The Project Gutenberg EBook of America, Volume II (of 6), by Joel Cook
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Title: America, Volume II (of 6)
Author: Joel Cook
Release Date: December 31, 2012 [EBook #41742]
Language: English
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[Illustration]
_EDITION ARTISTIQUE_
The World's Famous
Places and Peoples
AMERICA
BY
JOEL COOK
In Six Volumes
Volume II.
MERRILL AND BAKER
New York London
THIS EDITION ARTISTIQUE OF THE WORLD'S FAMOUS PLACES AND PEOPLES IS
LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED COPIES, OF WHICH THIS
COPY IS NO. 205
Copyright, Henry T. Coates & Co., 1900
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME II
PAGE
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, YELLOWSTONE _Frontispiece_
THE SUSQUEHANNA WEST OF FALMOUTH 284
THE CONEMAUGH NEAR FLORENCE 312
ON THE ASHLEY, NEAR CHARLESTON, S. C. 352
ON THE OCKLAWAHA 382
LINCOLN MONUMENT, LINCOLN PARK, CHICAGO 432
CROSSING THE ALLEGHENIES.
IV.
CROSSING THE ALLEGHENIES.
The Old Pike -- The National Road -- Early Routes Across the
Mountains -- Old Lancaster Road -- Columbia Railroad -- The
Pennsylvania Route -- Haverford College -- Villa Nova -- Bryn
Mawr College -- Paoli -- General Wayne -- The Chester Valley --
Pequea Valley -- The Conestogas -- Lancaster -- Franklin and
Marshall College -- James Buchanan -- Thaddeus Stevens --
Conewago Hills -- Susquehanna River -- Columbia -- The
Underground Railroad -- Middletown -- Lochiel -- Simon Cameron
-- The Clan Cameron -- Harrisburg -- Charles Dickens and the
Camel's Back Bridge -- John Harris -- Lincoln's Midnight Ride
-- Cumberland Valley -- Carlisle -- Indian School -- Dickinson
College -- The Whisky Insurrection -- Tom the Tinker -- Lebanon
Valley -- Cornwall Ore Banks -- Otsego Lake -- Cooperstown --
James Fenimore Cooper -- Richfield Springs -- Cherry Valley --
Sharon Springs -- Howe's Cave -- Binghamton -- Northumberland
-- Williamsport -- Sunbury -- Fort Augusta -- The Dauphin Gap
-- Duncannon -- Duncan's Island -- Juniata River -- Tuscarora
Gap -- The Grasshopper War -- Mifflin -- Lewistown Narrows --
Kishicoquillas Valley -- Logan -- Jack's Narrows -- Huntingdon
-- The Standing Stone -- Bedford -- Morrison's Cove -- The
Sinking Spring -- Brainerd, the Missionary -- Tyrone --
Bellefonte -- Altoona -- Hollidaysburg -- The Portage Railroad
-- Blair's Gap -- The Horse Shoe -- Kittanning Point -- Thomas
Blair and Michael Maguire -- Loretto -- Prince Gallitzin --
Ebensburg -- Cresson Springs -- The Conemaugh River -- South
Fork -- Johnstown -- The Great Flood -- Laurel Ridge --
Packsaddle Narrows -- Chestnut Ridge -- Kiskiminetas River --
Loyalhanna Creek -- Fort Ligonier -- Great Bear Cave --
Hannastown -- General Arthur St. Clair -- Greensburg --
Braddock's Defeat -- Pittsburg, the Iron City -- Monongahela
River -- Allegheny River -- Ohio River -- Fort Duquesne --
Fort Pitt -- View from Mount Washington -- Pittsburg Buildings
-- Great Factories -- Andrew Carnegie -- George Westinghouse,
Jr. -- Allegheny Park and Monument -- Coal and Coke -- Davis
Island Dam -- Youghiogheny River -- Connellsville -- Natural
Gas -- Murrysville -- Petroleum -- Canonsburg -- Washington --
Petroleum Development -- Kittanning -- Modoc Oil District --
Fort Venango -- Oil City -- Pithole City -- Oil Creek --
Titusville -- Corry -- Decadence of Oil-Fields.
THE OLD PIKE.
The American aspiration has always been to go westward. In the early
history of the Republic the Government gave great attention to the
means of reaching the Western frontier, then cut off by what was
regarded as the almost insurmountable barrier of the Alleghenies.
