last great floods which deposited the "Trenton gravel." The river was still wide and deep, and Arctic animals roamed the banks. Mankind then first appeared, living in primitive ways in caves and holes, and hunting and fishing along the swollen Delaware ten thousand years ago. Occasionally they dropped in the waters their rude stone implements and weapons, which were buried in the gravel, and, being recently found, are studied to tell the story of their ancient owners. The river deposited its gravel and the channel shrunk with dwindling current, moving gradually eastward as it eat its way into the cretaceous measures. The primitive man retired, making way for the red Indian, and the present era dawned, with the more moderate climate, and with again a slow sinking of the land, which the geologists say is now in progress.
TRENTON AND ITS BATTLE MONUMENT.
Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, is thirty miles from Philadelphia, a prosperous city with seventy thousand people. The first and most lasting impression many visitors get of it is of the deep rift cut into the clays and gravels of the southern part of the town, to let the Pennsylvania Railroad go through. Here, as everywhere, are displayed the lavish deposits of the "Trenton gravel" as the railway pa.s.ses under the streets, and even under the Delaware and Raritan Ca.n.a.l, to its depressed station alongside a.s.sunpink Creek of Revolutionary memory, the chief part of the city spreading far to the northward. Trenton is as old as Philadelphia, its reputed founder being Mahlon Stacy, who came up from Burlington Friends" Meeting, while the settlement was named for William Trent, an early Jersey law-maker. The Trenton potteries are its chief industry, established by a colony of Staffordshire potters from England, attracted by its prolific clay deposits; and the conical kilns, which turn out a product worth five or six millions of dollars annually, are scattered at random over the place. Their china ware has been advanced to a high stage of perfection, and displays exquisite decoration. The Trenton cracker factories are also famous. The finest building is the State House, as the Capitol is called, the Delaware River"s swift current bubbling over rocks and among gra.s.sy islands out in front of the grounds. At Broad and Clinton Streets, the intersection of two of the chief highways, mounted as an ornament upon a drinking-fountain, is the famous "Swamp Angel" cannon, brought from Charleston harbor after the Civil War. This was one of the earliest heavy guns made, plain and rather uncouth-looking, about ten feet long, and rudely constructed in contrast with the elongated and tapering rifled cannon of to-day, and it rests upon a conical pile of brownstone. It was the most noted gun of the Civil War, an eight-inch Parrott rifle, or two-hundred-pounder, and, when fired, carried a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound projectile seven thousand yards from a battery on Morris Island into the city of Charleston, which was then regarded as a prodigious achievement. It is a muzzle-loader, weighing about eight tons, and burst after firing thirty-six rounds at Charleston, in August, 1863, the fracture being plainly seen around the breech.
Trenton"s great historical feature is the Revolutionary battlefield, now completely built upon. Washington, having crossed the Delaware on Christmas night, in the early morning of December 26, 1776, marched down to Trenton, and surprised and defeated the Hessians under Rahl, who were encamped north of a.s.sunpink Creek. A fine battle-monument stands in a small park adjoining Warren Street, at the point where Washington"s army, coming into town from the north, first engaged the enemy. Here Alexander Hamilton, then Captain of the New York State Company of Artillery, opened fire from his battery on the Hessians, who fled through the town, along Warren, then called King Street. The monument is a fluted Roman-Doric column, rising one hundred and thirty-five feet, surmounted by a statue of Washington, representing him standing, field-gla.s.s in hand, surveying the flying Hessians, his right arm pointing down Warren Street. The elevated top of this monument gives a grand view over the surrounding country, the course of the Delaware being traced for miles. The subsequent fortnight"s campaign ending in the battle of Princeton revived the drooping spirits of the Americans, and was said by as accomplished a soldier as Frederick the Great to be among "the most brilliant in the annals of military achievements." Trenton is at the head of tidewater on the Delaware, the stream coming down rapids, known as the "Falls." On the Pennsylvania side is Morrisville, called after Robert Morris, who lived there during the Revolution. His estate subsequently became the home of the famous French General Jean Victor Moreau, the victor at Hohenlinden, who was exiled by Napoleon in 1804. He returned to Europe afterwards at the invitation of the Czar Alexander, and devised for him a plan for invading France. They were both at the battle of Dresden in 1813, and were consulting about a certain manoeuvre when a cannon ball from Napoleon"s Guard broke both Moreau"s legs, and he died five days afterwards.
