Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Jefferson was one of the earliest weather prophets in this country and in his works are found many references to the American climate, of use to any future climatologist. About 1805 he wrote to Mr. Volney, the philosopher: “In no case does habit attach our choice or judgment more than in climate. The Canadian glows with delight in his sleigh and snow, the very idea of which gives me the shivers. The changes between heat and cold in America are greater and more frequent, and the extremes comprehend a greater scale on the thermometer in America than in Europe. Habit, however, prevents these from affecting us more than the smaller changes of Europe affect the European, but he is greatly affected by ours. As our sky is always clear and that of Europe always cloudy, there is a greater accumulation of heat here than there in the same parallel. The changes between wet and dry are much more frequent and sudden in Europe than in America, for though we have double the rain, it falls in half the time. Taking all these together, I prefer much the climate of the United States to that of Europe, and I think it a more cheerful one. It is our cloudless sky which has eradicated from our constitutions all disposition to hang ourselves, which we might otherwise have inherited from our English ancestors. Still, I do not wonder that a European should prefer his grey to our azure sky.”

This description in the main holds good to our time, although social causes have increased here the tendency to suicide, though perhaps the ratio of suicide is no greater in America now than it ever was. If we add dueling, which was a form of suicide, to the regular cases of suicide, I have my doubts whether more Americans make away with themselves now than in the early days. I happen to think of one signer of the Declaration of Independence who died from mental excitement over signing that instrument, of another who was poisoned, and of a third who was killed by a fellow patriot in a duel.

Jefferson also noted in 1809, under “Cultivation,” the changes in the American climate, in a letter to Dr. Chapman: “I remember,” said he, “that when I was a small boy, say sixty years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter, to my knee very often, to my waist sometimes, and that they covered the earth long. And I remember while yet young to have heard from very old men that in their youth the winters had been still colder, with deeper and longer snows. In the year 1772 we had a snow two feet deep in the Champagne parts of this state, and three feet in the counties next below the mountains. But when I was President the average fall of snow for the seven winters was only 14½ inches, and the ground was covered but sixteen days in each winter on an average of the whole. I noticed the change in our climate in my ‘Notes on Virginia,’ but since that time public vocations have taken my attention from the subject, nor do I know of any source in Virginia now existing, from which anything on climate can be derived. Dr. Williamson has written on the subject, and Mr. Williams in his ‘History of Vermont’ has an essay on the subject of climate.”

Addressing Mr. Louis E. Beck at Albany, N. Y., in 1824, when he was a very old man, Jefferson said:

“I thank you for your pamphlet on the climate of the West; although it does not yet establish a satisfactory theory, it is an additional step toward it. My own was perhaps the first attempt to bring together the few facts then known, and suggest them to public attention, and they were written before the close of the revolutionary war, when the western country was a wilderness untrodden but by the feet of the savage or the hunter. It is now flourishing in population and science, and after a few more years of observation and collection of facts, they will doubtless furnish a theory of their climate. Years are requisite for this, steady attention to the thermometer, to the plants growing there, the times of their leafing and flowering, its prevalent winds, quantities of rain and snow, temperature of fountains, animal inhabitants, etc. We want this, indeed, for all the states, and the work should be repeated once or twice in a century to show the effects of clearing and culture toward changes of climate.”

Thus promptly did our early scholars and sages watch the climatic relations of the country to its population and vitality. These “Notes on Virginia,” which Jefferson wrote during the Revolution, contain five years’ instrumental observation on rain, heat and wind taken at Williamsburgh, the tidewater capital, which is about forty miles from Fortress Monroe, which latter place has since become a winter resort. He computed that we had forty-seven inches of rain annually, considerably more than fell in Europe, but a much larger proportion of sunshine than there, only half as many cloudy days as in France and Germany, and the statesman says about the Alleghany Mountain region, of which Chautauqua Lake is an outpost:

“It is remarkable that proceeding on the same parallel of latitude westerly, the climate becomes colder in like manner as when you proceed northerly. This continues to be the case until you attain the summit of the Alleghany, which is the highest land between the ocean and the Mississippi. From thence, descending in the same latitude to the Mississippi, the change reverses, and, if we may believe travelers, it becomes warmer there than it is on the same latitude on the sea side. On the higher parts of mountains, where it is absolutely colder than it is on the plains on which they stand, frosts do not appear so early by a considerable time in autumn, and go off sooner in the spring than on the plains. I have known frost so severe as to kill the hickory trees round about Monticello, and yet not injure the tender fruit blossoms then in bloom on the top and higher parts of the mountain. A change in our climate is taking place very sensibly, and both heats and colds are becoming much more moderate, within the memory even of the middle-aged.”

General Washington, it may not be generally known, kept all his early diaries on the blank leaves of the “Virginia Almanac,” which was printed at Williamsburgh, showing that he watched the weather as if it were a part of public life.

