Chapter VII: Glimpses of the Great Northwest, 447 (6)

To the northward is Long Branch, the most fashionable and exclusive of the New Jersey coast resorts, being mainly a succession of grand villas and elaborate hotels, stretching for about four miles along a bluff which here makes the coast, and has grass growing down to its outer edge almost over the water. In the three sections of the West End, Elberon and Long Branch proper, the latter getting its name from the "Long branch" of the Shrewsbury River, there are about eight thousand regular inhabitants, and there come here about fifty thousand summer visitors, largely from New York. The great highway is Ocean Avenue, running for five miles just inside the edge of the bluff, which, in the season, is a most animated and attractive roadway. The hotels and cottages generally face this avenue. The most noted cottages are the one which General Grant occupied for many years, and where, during his Presidency in 1869-77, he held "the summer capital of the United States," and the Franklyn Cottage, where President Garfield, after being shot in Washington, was brought to die in 1881. The most famous show place at Long Branch is Hollywood, the estate of the late John Hoey, of Adams Express Company, who died there in 1892, its elaborate floral decorations being much admired.

SHACKAMAXON TO BRISTOL.

Journeying up the Delaware from Philadelphia, we pass Petty Island, where the great Indian chief of the Lenni Lenapes, Tamanend, had his lodge--the chieftain since immortalized as St. Tammany, who has given his name to the Tammany Society of politicians who rule New York City. Petty on the old maps is called Shackamaxon Island, a derivation of the original Indian name of Cackamensi. St. Tammany is described as a chief who was so virtuous that "his countrymen could only account for the perfections they ascribe to him by supposing him to be favored with the special communications of the Great Spirit." In the eighteenth century many societies were formed in his honor, and his festival was kept on the 1st of May, but the New York Society is the only one that has survived. Farther up, the Tacony Creek flows into the Delaware, the United States having a spacious arsenal upon its banks. The name of this creek was condensed before Penn's time, by the Swedes, from its Indian title of Taokanink. Beyond, the great manufacturing establishments of the city gradually change to charming villas as we move along the pleasant sloping banks and through the level country, and soon we pass the northeastern boundary of Philadelphia, at Torresdale. This boundary is made by the Poquessing Creek, being the aboriginal Poetquessink, or "the stream of the dragons."

Across the river, on the Jersey shore, formerly roamed the Rankokas Indians, an Algonquin tribe, whose name is preserved in the Rancocas Creek, which is one of the chief tributaries flowing in from New Jersey. At Beverly, not far above, is one of the most popular suburban resorts, the villas clustering around a broad cove, known as Edgewater, which appears much like a miniature Bay of Naples. Over opposite is the wide Neshaminy Creek, flowing down from the Buckingham Mountain in Pennsylvania, its Indian title of Nischam-hanne, meaning "the two streams flowing together," referring to its branches. The earliest settlers along this creek were Scotch-Irish, and their pastor in 1726 was Rev. William Tennent, the famous Presbyterian preacher, who founded the celebrated "Log College" on the Neshaminy, "built of logs, chinked and daubed between, and one story high," as it was well described. From this simple college, which was about twenty feet square, were sent out many of the famous Presbyterian preachers of the eighteenth century; and from it grew, in 1746, the great College of New Jersey at Princeton, and in 1783 Dickinson College, at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, besides many other schools which were started by its alumni. William Tennent's son, Gilbert, was his assistant and successor. The great Whitefield preached to an audience of three thousand at this College in 1739. He was attracted there by Gilbert Tennent's fame as a preacher, and of him on one occasion wrote, "I went to the meeting house to hear Mr. Gilbert Tennent preach, and never before heard I such a searching sermon; he is a son of thunder, and does not regard the face of man."

The Delaware River broadens into two channels around Burlington Island, having on either hand the towns of Bristol and Burlington, both coeval with the first settlement of Philadelphia, and Bristol at that early day having had an ambition to become the location of Penn's great city. The ferry connecting them was established two years before Penn came to Philadelphia, and in the eighteenth century they had a larger carrying trade. Bristol began in 1680 under a grant from Edmund Andros, then the Provincial Governor of New York, for a town site and the ferry, which is curiously described in the Colonial records as "the ferry against Burlington," then the chief town in West Jersey. The settlement was called New Bristol, from Bristol in England, where lived Penn's wife, Hannah Callowhill. It was the first county seat of Bucks when Penn divided his Province into the three counties--Chester, Philadelphia and Buckingham. It was for many years a great exporter of flour to the West Indies. Its ancient Quaker Meeting House dates from 1710, and St. James' Episcopal Church from 1712; but the latter, which received its silver communion service from the good Queen Anne, fell into decay and has been replaced by a modern structure. Its Bath Mineral Springs made it the most fashionable watering-place in America in the eighteenth century, but Saratoga afterwards eclipsed them, and their glory has departed. Prior to the Revolution, Bristol built more shipping than Philadelphia; and, while quiet and restful, its comfortable homes and the picturesque villas along the Delaware River bank above the town tell of its prosperity now.