PRINCETON BATTLE AND COLLEGE.
A few days after Washington"s victory at Trenton, Cornwallis, in January, 1777, advanced across Jersey to crush the Americans, but he was repulsed at the ford of a.s.sunpink Creek in Trenton. Then Washington resorted to a ruse. Leaving his camp-fires brightly burning near the creek at night to deceive the enemy, he quietly withdrew, and made a forced march ten miles northeast to Princeton, and fell upon three British regiments there, who were hastening to join Cornwallis, defeating them, and storming Na.s.sau Hall, in which some of the fugitives had taken refuge. Trenton is in Mercer County, named in honor of General Hugh Mercer, who fell in this battle, at the head of the Philadelphia troops. Princeton is a town of about thirty-five hundred inhabitants, a quiet place of elegant residences, in a level and luxuriant country. It is the seat of the College of New Jersey, originally founded at Elizabeth, near New York, in 1746, and transferred here in 1757. It is best known as Na.s.sau Hall, or Princeton University, being liberally endowed, and having notable buildings surrounding its s.p.a.cious campus, and is a Presbyterian foundation, which has about eleven hundred students. The original Na.s.sau Hall erected in 1757, but burnt many years ago, was so named by the Synod "to express the honor we retain in this remote part of the globe to the immortal memory of the glorious King William the Third, who was a branch of the ill.u.s.trious House of Na.s.sau." Dr. John Witherspoon, the celebrated Scotch Presbyterian divine, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was for thirty years its President, and among the early graduates were two other signers, Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush. The final conflict of the battle of Princeton raged around this venerated building, and Washington presented fifty guineas to the College to repair the damage done by his bombardment. In the adjacent Presbyterian Theological Seminary have been educated many able clergymen. In Princeton Cemetery are the remains of the wonderful preacher and metaphysician, Jonathan Edwards, who became President of the College in 1758, dying shortly afterwards.
A panegyrist, describing his merits as a great Church leader, compressed all in this remarkable sentence: "These three--Augustine, Calvin and Jonathan Edwards." His son-in-law and predecessor as President was Rev. Aaron Burr; and near his humble monument is another, marking the grave of his grandson, who was an infant when the great preacher died, and whose career was in such startling contrast--the notorious Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States.
MARSHALL"S WALK.
The Delaware River above Trenton is for miles a stream of alternating pools and rapids, with ca.n.a.ls on either side, pa.s.sing frequent villages and displaying pleasant scenery as it breaks through the successive ridges in its approach to the mountains. Alongside the river, in Solebury, Bucks County, in the early part of the eighteenth century, was the humble home of the pioneer and hunter, Edward Marshall, who made the fateful "walk" of 1737, the injustice of which so greatly provoked the Indians, and was a chief cause of the most savage Indian War of Colonial times. All the country west of the Delaware, as far up as the mouth of the Lackawaxen River, was obtained from the Indians by the deception of this "walk." The Indians in those early times measured their distances by "days" journeys," and in various treaties with the white men transferred tracts of land by the measurement of "days" walks." William Penn had bought the land as far up as Makefield and Wrightstown in Bucks County, and after his death his descendants, Thomas and Richard Penn, became anxious to enlarge the purchase, and this "walk" was the result. After a good deal of preliminary negotiation, several sachems of the Lenni Lenapes were brought to Philadelphia, and on August 25, 1737, made a treaty ceding additional lands beginning "on a line drawn from a certain spruce tree on the river Delaware by a west-northwest course to Neshaminy Creek; from thence back into the woods as far as a man can go in a day and a half, and bounded in the west by Neshaminy or the most westerly branch thereof, so far as the said branch doth extend, and from thence by a line to the utmost extent of the day and a half"s walk, and from thence to the aforesaid river Delaware; and so down the courses of the river to the first-mentioned spruce tree." The Indians thought this "walk" might cover the land as far north as the Lehigh, but there was deliberate deception practiced. An erroneous map was exhibited indicating a line extending about as far north as Bethlehem on the Lehigh, and this deceived the Indians. The white officials had previously been quietly going over the ground far north of the Lehigh, blazing routes by marking trees, all of which was carefully concealed, and Marshall and others had been employed on these "trial walks." A reward of five hundred acres of land was promised the walkers.