Washington came to the vicinity of Chautauqua Lake in 1753, when he was scarcely of age, and this journey makes his earliest diary. He went from Williamsburgh to Fredericksburgh, thence to Alexandria, thence to Winchester in the valley of Virginia, thence to Cumberland, Maryland, and down the Monongahela River and up the Alleghany to French Creek, or the Venango. All the land was then a wilderness. Washington reported from hearsay, at Venango, that there were four forts, the first of them on French Creek near a small lake, the next on Lake Erie about 15 miles from the other, from which it was 120 miles to the fort at the falls of Lake Erie. From the fort on Lake Erie to Montreal was about 600 miles, which the French only required four weeks to traverse in good weather. Washington noted the good land about Venango and the extensive and rich meadows, one of which was four miles in length. When Washington was interested in connecting Lake Erie with the waters of the Ohio by a canal, he was very explicit in addressing General William Irvine about the climate traits of Chautauqua Lake; this General Irvine was a doctor born in Ireland and settled at Carlisle, Pa., and he was among the first men to understand the climate of Lake Erie, and he managed to get for Pennsylvania a frontage on this lake.

In the pursuit of climate, it is probable that the first movements were made by the people of the populous states of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Any one who possesses a library of travels in America, conveying successive pictures of our social life from colonial times down to the day of railroads, will discover numbers of perished watering places.

For instance, about the time of the Revolution, the chief summer resorts in Pennsylvania were about York, as at York Springs, and I possess pictures of old log hotels at some of these resorts, where the outspurs of the Blue Mountains gave a little altitude above the surrounding plains. The wounded soldiers in the Revolution were sent up to Ephrata and Litiz and Bethlehem, where the air was good and nurses were to be had.

These Blue Mountains were not ascended until 1716, when Governor Spotiswood of Virginia undertook to find where the rivers of that state had their fountains, and he took an ensign in the British army and went to the frontier, where he was joined by some gentlemen and some militia rangers, about fifty in all, with pack-horses and much liquor, and this little army started out from near the site of the battle of Chancellorsville, and it took them a week to get to the top of the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap, thirty-six days after the Governor had left Williamsburgh. They went down into the Shenandoah Valley and called that flowing river the Euphrates. So much delighted was Spotiswood with the air and scenery of the mountains that he instituted an order of knighthood called the Tramontane order.

Such was the beginning of human knowledge of the Alleghanies, nearly 170 years ago. The lives of three not very old men would have spanned from that day to this. The nearest approach of that Alleghany range, of which the Blue Ridge was the first parallel, to the great interior lakes of North America, is at Chautauqua. At this lake the Alleghany ridge, which divides the sources of the Ohio valley from the great lakes, is between 800 and 1400 feet high, every hill arable, and the earliest settlers observed how quickly the apples, pears and plums succeeded in the mild climate. They were surprised to find, at an altitude of more than 1300 feet above the ocean, a noble sheet of water 20 miles long. Some of the earliest settlers in this region came from the Blue Mountain country, buying their land from the Holland Land Company of New York, of which William H. Seward was long the attorney. Some of the first settlers pitched their cabins about 1803.

It is understood that Chautauqua Lake was first navigated about 1782, when the Revolutionary war was almost done and the battle of Yorktown had been fought. Desirous of keeping up some show of hostility, about 1800 British and Indians were sent to recapture Pittsburgh, and they launched their canoes on this lake, but their spies came back and told them that the Americans were on the lookout. Earlier than this, about 1752, when the French resolved to seize on the head waters of the Ohio, they left Niagara Fort by water in April and got to a place they called Chadacoin (undoubtedly Chautauqua) on Lake Erie, where they began to cut timber and prepared to build a fort, but their engineer coming on afterward put a stop to it, saying that the Chautauqua River was too shallow to carry out any craft with provisions to the Ohio. The man who had begun building the fort, M. Babeer, was so much pleased with the spot that he insisted on continuing his work, and he demanded that his opponent give him a certificate to excuse himself to the governor for not selecting so good a place. Consequently the fort was built at Erie, or Presqu’Ile.

The region about Chautauqua Lake is therefore, in an imperial sense, the oldest in America, the neighborhood for which two great empires contended, and at the time the French were meditating the seizure of these high lands and water-courses, twelve Virginians, two of whom were named Washington, formed the Ohio Company, before the year 1750.

Thus a third of a century only elapsed between the discovery of the Blue Ridge and the enterprises to connect the Alleghanies and the lakes on the part of two distinguished nations.

The high lands and hills about Chautauqua were familiar objects to the subjects of Louis XV. on their way to meet the adolescent Washington, and young Jumondville, who fell before Washington’s night assault, had cooled his fevered eyes on the green forests of the Chautauqua summits. In forty-six years more, old General Wayne, who used this region as the base of observations against the Indians of Michigan and Ohio, closed his eyes almost within sight of the Chautauqua hillocks, and, while his body was still lying in the fort where he breathed his last, Commodore Perry was building a crude navy to sweep Lake Erie of the British. Perry came through New York state to Lake Ontario, from thence went to Buffalo and took a sleigh on the ice for Erie, also passing within sight of the high knobs of Chautauqua. Several of his vessels went from the region of Buffalo, and at the age of twenty-seven this young officer won a fame hardly surpassed in the naval history of the New World.