OLD BURLINGTON.

The ancient town of Burlington, clustered behind its "Green Bank" or river-front street on the New Jersey shore, antedates Philadelphia five years. The Quaker pioneers are believed to have been the first Europeans who saw its site. The noted preacher George Fox, in 1672, journeyed from New England to the South, and rode on horseback over the site of Burlington at Assiscunk Creek, reporting the soil as good "and withal a most brave country." When Penn became Trustee for the insolvent Billynge, a Proprietor of West Jersey, much of his land was sold to Quakers, who migrated to the American wilderness to escape persecution at home. Thus Burlington was the first settlement founded by Quaker seekers after toleration in the New World:

"About them seemed but ruin and decay,
Cheerless, forlorn, a rank autumnal fen,
Where no good plant might prosper, or again
Put forth fresh leaves for those that fell away;
Nor could they find a place wherein to pray
For better things. In righteous anger then
They turned; they fled the wilderness of men
And sought the wilderness of God. And day
Rose upon day, while ever manfully
Westward they battled with the ocean's might,
Strong to endure whatever fate should be,
And watching in the tempest and the night
That one sure Pharos of the soul's dark sea--
The constant beacon of the Inner Light."

In the spring of 1677 the "goode shippe Kent," Gregory Marlowe, master, sailed from London, bound for West Jersey, with two hundred and thirty Quakers, about half coming from London and the others from Yorkshire; two dying on the voyage. They ascended the Delaware to the meadow lands below the mouth of Assiscunk Creek, landing there in June, and in October made a treaty with the Indians, buying their lands from the Rancocas as far up as Assunpink Creek at Trenton. Their settlement was first called New Beverly, and then Bridlington, from the Yorkshire town whence many of them came, but it finally was named Burlington. They made a street along the river, bordered with greensward, and called the "Green Bank," and drew a straight line back inland, calling it their Main Street, and the Londoners settled on one side and the Yorkshiremen on the other. The old buttonwood tree, to which was moored the early ships bringing settlers, still stands on the Green Bank, a subject of weird romance. Elizabeth Powell, the first white child, was born in July, 1677. The next May, 1678, they established a "Monthly Meeting of Friends" at Burlington, of which the records have been faithfully kept. In June the graveyard was fenced in, and the old Indian chief, Ockanickon, a Quaker convert to Christianity, was among the first buried there. In August the first Quaker marriage was solemnized in meeting, this first certificate being signed by ten men and three women Friends as witnesses. In 1682, just as Penn was coming over, they decided to build their first meeting house--a hexagonal building, forty feet in diameter, with pyramidal roof, which was occupied the next year. In 1685 they decided that a hearse should be built, the entry on the record being an order for a "carriage to be built for ye use of such as are to be laid in ye ground."

Burlington grew, and was long the seat of government of the Province of West Jersey, being the official residence of the Provincial Governors, the last of whom was William Franklin, natural son of Benjamin Franklin. It had wealthy merchants and much shipping, and, despite its peacefulness, equipped privateers to fight the French. Its famous old Episcopal Church of St. Mary had the corner-stone laid in 1703 under the favor of Queen Anne, who made a liberal endowment of lands, much being yet held, and gave it a massive and greatly prized communion service. This old church is cruciform, with a little belfry, and a stone let into the front wall bears the inscription "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." In the extensive churchyard alongside is the modern St. Mary's Church, of brownstone, with a tall spire, also cruciform. This is the finest church in Burlington. When "Old St. Mary's" was built with its belfry, the Friends did not like the innovation, and long gazed askance at the "steeple house," as they called it; so that Talbot, the first rector, sturdily retaliated, calling the Quakers "anti-Christians, who are worse than the Turks." Many of St. Mary's parishioners of to-day are descended from these maligned Quakers. The early records of the Meeting are filled with entries showing that charges were brought against members for various shortcomings. One was admonished for "taking off his hat" at a funeral solemnized in the "steeple house;" others gave testimony of "uneasiness" on account of the placing of "gravestones in the burial-ground;" a query was propounded, "Are Friends in meeting preserved from sleeping or any other indecent behavior, particularly from chewing tobacco and taking snuff?" A record was also made of testimony against "a pervading custom of working on First days in the time of hay and harvest" when rain threatened. The descendants of these good people have established St. Mary's Hall and Burlington College, noted educational institutions. Probably the most famous son of Burlington was the distinguished novelist, James Fenimore Cooper, born in 1789, but taken in his infancy by his parents to his future home at Cooperstown, in Central New York. The town was bombarded by the British gunboats that sailed up the Delaware in 1778, but since then the career of Burlington has been eminently peaceful.