General Washington was the first to project a chain of internal
improvements across the mountains, by the route of the Potomac to
Cumberland, then a Maryland frontier fort, and thence by roads to the
headwaters of the Ohio. The initial enactment was procured by him from
the Virginia Legislature in 1774, for improving the navigation of the
Potomac; but the Revolutionary War interfered, and he renewed the
movement afterwards in 1784, resulting in the charter of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, of which Washington was the first
President. Little was done at that early period, however, in building
the canal, but the Government constructed the famous "National Road,"
the first highway over the Allegheny Mountains, from Cumberland in
Maryland, mainly through Southwestern Pennsylvania, to Wheeling on
the Ohio. This noted highway was finished and used throughout in 1818,
and, until the railways crossed the mountains, it was the great route
of travel to the West. It was familiarly known as the "Old Pike," and
Thomas B. Searight has entertainingly recorded its pleasant memories,
for it has now become mainly a relic of the past:
"We hear no more of the clanging hoof,
And the stage-coach, rattling by;
For the steam king rules the travelled world,
And the Old Pike's left to die."
He tells of the long lines of Conestoga wagons, each drawn by six
heavy horses, their broad wheels, canvas-covered tops and huge cargoes
of goods; of the swaying, rushing mail passenger coach, the
fleet-footed pony express; the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle,
the droves of horses and mules sent East from the "blue-grass" farms
of Kentucky; and occasionally of a long line of men and women, tied
two and two to a rope, driven by a slave-master from the South, to be
sold in the newer region of the Southwest. He describes how the famous
driver, Sam Sibley, brings up his grand coach at the hotel in
Uniontown with the great Henry Clay as chief passenger, and then after
dinner whirls away with a rush, but unfortunately, dashing over a pile
of stone in the road, the coach upsets. Out crawls the driver with a
broken nose, and a crowd hastens to rescue Mr. Clay from the upturned
coach. He is unhurt, and brushing the dust from his clothes says:
"This is mixing the Clay of Kentucky with the limestone of
Pennsylvania." Many are the tales of the famous road. One veteran
teamster relates his experience of a night at the tavern on the
mountain side--thirty six-horse teams were in the wagon-yard, one
hundred mules in an adjoining lot, a thousand hogs in another, as many
fat cattle from the West in a field, and the tavern crowded with
teamsters and drovers--the grunts of the hogs, the braying of the
mules, the bellowing of the cattle and the crunching and stamping of
the horses, "made music beyond a dream." In 1846 the message arrived
at Cumberland at two o'clock in the morning that war was declared
against Mexico, and a noted driver took the news over the mountains,
past a hundred taverns and a score of villages, one hundred and
thirty-one miles to Wheeling, in twelve hours. Over this famous road
the Indian chief Black Hawk was brought, but the harness broke, the
team ran away and the coach was smashed. Black Hawk crept out of the
wreck, stood up surprised, and, wiping a drop of blood from his brow,
earnestly muttered, "Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!" Barnum brought Jenny Lind over
this road from Wheeling, paying $17.25 fare apiece to Baltimore.
Lafayette came along it in 1825, the population all turning out to
cheer him. Andrew Jackson came over it four years later to be
inaugurated the first Western President, and subsequently also came
Presidents Harrison, Polk and Taylor. What was thought of the "Old
Pike" in its day of active service was well expressed at a reception
to John Quincy Adams. Returning from the West, he arrived at Uniontown
in May, 1837, and was warmly welcomed. Hon. Hugh Campbell, who made
the reception address, said to the ex-President: "We stand here, sir,
upon the Cumberland Road, which has broken down the great wall of the
Appalachian Mountains. This road, we trust, constitutes an
indissoluble chain of Union, connecting forever, as one, the East and
the West."
In the early part of the nineteenth century, Lancaster in Pennsylvania
was the largest inland city of the United States. It is sixty-nine
miles from Philadelphia, and the "old Lancaster Road," the finest
highway of that period, was constructed to connect them. This began
the Pennsylvania route across the Alleghenies to the West, which
afterwards became the most travelled. In 1834 the Pennsylvania
Government opened its State work, the Columbia Railroad between the
Delaware and the Susquehanna. In 1836 there were four daily lines of
stages running in connection with this State railroad between
Philadelphia and Pittsburg, making the journey in sixty hours.
Gradually afterwards the Pennsylvania Railroad was extended across the
mountains, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was completed to
Wheeling, and they then took away the business from the "Old Pike"
and all the other wagon or canal routes to the Ohio River.
CHESTER AND LANCASTER VALLEYS.
Let us go westward across the Alleghenies by the Pennsylvania route.
East of the mountains it traverses a rich agricultural region,
limestone valleys, intersected by running streams and enclosed between
parallel ridges of hills, stretching, like the mountain ranges, across
the country from northeast to southwest. It is a land of prolific
farms and dairies, and for miles beyond Philadelphia the line is
adjoined by attractive villages and many beautiful suburban villas.