The influence of the lake and western climate on the seamen and soldiers who visited it was almost immediately seen in their location hereabout and settling of many towns on the southern shore of Lake Erie, and if both sides of this lake were American, there seems to be little doubt that it would now be approaching the time of being the greatest center of population in the New World. That center has been driven down the hot Ohio valley by the limitations of our boundary, which giving not American soil to the north of Lake Erie, has reluctantly abandoned the cool summer air and clear fine winters of the lakes for the hot limestone inclosures of the streams to the south.

Yet the present growth of towns along Lake Erie shows with what alacrity the populations of the lower West precipitate themselves against the shores of the lake. Cleveland is growing faster than Cincinnati. Detroit, long retarded by a _habitant_ population, is growing faster than Louisville. Toledo is growing faster than Wheeling. Buffalo has almost outgrown its more ancient neighbor of Pittsburgh. Chicago and Milwaukee stride ahead of St. Louis and Memphis. When the summer comes and the great national conventions choose their places of meeting, they benefit by experience, and both assemble the same year at Chicago to get the air of the lakes instead of sweltering in St. Louis or Cincinnati.

The fine climate about Chautauqua is in much a matter of altitude. Proceeding either east or west from this point, the shores of the lakes lie comparatively flat, and in the state of Ohio there is but one eminence sufficient to be called a mountain, and that is the Little Mountain not far from Painesville, a mere knob only about 200 feet above the plain, and ten miles back from Lake Erie. Even here some comfort can be had by the inhabitants of the plain, and a hotel was built at least fifty years ago.

The rise of public biography on the southern shore of Lake Erie has not been overlooked by the general reader; Garfield, Giddings, Wade, General McPherson, Hon. Henry B. Payne, Governor Todd, William Howells, Chief Justice Waite and many others are among the men whose minds have been lifted by the breezes from the lake, and which have already begun to display an energizing character attracting the attention of the whole country.

It has only been eighty-eight years since the first surveyors landed at Conneaut to survey the military lands of Connecticut and organize northern Ohio. When they pulled their boats ashore, which they had taken from Buffalo up the lake, they were so touched with their improved health that they moored on the beach, had prayer together and resolved to make the first day in the West a holiday. Mr. Harvey Rice in his recent history of the Western Reserve says: “The day was remarkably pleasant and the air bracing, and they partook of an extemporized feast with a keen relish, and gave for one of the toasts, ‘May these fifty sons and daughters multiply in sixteen years sixteen times fifty.’” Seven weeks after this picnic the site of Cleveland was selected for a city. Twenty-two years after that the first steamboat starting from Buffalo passed within sight of Chautauqua and entered the harbor of Cleveland and went on to Detroit.

I have been almost an extensive traveler in the United States, not like commercial travelers, merely visiting the towns and trading points, but the scenery and the health resorts. About twenty-four years ago I went on the press and the vocation of special correspondent was then just rising into consideration, and I threw myself toward it, desiring to gratify “the lust of the eye” by my newspaper facilities. Even before I left school I had tramped through the Alleghany mountains, through the Sinking Spring valley, the Seven mountains and the fountain town called Bellefonte, in the heart of the Alleghanies. Next I went through the Lackawanna and Wyoming valleys, visited the old resorts in the lap of Pennsylvania under the Blue Mountains, and in the midst of the war was a battle correspondent at such places as the Fauquier White Sulphur Springs. Next, lecturing opportunities took me through New York state and the West, and I visited Fredonia twice, in the vicinity of Chautauqua Lake, and there heard of the beautiful region almost overhanging it, on the highlands. With renewed opportunities I have been in California, about Los Angeles, and at Santa Barbara, and in southern Georgia and Florida, and in Cuba, at the Hot Springs of Arkansas, on the summits of the Osage mountains where the trade wind blows, at Springfield and through the Indian territory, and at San Antonio, in Texas, with smaller journeys to Oaklands and the Green Brier White Sulphur Springs, on the Alleghany tops and the Peaks of Otter, and along all our coasts as far as Mount Desert and New Brunswick, and several times in the White Mountains, down the St. Lawrence to the sea and out the Northern Pacific railroad, and I miss no opportunity, when I can afford it, to extend my information of places and people.

This is only said in answer to your request to give some idea of the relative quality of the air about Chautauqua Lake. I have seen no place where the air is so pure and the nights so agreeable anywhere along our lakes, and the spot seems almost arranged by nature with a reference to the anticipated arrangement of the people and the lines of communication in this republic.

When you consider that the low grade railroad route to the West must turn the Alleghany mountains to the North and use the limited space between those mountain spurs and the lake to reach the West without unnecessary expenditure of steam power, it would seem that Chautauqua Lake had been adjusted to the coming lines of travel, and we already have the Lake Shore, the Nickel Plate, the Erie, and the different Alleghany River lines, with more lines soon to come, to connect the Lehigh, the Lackawanna, the West Shore, and kindred systems with the great West.

Surely the spot is most agreeable for health and enjoyment to the great homogeneous people who are nearly evenly divided in numbers by the Alleghany range. The Alleghany mountains have hardly commenced their material development, and being full of coal, oil, iron, and the more precious minerals, the time is approaching when that mountain range will contain on its slopes the densest population in America, and its mineral resources be worked from the vicinity of Buffalo to Alabama.