Marshall and two others, Jennings and Yeates, were selected to do the walking, all young and athletic hunters, experienced in woodcraft and inured to hardships. The walk was fixed for September 19th, under charge of the Sheriff, and before sunrise of that day a large number of people gathered at the starting-point at Wrightstown, a few miles west of the Delaware. An obelisk on a pile of boulders now marks the spot at the corner of the Quaker Burying Ground, bearing an inscription, "To the Memory of the Lenni Lenape Indians, ancient owners of this region, these stones are placed at this spot, the starting-point of the "Indian walk," September 19, 1737." The start was made from a chestnut tree, three Indians afoot accompanying the three walkers, while the Sheriff, surveyors and others, carrying provisions, bedding and liquors, were on horseback. Just as the sun rose above the horizon at six o"clock they started. When they had gone about two miles, Jennings gave out. They halted fifteen minutes for dinner at noon, soon afterwards crossed the Lehigh near the site of Bethlehem, turned up that river, and at fifteen minutes past six in the evening, completing the day"s journey of twelve hours actual travel, the Sheriff, watch in hand, called to them, as they were mounting a little hill, to "pull up." Marshall, thus notified, clasped his arms about a sapling for support, saying "he was almost gone, and if he had proceeded a few poles farther he must have fallen." Yeates seemed less distressed. The Indians were dissatisfied from the outset, claiming the walk should have been made up the river, and not inland. When the Lehigh was crossed, early in the afternoon, they became sullen, complaining of the rapid gait of the walkers, and several times protesting against their running. Before sunset two Indians left, saying they would go no farther, that the walkers would pa.s.s all the good land, and after that it made no difference how far or where they went. The third Indian continued some distance, when he lay down to rest and could go no farther.
The halt for the night was made about a half-mile from the Indian village of Hokendauqua, a name which means "searching for land." This was the village of Lappawinzoe, one of the sachems who had made the treaty. The next morning was rainy, and messengers were sent him to request a detail of Indians to accompany the walkers. He was in ugly humor and declined, but some Indians strolled into camp and took liquor, and Yeates also drank rather freely. The horses were hunted up, and the second day"s start made along the Lehigh Valley at eight o"clock, some of the Indians accompanying for a short distance through the rain, but soon leaving, dissatisfied. The route was north-northwest through the woods, Marshall carrying a compa.s.s, by which he held his course. In crossing a creek at the base of the mountains, Yeates, who had become very lame and tired, staggered and fell, but Marshall pushed on, followed by two of the party on horseback. At two o"clock the "walk" ended on the north side of the Pocono or Broad Mountain, not far from the present site of Mauch Chunk. The distance "walked" in eighteen hours was about sixty-eight miles, a remarkable performance, considering the condition of the country. The terminus of the "walk" was marked by placing stones in the forks of five trees, and the surveyors then proceeded to complete the work by marking the line of northern limit of the tract across to the Delaware River. This was done, not by taking the shortest route to the river, but by running a line at right angles with the general direction of the "walk;" and after four days" progress, practically parallel to the Delaware, through what was then described as a "barren mountainous region," the surveyors reached the river, in the upper part of Pike County, near the mouth of Shohola Creek, just below the Lackawaxen.
The Indians were loud in their complaints of the greediness shown in this walk, and particularly of the carrying of the surveyors" line so far to the northward, which none of them had antic.i.p.ated. Marshall was told by one old Indian, subsequently, "No sit down to smoke--no shoot squirrel; but lun, lun, lun, all day long." Lappawinzoe, thoroughly disgusted, said, "Next May we will go to Philadelphia, each one with a buckskin, repay the presents, and take the lands back again." The lands, however, were sold to speculators, so this was not practicable, and when the new owners sought to occupy them, the Indians refused to vacate. This provoked disputes over a half-million acres, a vast domain. The Penns, to defend their position, afterwards repudiated the surveyors, and they never fulfilled their promise to give Marshall five hundred acres. This did not mend matters, however, and the Lenni Lenape Indians" att.i.tude became constantly more threatening, until the scared Proprietary invited the intervention of their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois Confederation, or Six Nations. In 1742 two hundred and thirty leading Iroquois were brought to Philadelphia, and the dispute submitted to their arbitration. They sided with the Proprietary, and the Lenni Lenapes reluctantly withdrew to the Wyoming Valley, part going as far west as Ohio. But they thirsted for revenge, and when the French began attacking the frontier settlements, these Indians became willing allies, making many raids and wreaking terrible vengeance upon the innocent frontiersmen throughout Pennsylvania.