Three noted institutions of learning are passed--Haverford College,
the great Quaker College, standing in an extensive wooded park; the
Roman Catholic Augustinian College at Villa Nova, with its
cross-surmounted dome and twin church spires; and the Bryn Mawr
College for women, one of the most famous in the United States. This
is a region first settled by Welsh Quakers, and the name Bryn Mawr is
Welsh for the "great hill." It is a wealthy and extensive settlement,
and its College has spacious buildings and over three hundred
students. At the Commencements they all join in singing their
impressive College hymn:
"Thou Gracious Inspiration, our guiding star,
Mistress and Mother, all hail Bryn Mawr,
Goddess of wisdom, thy torch divine
Doth beacon thy votaries to thy shrine,
And we, thy daughters, would thy vestals be,
Thy torch to consecrate eternally."
A few miles beyond is Paoli, preserving in its name the memory of the
Corsican patriot Paoli, and the birthplace of the Revolutionary
General "Mad Anthony" Wayne. Here the British defeated the American
patriots in September, 1777. It stands on the verge of one of the
garden spots of Pennsylvania, the Chester Valley, a charming region of
broad and smiling acres, bounded on the northwest by the Welsh
Mountain and Mine Hill, and a veritable land of plenty. The Brandywine
and Valley Creeks water it, flowing out respectively to the Delaware
and the Schuylkill. Beyond the long ridge of Mine Hill is Lancaster
County, another land of rich farms, with many miles of grain and
tobacco fields. Mine Hill is the watershed between the Delaware and
the Susquehanna, the fertile Pequea Valley being at its western base.
This is a great wheat country, and from here was sent the first
American grain across the Atlantic to feed Europe, the Lancaster
County wheat, in the days before the railroads brought it from the
West, ruling prices for the American markets. It was hauled out in the
ponderous Conestoga wagons, named after the Indian tribe which
formerly ruled this region--their name signifying "the great magic
land." They were a quarrelsome people, fighting all the neighboring
tribes, and becoming deadly foes of the whites. Repeated wars
decimated them, until in 1763 their last remnant, being hunted almost
to death, took refuge in the ancient jail at Lancaster, and were
cruelly massacred by the guerillas called the "Paxton Boys."
In the midst of the wheat lands and bordering the broad Conestoga
Creek, flowing down to the Susquehanna at Safe Harbor, is the city of
Lancaster, its red sandstone castellated jail being a conspicuous
object in the view. This city was originally called Hickory Town, but
in the eighteenth century its loyal people christened it Lancaster,
and named the chief streets, intersecting at the Central Market
Square, King and Queen Streets, with Duke Street parallel to the
latter. Prior to 1812 it was the capital of Pennsylvania. Lancaster is
an attractive and comfortable old city of thirty-five thousand
population, with many mills and factories and large tobacco houses. It
has a splendid Soldiers' Monument in the Central Square, with finely
sculptured guards, representing each branch of the service, watching
at the base of the magnificent shaft. Upon the outskirts are the
ornate buildings of Franklin and Marshall College, a foundation of the
German Reformed Church, and it also has a Theological Seminary. The
charm of Lancaster, however, is Woodward Hill Cemetery, on a bold
bluff, washed by the Conestoga Creek, which forms a graceful circle
around its base. Upon the surface and sides of the bluff the graves
are terraced. Here is the tomb of James Buchanan, the only President
sent from Pennsylvania, who died in 1868, at his home of Wheatland on
the outskirts of the town. Another noted citizen of Lancaster was
Thaddeus Stevens, who long represented it in Congress, and was the
Republican leader in the House of Representatives during the Civil
War, and afterwards until his death in 1868. He was the great champion
of the emancipation of the negro race, and refused to be buried in the
cemetery because negroes were excluded. Upon the grave which he
selected in Lancaster are these words: "I repose in this quiet and
secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but
finding other cemeteries limited by charter rules as to race. I have
chosen it that I might be enabled to illustrate in death the principle
which I have advocated through a long life--equality of man before
his Creator." When Lancaster was the chief town of the Colonial
frontier in 1753, it was the place where Braddock's unfortunate
expedition against Fort Duquesne at Pittsburg was organized and
equipped, the work being mainly directed by Benjamin Franklin. Robert
Fulton was born in Lancaster County, and he grew up and was educated
at Lancaster, going afterwards to Philadelphia.
[Illustration: _The Susquehanna West of Falmouth_]
THE SUSQUEHANNA RIVER.