My brother, Doctor Ralph M. Townsend, who was a surgeon connected with the medical schools of Philadelphia, and also a writer, was taken ill about ten years ago and compelled to search up and down the world for a climate in which to live. He tried Algiers, the south of France, the Bahamas, the Bermudas, Central America, Lower California, Colorado, and finally died in the Adirondack mountains, which he thought might allow him, in the dry air, to safely winter there. He did not like Florida, thought it was too damp, considered the southern part of California to be subject to winds, took cold in Colorado, which hastened his death, and finally considered that the northern climates were the most reliable. His vital power was almost spent when he came to this conclusion.

I was recently talking to General Pike Graham, a retired officer of the United States army and a native of Virginia, about the relative climate of Europe and America. He said that he had spent within a very few years three full winters abroad, and had tried almost all the resorts in the South of Europe, and he considered that the United States was much better situated for climate. He did not think Florida was a good climate, being too low and subject to changes and to dampness, but regarded southwestern Texas as perhaps the best he knew. I haw talked to other travelers who consider the City of Mexico to have the best air they know of on the continent.

It is of advantage to an invalid to have a resort from which the surrounding world of men is attainable. That accounts for Fortress Monroe in the winter, with probably an inferior climate, absorbing much of the best travel to Florida. It is softer than any indentation to the north of the Chesapeake, and can be reached by a husband, or brother, or wife, from any of the great centers of the North in a very little time. The same is the case with Chautauqua Lake; it is only a night from the East, and a night and a day from the far West. A large portion of the American people can visit it without taking rail at all, using the steam lines on the St. Lawrence and the great lakes. It is especially a summer climate and the foliage of western New York in the autumns is not equaled on the globe, at least not in the temperate zones. The finest autumn tints I ever recollect to have seen are in western New York, where the character of the trees assimilates to the ardor of the foliage, and the maples and poplars almost imitate the finery of the Indians who once dwelt in their region.

The Western States do not possess the variety of the East in coasts, hills, spas, and scenery; much of the Mississippi valley is limestone hill or flat plain, bare of mountains, and the first cool and lovely spot reached from the West is on the lofty headwaters of the Ohio, near Lake Erie. Following the Lake Shore to the westward I do not know of a single spot to be found like Chautauqua, though one should go as far as Duluth, where I have been also in the time of its prosperity, about 1872; the heat at Duluth, though so much farther to the north, was much greater in midsummer than it is on the Chautauqua uplands. Indeed, the heat of the American summer penetrates almost every resort, and I have known at Saratoga some of the most stagnant days of my life. A perfectly cool climate is not obtained along our coasts till one gets to New Brunswick, about St. John, and the coolness there has the drawback of heavy fogs and a moisture exceeding Ireland.

My brother, already referred to, possessed more special intelligence on this subject than myself, and at the commencement of his sickness he began a series of letters to the _Medical and Surgical Reporter_, where I read at the outstart this sentence: “My languor and lassitude from May until July was followed by a slight attack of laryngitis. I grew thinner daily. A week in July at the high, dry country estate of a friend did bring some increased strength and appetite, but a second week at Cape May brought on a severe attack of bronchitis. Recovering partly from this, two weeks were spent at Saratoga and Lake George with the effect of again bringing me home with a bronchial attack, and the last straw was finally attained by taking my boy to Atlantic City for his health. I had hardly come within smell of the salt marshes at this place when my bronchial trouble was brought back with redoubled intensity.”

He goes on to say that his doctor, Professor Da Costa, ordered him to find a new climate at once, as a deposit had already made its appearance in both lungs. This was just ten years ago, and in the month of October, he says: “Of the many different medical friends who came to say good-bye and add hearty wishes for my recovery, scarcely two united on the same place as the one best suited for me to go to.”

My brother’s letters, continued for several months and written just before his death, grappled with the question of a climate after severe experience. He found Mentone “the most crowded of all places with invalids, and the least deserving of patronage of any place long the Riviera.” “If you get into a carriage in front of a hotel on a beautiful sunshiny day you protest against taking an overcoat in the absolute heat, but when you turn a corner into a shady street or get on the shady side of a wall or hill and let the sun be temporarily obscured, you must quickly draw close your overcoat and pull a robe over your lap. I do not recommend Nice as a winter climate except by comparison, and I would never halt on the north shore of the Mediterranean if it were in my power to reach Egypt or Algeria.”

He kept a diary, wherever he went, of the condition of the weather, and Europe is almost invariably written “cloudy,” “chilly,” “raw,” “showery,” or “rain.” He thought much better of Algiers, where he stayed fifty-nine days, but how few persons can afford to go to Algiers—“and even there,” he says, “ten days were partially or wholly cloudy, and on eleven days we had continuous rains or showers, one of the rainy days being characterized by a smart hail storm.” This was between January and March.