Marshall, who never got his reward, removed his cabin farther up the Delaware, above the mouth of the Lehigh. The Indians always pursued him, as an arch-conspirator, for a special vengeance. They attacked his cabin, killing his wife and wounding a daughter, he escaping by being absent. They made a second attack, and killed a son. His whole life was embittered by these murders, and he lost no opportunity for retaliation, removing, for greater safety, to an island in the river.
They pursued him for forty years, a party of Indians, during the Revolution in 1777, coming all the way from Ohio to kill him, but he eluded them and escaped. His closing years, however, were pa.s.sed peacefully, and he died at the age of ninety at his island home in the Delaware.
THE NARROWS AND THE FORKS.
The Tohickon Creek, the chief stream of Bucks County, flows into the Delaware at Point Pleasant, its Indian name of Tohick-hanne meaning "the stream crossed by a drift-wood bridge." Here in the river are many rapids or "rifts," some having been given curious names by the early raftsmen who used to "shoot" them--such as the "Buck Tail rift,"
the "Cut Bite rift," the "Man-of-War rift," the "Ground Hog rift," and the "Old Sow rift." The river makes many sweeping curves in pa.s.sing through the gorges, and it displays the Nockamixon Rocks or "Pennsylvania Palisades," a series of about three miles of beetling crags, of rich red and brown sandstone, rising four hundred feet, almost perpendicularly, and making a grand gorge known as the Narrows.
The ridge which the river thus bisects is known as Rock Hill in Pennsylvania, and across in New Jersey stretches away to the northeast as the Musconetcong Mountain. Above, the Musconetcong River, the Indian "rapid runner," flows in at Reigelsville, a town on both sides of the Delaware. This was the Indian village of Pechequeolin in the early eighteenth century, where iron works, the first on the Delaware, were started in 1727, famous for making the "Franklin" and "Adam and Eve" stoves that were so popular among our ancestors, the latter bearing in bold relief a striking representation of our first parents in close consultation with the serpent. Just above, the Delaware comes out through the ma.s.sive gorge of the Durham Hills or South Mountain, north of which the Lehigh River flows in from the southwest amid iron mills and slag heaps, with numerous bridges bringing the various Lehigh coal railways across from Easton to Phillipsburg. This is the confluence with the Lehigh, known in early times as the "Forks of the Delaware." To this place the Lenni Lenapes often came to treat and trade with the Penns, and a town was founded there when John Penn was the Proprietor. He was then a newly-married man, and had courted his bride, a daughter of Lord Pomfret, at her father"s English country-house of Easton in Northamptonshire. So the new town was called Easton and the county Northampton, at the junction of the Delaware with the Indian Lechwiec.h.i.n.k, signifying "where there are forks." This name was shortened to Lecha, and afterwards became the Lehigh. The two towns literally hang upon the hillsides, Mount Parna.s.sus looking down upon Phillipsburg, named after the old chief Phillip, who had the original village there, while Easton is compressed between the South Mountain and the long ridge of Chestnut Hill, rising seven hundred feet, where the Paxinosa Inn recalls the st.u.r.dy Paxanose, the last of the Shawnee kings who lived east of the Alleghenies. Through these towns and across the bridges spanning the Delaware roll constant processions of coal trains bringing the anthracite out from the Lehigh and Wyoming coal-fields to market.
Easton dates from 1737 and has about fifteen thousand people, but its growth did not come until the coal trade was developed. The Lehigh Ca.n.a.l started this, and upon it Asa Packer was a boatman before the railway era, and carried goods for the industrious Frenchman, Ario Pardee, who then had a mill and store at Hazleton, back in the interior. These were the two leaders in developing the Lehigh coal trade. The chief inst.i.tution of Easton is Lafayette College, a Presbyterian foundation, its main building being Pardee Hall, a gift of Ario Pardee. It is largely a school of the mine, and is devoted to that branch of scientific research. Here often came the famous Teedyuscung, the eloquent sachem of the Lenni Lenapes, who, in the councils at the "Forks," pleaded for his people"s rights. The last remnant of his tribe, having been pressed farther and farther towards the setting sun, now live as the "Delaware Indians" out in Oklahoma, there being barely ninety of them, where Hon. Charles Journeycake, at last advices, was the "King of the Delawares," the successor of Teedyuscung and of St. Tammany. Phillipsburg was originally settled by Dutch, and its prosperity was based chiefly on the Morris Ca.n.a.l, which crossed New Jersey through Newark to New York harbor, a work since abandoned for transportation purposes. It was a wonderful ca.n.a.l in its day, crossing mountain ranges of nine hundred feet. This was made possible by the high elevation of Lake Hopatcong, which furnished most of the water for the levels. While some of the elevations were overcome by locks, the greater ones were mounted by inclined planes up which the boats were drawn, the machinery of the planes being worked by water-power taken from the higher ca.n.a.l levels. Its chief usefulness now is the supply of water to Newark, the descent from Lake Hopatcong on that side being nine hundred and fourteen feet. This beautiful lake, supplied with the purest spring water, is nine miles long and about four miles wide, dotted with islands, its rock-bound sh.o.r.es encompa.s.sed by surrounding mountains giving charming scenery.