BORDENTOWN AND ITS MEMORIES.

Above Burlington Island the Delaware winds around a jutting tongue of flat land, "Penn's Neck," which is one of the noted regions of the river, the ancient "Manor of Pennsbury." This was Penn's country home, originally a tract of over eight thousand acres, the Indian domain of "Sepessing." His house, which he occupied in 1700-01, was then the finest on the river, but it long ago fell into decay, and the manor was all sold away from his descendants during the eighteenth century. At the eastern extremity of "Penn's Neck," on the New Jersey shore, is White Hill, with the village of Bordentown beyond, up Crosswick's Creek. Here is a region redolent with historical associations. The old buildings along the river bank were the railway shops of the famous "Camden and Amboy," whose line, coming along the Delaware shore, goes off up Crosswick's Creek to cross New Jersey on the route to New York. Above is the dense foliage of Bonaparte Park, now largely occupied by the Convent and Academy of St. Joseph. Bordentown was a growth of the railway, having been previously little more than a ferry, originally started by Joseph Borden. Its most distinguished townsman was Admiral Charles Stewart, "Old Ironsides" of the American navy, a relic of the early wars of the country, his crowning achievement being the command of the frigate "Constitution" when she captured the two British vessels, "Cyane" and "Levant." He was the "Senior Flag Officer" of the navy when he died in 1860 on his Bordentown farm, to which he had returned. The old house where he lived is on a bluff facing the river. He was the grandfather of the noted Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell.

To Bordentown, in 1816, Joseph Bonaparte, the ex-King of Naples and of Spain, and eldest brother of Napoleon, came to live, as the Count de Survilliers, and bought the estate known since as Bonaparte Park. It was through Stewart's persuasion, mainly, that he located there, the estate covering ten farms of about one thousand acres. Lafayette visited him in 1824, and Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III., in 1837. Joseph returned to Europe in 1839, dying in Florence in 1844. Another famous resident of Bordentown was Prince Murat, the nephew of Napoleon and of Joseph, and the son of the dashing Prince Joachim Murat, who was King of the Sicilies, and was shot by sentence of court-martial after Waterloo. Prince Murat came in 1822, bought a farm, got married, lived a rather wild life, but was generally liked, and, going through various fortunes, returned to France after the Revolution of 1848 and was restored to his honors. He was with Marshal Bazaine in the capitulation of Metz in 1870 and became a prisoner of war, and died in 1878.

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 passenger 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 passenger 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 passengers, 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 canal across New Jersey, his son, Robert L. Stevens, being the railway chieftain, while Commodore Robert F. Stockton championed the canal, 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 Canal Company." In furtherance of this compromise, what is known as the celebrated "Marriage Act" was passed 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 passenger 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 passengers 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 canal 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 Canal 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 canal 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 canal, 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 canal 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 canal is suggested.

THE TRENTON GRAVEL.

In journeying up the Delaware and approaching Trenton, we have passed 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 coarser 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 shore 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 passes under the streets, and even under the Delaware and Raritan Canal, to its depressed station alongside Assunpink 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 grassy 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 Assunpink 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-glass 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 Assunpink 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 Nassau 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 Nassau Hall, or Princeton University, being liberally endowed, and having notable buildings surrounding its spacious campus, and is a Presbyterian foundation, which has about eleven hundred students. The original Nassau 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 illustrious House of Nassau." 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 canals on either side, passing 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 pass 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 compass, 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 anticipated. 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' attitude 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 passed 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 passing 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 massive 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 Lechwiechink, 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 Parnassus 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 sturdy 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 Canal 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 institution 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 Canal, which crossed New Jersey through Newark to New York harbor, a work since abandoned for transportation purposes. It was a wonderful canal 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 canal 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 shores encompassed 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 noble 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 passed, 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 spacious hip-roofed, slate-covered stone houses, with their ponderous gables. Though dwelling in communism, the Moravians strictly separated the sexes 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 institution, 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 compass. 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 massacre 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.