Santa Barbara is probably the best indorsed wintering place on the coast of California. I went ashore there from a ship, and found a small town, partly of frame houses and partly of Mexican huts, with a dull mongrel life, hardly relieved by an old mission house a mile or so in the rear of the town; the invalids looked like banished people, and had then such infrequent access to the outer world that their eyes seemed yearning toward their homes in Chicago or elsewhere. The element of society and of change and life is more necessary than medicine to a desponding and invalid nature. That is the great trouble with the majority of American resorts, which are neither large enough to accommodate the crowd in the high season, nor near enough to the channels of travel in any season. There can not be, for example, a more wretched place than the Hot Springs of Arkansas, even in the height of the season, which is in late winter and spring; the close ragged valley with a sewer running through the middle of it, alternately a stench and deluge, and the series of raveled hotels wherein gambling is the chief occupation, where the rain is frequent and at times seems constant, and the natural life of the place is hard and outlaw like, and it takes about twenty-four hours to get anywhere in the current of mankind.

San Antonio, which has a good climate, has not a hotel fit for a person to inhabit who is acquainted with the comforts of the table. Though situated considerably inland, it is subject to what are called “northers,” or cold storms, that often bring hail, and advance upon the place with the rapidity of a spirit of ice and snow. Almost all those southern resorts are too warm for summer tourists, and this is the case at the Green Brier Sulphur Springs, notwithstanding its high altitude; the nights are cold, but mid-day is often exhausting.

About Oakland, in Maryland, is a cool climate, and the summit there has become something similar to Chautauqua Lake, having groups of hotels about six miles apart, and between them in the glades is a kind of religious camp settlement.

The interior of New York state, as at Cooperstown, is agreeable in the nights, but the limestone soil retains a portion of its heat and the days are often sultry.

The White Mountains have the disadvantage of remoteness from any considerable centers of population and are not upon the main highways of travel. It takes a whole day to go to the mountains from Boston, and many of the resorts there are distant from the railroad, and must be reached by livery teams, which slowly climb to the altitudes, and affect the patience and also increase the cost of living. The days are often very cold. I was in the White Mountains last summer, and undertook to walk from my hotel down to the village of Franconia, in plain sight. I generally found that the heat spoiled my linen and brought me back to the hotel used up.

* * * * *

For my own part I am fully persuaded that the most powerful goddess, and one that rules mankind with the most authoritative sway is Truth. For though she is resisted by all, and ofttimes has drawn up against her the plausibilities of falsehood in the subtlest forms, she triumphs over all opposition. I know not how it is that she, by her own unadorned charms, forces herself into the heart of man. At times her power is instantly felt; at other times, though obscured for awhile, she at last bursts forth in meridian splendor, and conquers by her innate force the falsehood with which she has been oppressed.—_Polybius._

A DREAMY OLD TOWN.

By EDITH SESSIONS TUPPER.

To Chautauquans the name Chautauqua means one thing; and yet I believe that anything pertaining to Chautauqua county must of necessity be of interest to the thousands who know and love the beautiful lake which bears the name. To this end has this rambling sketch of the oldest town in the county been prepared. It lies only seven miles away from _the_ Chautauqua; at just the right distance for a day’s excursion from that point, when the student’s head, bewildered by so many good things, demands and needs a day’s rest and diversion. The drive is a delightful one, passing through the pretty little village of Mayville and over the hills, from one of which one gets a view of two lakes, beautiful Chautauqua flashing and sparkling under the mid-summer sun, glorious old Erie rolling his blue waters with slow and majestic movement. Then descending these hills one comes into the pleasant valley and into the dreamy old town. It has been said of it, that one-half of it is dead and the other half gone to its funeral, but to the tired heart and brain its peaceful quiet comes as a whiff of salt air or a breeze from mountain heights. With natural advantages equal to those of many noted watering places, it is somewhat of a mystery why the sleepy old place has never awakened and found itself famous.

But it lies, sleeping beauty that it is, dreaming, shut in by a range of dark green hills on one side and by the waters of the bluest of all the great lakes on the other. There are a few factories and mills within its precincts, but somehow no whirr of machinery nor other sound ever comes from them to break the stillness, which is Sabbath-like every day. It boasts of three railroads, but each at a respectful enough distance from the town, so that the faint shriek of the locomotive alone causes the sojourner to remember that far away, somewhere, outside, there is such a thing as a busy, noisy, bustling world. It is the home of solidity, respectability, and wealth. A place in which erring human nature finds it very easy to be good; in which the old-fashioned virtues of sobriety, temperance, and hospitality hold sway; in which no more reckless amusements than lawn tennis and teas, with an occasional reception at one of the many beautiful homes, or a clam-bake on the shores of the lake are permitted; a thoroughly drowsy old town.

Westfield, the oldest town of the famous Chautauqua county, New York state, lies on the shore of Lake Erie, fifty-seven miles west from Buffalo. It is a garden of the gods on a small scale. Lying back one mile and a half from the lake, it receives its breezes at exactly the right temperature. It is never too hot in summer; rarely too cold in winter.

The town is divided by a deep picturesque gorge, through which Chautauqua Creek runs, and whose sides are now high and rocky, now a bewildering and beautiful mass of wild grapevines, chestnut and willow, and shrubs of nearly every variety and description. It is spanned at seemingly the most inaccessible places by various bridges and ah! the beauty of that deep chasm on an autumn day, when it is ablaze with the color of maple leaf and sumach and golden rod. This gorge deepens and widens, grows more wild and gloomy as it runs back among the Chautauqua hills, until it culminates in a most remarkable freak of nature, known the country round as the “Hog’s Back,” of which a description will be given further on.