Small steamboats navigate it, and the name Hopatcong means "Stone over the Water," referring to an artificial causeway of stone the Indians had, connecting with one of the islands, but which is now submerged.
BETHLEHEM AND THE MORAVIANS.
The Lehigh River flows out of the Alleghenies through a deep and tortuous valley which rends the mountain ridges until it strikes against the South Mountain range, here called the Durham Hills, and then turns northeast along its base to the Delaware. At this bend the Saucon Creek comes in from the south and the Monocacy Creek from the north, and here, twelve miles from Easton, is Bethlehem. This manufacturing town of twenty thousand population is one of the noted places of the Lehigh Valley. A large part of the lowlands along the river are occupied by the extensive works of the Bethlehem Steel Company, where the big guns, armor and crank-shafts are made for the navy, while on the slopes of the South Mountain are the n.o.ble buildings of the Lehigh University, the munificent benefaction of Asa Packer, supporting four hundred students of the technical studies developing mining and railways. On the hill slopes of the northern river bank is the original Moravian town, oddly built of bricks and stone, with a steep slate roof on nearly every house. It was one of the earliest and the most important of the settlements in America of the refugee followers of John Huss, the "Congregation of the United Brethren," and for a century was under its absolute government. In the winter of 1740 the first trees were cut down that formed the log hut which was the first house on this part of the Lehigh. Count Zinzendorf, their leader, arrived from Moravia, with his young daughter Benigna, before the second house was built, and celebrated with the settlers the Christmas Eve of 1741. They had called the place Beth-Lechem, "the house upon the Lehigh," but it is related that towards midnight on this occasion Zinzendorf, becoming deeply moved, seized a blazing torch and earnestly sang a German hymn:
"Not Jerusalem--lowly Bethlehem "Twas that gave us Christ to save us."
Thus the young settlement got its name. Receiving large accessions by immigration, it soon grew into activity, and outstripping Easton, became the commercial depot of the Upper Delaware and the Lehigh, sending missionaries among the Indians, and during the Revolution was a busy manufacturing town. For the first thirty years it was a pure "commune," the church elders regulating the labor of all the people, and afterwards, until 1844, the church council of the "Congregation"
ruled everything, this exclusive system being then abandoned.
Proceeding up a winding highway from the river, the old "Moravian Sun Inn" is pa.s.sed, the building, dating from 1758, being modernized; and mounting the higher hill above the Main Street, the visitor soon gets into the heart of the original Moravian Colony, among the ancient and s.p.a.cious hip-roofed, slate-covered stone houses, with their ponderous gables. Though dwelling in communism, the Moravians strictly separated the s.e.xes in house, street, church and graveyard, taking good care of the lone females, whether maidens or widows. Here are the "Widows"
House" and the "Single Sisters" House," quaintly attractive with their broad oaken stairways, diminutive windows, stout furniture and sun-dials, tiled and flagged pavements, low ceilings, steep roofs and odd gables. The "Sisters" House" was built in 1742. The "Congregation House" and "Theological Seminary" are also here; and, best known of all, the Moravian "Young Ladies" Seminary," an extensive and widely celebrated inst.i.tution, dating from 1749, whose educational methods are those founded by the noted John Amos Commenius, who flourished in the seventeenth century, and whose life-size portrait bust is sacredly preserved in the school, as is also the old sun-dial of 1748 on the southern front of one of the buildings.