The first white settlement of this town, and of the entire county as well, was commenced in 1802, at what was long known as the Cross Roads, and which is now marked by a curious stone monument. The earlier history of these regions is dim and indistinct, but all tradition and history, as well as many curious relics which have been discovered, point to the fact that after the mound builders, the Neutral nations, or as they were called by the Senecas, the _Kahkwas_, were the first occupants of the soil of Chautauqua. They dwelt in forty villages, some of which were near Fort Niagara; some in Erie county, but the greater part of their territory extended west along the shore of Lake Erie, through Chautauqua county into Ohio. They were a strange race of people, famous hunters, exceedingly fierce and superstitious. The first knowledge had by Europeans of the Lake Erie regions, and of the tribes which inhabited them, was obtained by the French in Canada; their enterprise in this surpassing that of the British.

Father Lalement, in a letter to the Provincial of Jesuits in France, dated at St. Mary’s Mission, May 19, 1641, speaks of the Neutrals, and also of a warlike nation named the Eries, or the Nation of the Cat, so called from the extraordinary number of wild cats which infested their section, that lived to the south of Lake Erie and west of the Neutral nation. The Eries were great warriors and were a terror to the Iroquois. They fought with poisoned arrows, having no fire-arms.

Both these nations were cruelly destroyed by the Iroquois in 1651 and 1655. The final overthrow of the Neutral nation is supposed to have taken place near Buffalo; the destruction of the Eries, along the shore of the beautiful lake bearing this name. The whole force of the Iroquois embarked in canoes upon the blue waters of the lake, and after assaulting the Eries at a point, the exact location of which is not now known, scenes most horrible and revolting were enacted, and the brave Eries were totally annihilated in a fearful butchery.

The accounts of the destruction of these nations are found in the written narratives of the Jesuits, who were living at that time among the Indians of New York and Canada. From the extirpation of the Neutral and Erie nations, until its settlement by pioneers, Chautauqua county, and especially the portion along the shore of Lake Erie, was the home of the Senecas, the fiercest tribe of the Iroquois nation.

In 1679, La Salle, Tonti, his Italian lieutenant, Father Louis Hennepin and several others set sail from Cayuga Creek, a small stream emptying into Niagara River, for the foot of Lake Erie, steering west-southwest. They made many leagues, passing what is now Chautauqua county. They are supposed to be the first Europeans who saw the Chautauqua hills, gloomy and rugged, covered with mighty forests. The boundary line between the French and English possessions in America had long been a cause of contention, and the territory of Chautauqua county was included in the disputed ground. Communications between the French posts on the Mississippi and French forts in Canada were made by the long and tedious routes of the Mississippi, Green Bay routes, and afterward by Lake Michigan and the Wabash. The easy communication between Canada and the Mississippi by way of Lake Erie and Chautauqua Lake was not discovered until 1752, when the Marquis Du Quesne, having been appointed Governor-General of Canada, arrived there. He at once took more aggressive and decided measures to obtain possession of the disputed territory, than any of his predecessors had done. He immediately began to construct the long line of frontier forts which La Salle had suggested, that were to unite Canada and Louisiana by way of the Ohio. This bold step is regarded as leading to the French and Indian war, which resulted in losing Canada to the French. One of Du Quesne’s first acts was to open a portage road from the mouth of the Chautauqua Creek, which empties into Lake Erie a mile and a half from the town of Westfield, to the head of Chautauqua Lake, and thus open communication between Lake Erie and the head waters of the Ohio.

In a letter which he sends to the French minister of the marine and colonies, in Paris, he states that his intention is to begin his posts near the mouth of _Chataconit_, or Chautauqua Creek. This portage road was cut through the wilderness more than twenty years before the battle of Lexington, and yet traces of it to this day are to be seen in and about the town. In 1761 Sir William Johnson journeyed to Detroit to establish a treaty with the Ottawa confederacy. On his return, he sailed along the southern shore of Lake Erie, and in his journal speaks thus of this portage:

“Wednesday, October 1, 1761.—Embarked at _Presque Isle_ (Erie) at
7 o’clock, with the wind strong ahead, continued so all the day,
notwithstanding it improved all day, and got to _Jadaghque Creek,
and carrying place_, which is a fine harbor and encampment.”

In a letter from General Washington to General Irvine, dated Mount Vernon, October 31, 1788, he speaks thus of this portage:

“If the Chautauqua Lake at the head of the Connewango River
approximates Lake Erie as closely as it is laid down in the draft
you sent me, it presents a very short portage indeed between the
two, and access to all those above the latter.

“I am, etc.,

“GEORGE WASHINGTON.”

One of Chautauqua’s earliest pioneers was William Peacock, who passed over this road in 1800. Ten years later he became the agent of the Holland Land Company. He was an eccentric and shrewd man, and in a short time became exceedingly wealthy, the hard working land owners thought at their expense. He was charged with reserving the choicest farms, best water powers and timber lands for himself and his favorites. The land holders also thought he was not giving them credit for interest which they paid from time to time upon their land, and these opinions found vent in the newspapers, and the agitation grew until on the 6th of February, 1836, a mob gathered from all parts of the county at Dewittville, a little hamlet on the shore of Chautauqua Lake.

Word was brought to Mr. Peacock at Mayville, a village at the head of the lake, and seven miles from Westfield, that a raid was to be made upon the land office that night, and that mischief might be done to his person unless he should make good his escape. Donald McKenzie, a northwestern fur trader, and brother of the McKenzie who discovered the river of that name, had three years previous to this come to Mayville to live, and was in the land office that dreary February afternoon when this alarming message was brought. The stalwart Scotchman, through whose veins flowed some of the proudest blood of Caledonia, feared neither “mon nor de’il.” It was his custom to wear a very long black coat which fell in ample folds around his massive frame. Mr. Peacock was an undersized man. Donald McKenzie cast the drapery of his inky cloak about the frightened little man and thus shielded and shrouded from sight, he hurried him up the hill to his home, whence he was soon taken in a covered sleigh to Westfield, and down the lake shore road to Buffalo as fast as horses could carry him, and none too soon was he out of the way, for at dusk a crowd of infuriated men, numbering two or three hundred, made a raid upon the land office, demolished it, and after working until near morning succeeded in forcing open the vault and seized the books, records and contracts and carried them two miles away, and heaping them up made a goodly bonfire of them. The ruins of the land office are yet to be seen in Mayville. The land holders by this mad proceeding brought only “confusion worse than death” upon themselves, while the prudent Peacock accumulated a wonderful property, and was afterward made judge. He left to one heir alone the whole village of Barcelona, the harbor of Westfield, situated just east of the mouth of Chautauqua Creek, the starting point of the French portage road. This harbor was made a port of entry by the general government. In 1828 a lighthouse was erected by a citizen at his own expense; a steamer named the “William Peacock,” for the hero of the land office story, was built; all craft on the lake stopped at the little port; a company was formed called the Barcelona Company; the village was enlarged, the streets being laid out in city fashion; corner lots sold for fabulous sums; men lost their heads; the place was to be a great port; when suddenly the railroad came creeping along the shore; the bubble broke; the mushroom town was a failure; fortunes were lost, and to-day Barcelona harbor is a deserted village with grass-grown streets, gaunt houses, whose windows stare reproachfully at the gay carriage loads passing by, and an old white lighthouse, which, like the ghostly finger of the past, seems to beckon to all to come and look upon the desolation around it. A few sad faced women who might have ridden in their carriages; brawny fishermen who might have owned their blocks and wharves and shipping, are the only inhabitants. Down on the beach of a bright autumn afternoon the nets are spread a-drying; little huts, whose half open doors reveal the hauls of herring and bass, are here and there; ruddy faced boys lie sprawling on the sand, sunning themselves; the trees have grown thick and tall about the lighthouse upon the cliff; no sound is heard save the hiss of the waves as they tumble in; the quaint little harbor wears a disappointed look. Old “Groats’ Inn,” though time has used it roughly, alone seems to try and hold its ancient smartness, like an antiquated spinster who wishes it understood that the reason she has never married is not that she never had an offer. Summer and winter for many long years has it stood there on the edge of the cliff, waiting for the rush of travel which never came; ready to give hospitality to man and beast, but no wayfarer ever knocks for admission and entertainment. There is nothing sadder than a deserted village. What a mockery it seems of all human hopes and ambitions. In these old houses that look as if they were weary waiting through so many long years, what homely, uneventful lives have been spent; what tired eyes have closed for the last time; what aching and disappointed hearts have ceased to beat, thankful, no doubt, that the worry and fret were all over.

When old Judge Peacock died, his heirs each received one thirteenth of his vast estate. One grand-nephew, whose father and mother had been cousins, fell heir to two-thirteenths, and from being a poor lad living among the fishermen, found himself the possessor of this entire harbor and nearly all the land lying between it and Westfield.

In June, 1836, four months after the land office at Mayville had been destroyed, William H. Seward having been appointed to the agency, and also having an interest in the purchase, established the land office in Westfield and lived there until his election as governor of New York. The Seward mansion is one of the attractions to visitors. It is a “brave old house,” with a beautiful lawn, fronting on the village green. Its trees are trimmed in a peculiar old-fashioned way. Its iron gates stand open, as if inviting the passer to enter and look upon its quaint surroundings. Another stately old-time mansion is that of the Patterson family. It was originally occupied by a brother of Seward’s, and when a member of the family died its front door was painted black! A superb lawn shaded by grand old trees sweeps away on one side; a garden of grapevines lies on the other; in front great beds of scarlet geranium blaze, and the trees and shrubs are out in the same quaint pattern as those upon the Seward estate. The fashion of other days is plainly to be seen in everything pertaining to both these rare old places.