The Moravian Church, a large square building, fronts the Main Street, and here are held the great festivals at Christmas and Easter which bring many visitors to Bethlehem. Its most interesting adjunct is the "Dead House" alongside, a small pointed gothic steep-roofed building, which is used whenever a member dies. The public announcement of the death is made at sunrise from the church cupola by the "trombone choir," who go up there and vigorously blow their horns, one standing facing each of the four points of the compa.s.s. The funeral services are held in the church, but the corpse is not taken there, it being deposited in the "Dead House," and guarded by the pall-bearers during the ceremony. This ended, a procession solemnly marches farther up the hill, led by the trombones, playing a dirge, escorting the corpse and mourners to the ancient graveyard. Here are the graves of the faithful, resting beneath grand old trees, all the men on one side of the central path and the women on the other. There are no monuments or family lots, but the graves stretch across the cemetery in long rows, each row being completed before another is begun, the latest corpse, without reference to relationship, being laid alongside the last interred, so that the row of graves shows the chronological succession of the deaths. All are treated alike, the dead bishop resting alongside the humblest of the flock, a small square stone being laid upon each flattened grave, marked with name and date of birth and death, and usually a number. Only one person--a woman--has any sign of distinction above the others in this unique cemetery. She was Deaconess Juliana Nitschman, wife of Bishop John Nitschman, who died in 1751, greatly beloved by the Congregation, and was honored by being given a special grave in the path in the centre of the yard, between the men and the women. There are some fifty graves of Indian converts in the early days, among them "Tschoop of the Mohicans," whom Cooper, the novelist, has immortalized, the brave and eloquent father of his hero Uncas. The record of the conversion of the famous King Teedyuscung is kept in the Moravian Congregation, and his exploits are frequently described in their annals. He lived on the meadow land down by the river, having gone there in 1730 from near Trenton, where he was born about 1700, and in 1742 he released the lands at Bethlehem to the Moravians. He was impressed by the persuasions of the preachers, and after a long probation, in 1750 was baptized under the name of Gideon. Bishop Cammerhoff, on March 12th, made an entry which, translated, reads, "To-day I baptized Tatius Kundt, the chief among sinners." He was made Grand Sachem of the Lenni Lenapes in 1754, but he backslid from the Church, and joined in the pillage and ma.s.sacre of the Colonial wars. He became dissipated, but was afterwards reconciled to the whites and removed to Wyoming, where the Iroquois in 1763 made a raid, and finding him in a drunken stupor in his wigwam, they set fire to it and he was burnt to death.
During the Revolution the Moravians were of great use to the army, conducting hospitals at Bethlehem and providing supplies. In 1778 the "Single Sisters" made and presented to Count Pulaski a finely embroidered silk banner, afterwards carried by his regiment, and preserved by the Maryland Historical Society. Longfellow has beautifully enshrined this memory in his "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns"
at its consecration:
"When the dying flame of day Through the chancel shot its ray, Far the glimmering tapers shed Faint light on the cowled head, And the censer burning swung Where before the altar hung That proud banner, which, with prayer, Had been consecrated there; And the nuns" sweet hymn was heard the while Sung low in the dim mysterious aisle--
""Take thy banner. May it wave Proudly o"er the good and brave, When the battle"s distant wail Breaks the Sabbath of our vale; When the clarion"s music thrills To the heart of these lone hills; When the spear in conflict shakes, And the strong lance, quivering, breaks.""
MAUCH CHUNK AND COAL MINING.
The Lehigh above Bethlehem comes through the clear-cut "Lehigh Gap" in the Blue Ridge, which stretches off to the northeast, where are two other notches, one cut partly down and the other deeply cut--the first being the "Wind Gap" and the other the "Delaware Water Gap." The Indians used to tell the early pioneers that the wind came through the one and the water through the other. The Jordan Creek flows out from the South Mountain, and in the valley is Allentown, the chief city of the Lehigh, having thirty thousand people, and numerous factories and breweries. Here is the township of Macungie, which is Indian for "the feeding-place of bears." It was to Allentown, when the British captured Philadelphia, that in 1777 were hastily taken the Liberty Bell and the chimes of Christ Church and St. Peter"s Church, being concealed beneath the floor of old Zion Church to prevent their capture and confiscation. Above Allentown the Lehigh traverses the valley between the South Mountain and the Blue Ridge, pa.s.sing Catasauqua, "the thirsty land," and Hokendauqua, seats of extensive iron manufacture, the first of these establishments on the Lehigh, founded in 1839 by David Thomas, who came out from Wales for the purpose. Then we get among the slate factories in crossing the vast slate measures that adjoin the Blue Ridge, and go quickly through the deep notch in the tall and here very narrow ridge, the waters foaming over the slaty bed, its thin layers standing up in long straight lines across the stream. Beyond is another valley, and then comes the wide-topped range known as the Broad Mountain. In this valley was Gaudenhutten, where the Indian trail, known as the "Warrior"s Path,"
crossed the Lehigh, and where the first Moravian missionaries from Bethlehem came and built a church and converted the Indians. It was the scene of one of the terrible ma.s.sacres of the Colonial wars.
Within the gorge of the Broad Mountain is the oddest town on the Lehigh, Mauch Chunk.
This noted coal town has two princ.i.p.al streets--one laid along the front of a mountain wall above the river bank, and the other at right angles, stretching back through a cleft in the mountain. Most things are set on edge in Mauch Chunk, and the man who may have the front door of his house on the street often goes out of an upper story into the back yard, which slopes steeply upward. Mount Pisgah rises high above, crowned with the chimneys of the machine-house of an inclined-plane railway. A view from it discloses a novel landscape beneath, the railroads, ca.n.a.l, river and front street all being compressed together into the narrow curving gorge which bends around Bear Mountain, the "Mauch Chunk" over opposite. The red sandstone is universal, and the chocolate-colored roads leading out of town are carved into the mountain walls. Through the centre of the place the river pours over a ca.n.a.l dam, its roaring mingled with the noise of constantly moving coal trains. The curious conical Bear Mountain, around which everything curves, rises seven hundred feet high, and the town, which has about four thousand people, rests at various elevations, wherever houses can get room to stand--in gullies or gorges, or hanging on the hillsides. From every point of view rises the tall and quaintly turreted tower of St. Luke"s Episcopal Church, looking like an ancient feudal castle of the Rhine, which was built as a memorial of Asa Packer by his widow; for here was his home, and his grave is in the cemetery almost over the roof of his house.
At Summit Hill, nine miles northwest of Mauch Chunk, the anthracite coal of this region was first discovered. Philip Ginter, a hunter, found it while roaming over Sharp Mountain in 1791. This "stone coal"
was carried down to Philadelphia and exhibited, and a company was formed, taking up ten thousand acres on the mountain and opening a mine. For thirty years they had disappointments, as n.o.body would use the coal, which cost about $14 per ton to transport to Philadelphia.
To cheapen this, efforts were made to improve the navigation of the Lehigh, out of which grew the ca.n.a.l which was the early route of the coal to that city. Asa Packer once said that in 1820 three hundred and eighty-five tons went to Philadelphia, and this choked the market. In 1827, when the mining at Summit Hill had got a good start, the "Switchback" gravity railroad was built to bring the coal out from the mines to the river at Mauch Chunk. The loaded coal cars ran by their own momentum nine miles down a grade of about ninety feet to the mile.
To get the cars back, they were hauled up the inclined plane on Mount Pisgah, then run by gravity six miles inland to Mount Jefferson, where they were hauled up a second plane, and then they ran three miles farther by gravity to the mines. This route was used for many years, but was afterwards superseded by another railway, and now the famous "Switchback" is a summer excursion route for tourists who delight in the exhilarating rides down the gravity slopes. At Summit Hill and in the Panther Creek Valley, a large output of coal is mined and sent through a railway tunnel to the Lehigh, and there is at Summit Hill a burning mine which has been smouldering more than a half-century. Asa Packer developed this region, while, farther up the river, branch lines come in from the Mahanoy and Hazleton regions, which were the field of operations of Ario Pardee; and the two went hand in hand in fostering the prosperity of the Lehigh Valley.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mauch Chunk_]
The upper waters of the Lehigh flow through a wild canyon, the river at times almost doubling upon itself as it makes sharp bends around the bold promontories. Enormous hills encompa.s.s it about, the stream often flowing through the bottom with the rush and foam of a miniature Niagara rapids. The ca.n.a.l, abandoned above Mauch Chunk, was destroyed by a freshet many years ago, but the amber-colored waters still pour over the dilapidated dams and through the moss-grown sluices. There are log houses for the lumbermen, also an almost obsolete industry, and finally the railways abandon the diminutive Lehigh and climb over the desolate Nescopec Mountain, to go through the Sugar Notch and down the other side into the Vale of Wyoming and to the banks of the Susquehanna. Upon the eastern slopes of the Nescopec the Lehigh has its sources, gathering the tribute of many small streams between this ridge and Broad Mountain.
THE VALE OF WYOMING.