The drives about the town are picturesque and delightful. From nearly every street and road you get enchanting views of the lake on one hand and the range of hills on the other. The streets are laid in curves, and you are continually sweeping rounded corners and coming upon unexpected beauties. Old trees meet above your head; you cross and recross the gorge dividing the town; far below you rushes the stream; down a shaded street you go past old-fashioned homes and modern villas in sharp contrast, and suddenly through overhanging boughs you catch the glory of the blue waters of old Erie; you are soon in Barcelona harbor; from there you can drive for miles along the beach, now on the cliff, with the waves thundering in many feet below you, now further back from the shore past finely cultivated farms, vineyards, orchards, fields “afoam with sweetness,” and never failing to catch through grove, across fields of waving corn and grain, wooded hollows through which clear waters run, glimpses of the lake’s witchery.

Or you can drive into Peacock’s Grove at Barcelona—a lovely little forest of tall graceful trees, with a velvet turf from which all annoying brush has been removed. Leave your carriage, throw yourself upon the ground and drink in the ever changing beauty of the magic view; the turquoise blue of the water, of a sunny morning; the sapphire blue of a drowsy summer afternoon; the molten glory of sky and water at sunset; the slow oncoming of the solemn moon. How the trees seem to whisper to the waters as if they were talking over all they have witnessed in common; faintly comes the tinkle of a cow bell from a neighboring copse; the crows are calling to each other in the tree-tops; across the path scamper the squirrels; the bay is dotted with the boats of the fishermen; there is scarcely a ripple on the vast stretch of water before you; a heavenly peace lies on lake and shore.

Or take the drive to the wonderful “Hog’s Back.” Leaving the town behind you, commence the gradual ascent of the dark and rugged hills. Up and up, higher and higher you go, now pause and look back. The valley lies smiling before you—a lovely jewel with its setting of the marvelously blue waters behind it. You leave your carriage and horses in a hospitable farm yard and set out on foot for the “Hog’s Back.” Across a meadow or two and you come into a forest of pines and hemlocks. The wind sighs through the trees as it only sighs through such a wood; far, far off you hear the rushing of water. You go on a few steps further and suddenly you find yourself on the edge of a most frightful precipice, the descent into which is over a narrow ledge of earth thrown up by some tremendous eruption into the shape of the back of a giant hog. And such an abyss! Words can not express the awful stillness which reigns over this mighty gorge whose sides are lined with gloomy forests. Primeval solitudes could not have been more desolate. The descent is terrible, but nothing in comparison with the dizzy ascent. One draws a breath of relief when safely up once more and out from the shade of the mysterious pines into the gladness of sunlight and an open sky.

Having heard that a mile or so from the town were still to be seen traces of an old French fort, built either at the time Du Quesne cut the portage road, or during the French and Indian war, the writer drove with a friend one morning in search of the place. After many questions, directions and counter-directions, we finally found the farm upon which it was said to be located. The genial farmer to whom we stated our errand laughed and answered:

“O, yes, I’ve got all there is left of it, which ain’t much.”

He told us we could drive nearly to the spot, and led the way, walking by the carriage, while a joyful dog leaped on before. Past the farm house, barns, the orchard flaunting its magnificent red fruit, through the “back lot,” across a field perfumed with its “second crop” of red clover, we came to a rail fence almost hidden from view by young chestnut trees and the rioting wild grapevine. Thus far, and no farther, could we go in the carriage, and leaving it, we stepped over the fence chivalrously lowered by our guide, and soon saw “all there’s left of it.” Only an immense circular breastwork, with tall straight trees many, many years old growing on its top, is left of what may have been simply a supply station, a fort erected by the French against the Indians, possibly the fort where the brave Eries were massacred by the Iroquois, or going further back, it may have been the work of the mound builders.

“I can’t tell you anything about it,” said our obliging guide, “but if you want to take the trouble to go there, old Uncle Dave Cochrane will tell you all about it. He’s ninety years old, but he remembers everything, and he’ll be glad to see you and tell you all he knows.”

Being directed to Uncle Dave’s, we left the farm and drove in the opposite direction toward the lake. When about half way to Barcelona, we turned aside from the main road, and in a hollow, close by Chautauqua Creek, found an old-fashioned stuccoed house, over which the scarlet woodbine crept and clung lovingly. We could bring no one to the front door, and so the Adventurous One commenced to explore the rear of the house, and was rewarded by seeing peering over the top of the coal bin in the woodshed, an old, old man with a chisel in his hand.

“Are you Uncle David Cochrane?”

“Hey?” shouted the old gentleman.

The question was repeated, and the answer was literally bawled:

“Yes; who be you?”

The Adventurous One was obliged to state her name and errand before the old man would move one step from behind the coal bin.

“I’ll come around to the front of the house,” announced this tremendous voice, coming with startling effect from this little bundle of humanity to which it belonged, “for I’m hard o’ hearin’.”

And so Uncle Dave and the Adventurous One sat down on a bench by the old stone wall around the little garden, and while the autumn sun smiled down on the waters of the pretty stream that flowed by the old man’s door, this voice from the past spoke freely and at length.

Uncle Dave was a remarkable old gentleman, possessing an astounding memory, of which faculty he was well aware, and of which he was very proud. He had dates, incidents, historical events at his tongue’s end. On being asked, who in his opinion had built the fortifications we had that morning seen, he said emphatically:

“It was some of them ten foot fellers that lived here long before the Injuns. Injuns never done it, they didn’t know enough, and they are too old for the French to have built ’em.”