The line westward from Lancaster crosses one long ridge-like hill
after another stretching broadly over the country, and finally comes
to the outlying ridge of the Allegheny range, the South Mountain,
beyond which is the great Appalachian Valley. One railroad route
boldly crosses this mountain through the depressions in the Conewago
hills, where the picturesque Conewago Creek, the Indian "long reach,"
flows down its beautiful gorge to the Susquehanna, and this railroad
finally comes out on that river at Middletown below Harrisburg; the
other route follows a more easy gradient westward ten miles to
Columbia, and this is used by the heavier freight trains. Coming
towards it over the hills, the wide Susquehanna lies low in its broad
valley, enclosed by the distant ridge of the Kittatinny bounding
Cumberland County beyond the river. As it is approached, the thought
is uppermost that this is one of the noblest, and yet among the
meanest rivers in the country. Rising in Otsego Lake in New York, it
flows over four hundred miles down to Chesapeake Bay, receives large
tributaries, its West Branch being two hundred miles long, rends all
the Allegheny Mountain chains, and takes a great part of the drainage
of that region in New York and Pennsylvania, passes through grand
valleys, noble gorges and most magnificent scenery, and yet it is so
thickly sown with islands, rocks and sand-bars, rapids and shallows,
as to defy all attempts to make it satisfactorily navigable excepting
by lumber rafts, logs and a few canal boats. Thus the Indians
significantly gave its name meaning the island-strewn, broad
and shallow river, and it is little more than a gigantic drain for
Central Pennsylvania.
On its bank is Columbia, a town of busy iron and steel manufacture, as
the whole range of towns are for miles up to and beyond Harrisburg. At
Columbia first appeared, about 1804, that mysterious agency known as
the "Underground Railroad," whereby fugitive slaves were secretly
passed from one "station" to another from "Mason and Dixon's Line" to
Canada, mainly through the aid and active exertions of philanthropic
Quakers. All through Chester and Lancaster Counties and northward were
laid the routes of this peculiar line, whose ramifications became more
and more extensive as time passed, making the Fugitive Slave Law
almost a nullity during the decade before the Civil War. There were
hundreds of good people engaged in facilitating the unfortunate
travellers who fled for freedom, and many have been the escapades with
the slave-hunters, whose traffic long ago happily ended. At Middletown
the Swatara River flows in from the hills of Lebanon County, there
being all along the Susquehanna a prodigious development of the steel
industry as well as rich farms on the fertile bottom lands. Here is
the historic estate of Lochiel, which was the home of Simon Cameron,
who for many years ruled the political destinies of Pennsylvania. He
was born in 1799 at Maytown, near Marietta, on the Susquehanna, a few
miles above Columbia, in humble circumstances, and came as a poor
printer's boy to Harrisburg, rose to wealth and power, and when he was
full of years and honors placed the mantle of the United States
Senatorship upon his son. Their "Clan Cameron" which ruled
Pennsylvania for two generations has been regarded as the best managed
political "machine" in the Union, having in its ranks and among its
allies not only politicians, but bankers, railway managers, merchants,
manufacturers and capitalists, and men in every walk of life,
ramifying throughout the Keystone State.
Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, stands upon the sloping
eastern bank of the river in the grandest scenery. Just above, the
Susquehanna breaks through the Kittatinny at the Dauphin Gap, giving a
superb display of the rending asunder of the towering mountain chain.
Opposite are the forest-clad hills of York and Cumberland bordering
the fertile Cumberland Valley spreading off to the southwest, while
behind the city this great Appalachian Valley continues between its
enclosing ridges as the Lebanon Valley northeast to the Schuylkill
River at Reading. Market Street is the chief Harrisburg highway, and
the Pennsylvania Railroad is the back border of the town. The State
Capitol, set on a hill, was burnt, and is being rebuilt. A pleasant
park encloses the site, and from the front a wide street leads down to
the river, making a pretty view, with a Soldiers' Monument in the
centre, which is an enlarged reproduction of Cleopatra's Needle. The
Front Street of the city, along the river bank, is the popular
promenade, and is adorned with the Executive Mansion and other fine
residences, which have a grand outlook across the broad expanse of
river and islands. Bridges cross over, among them the old "camel's
back," a mile long, and having its shelving stone ice-breakers jutting
up stream. This is the old wooden covered bridge that Charles Dickens
wrote about in his _American Notes_. On his first American visit he
came into Harrisburg from York County on a stage-coach through this
bridge, and he wrote: "We crossed the river by a wooden bridge, roofed
and covered on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was
profoundly dark, perplexed with great beams, crossing and re-crossing
it at every possible angle, and through the broad chinks and crevices
in the floor the river gleamed far down below, like a legion of eyes.
We had no lamps, and as the horses stumbled and floundered through
this place towards the distant speck of dying light, it seemed
interminable. I really could not persuade myself at first as we
rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with hollow noises--and I held
down my head to save it from the rafters--but that I was in a painful
dream, and that this could not be reality." The old bridge is much the
same to-day as when Dickens crossed it.
Harrisburg was named for John Harris, who established a ferry here,
and alongside the river bank is the little "Harris Park" which
contains his grave. The stump of the tree at the foot of which he was
buried is carefully preserved. A drunken band of Conestoga Indians
came this way in 1718, and, capturing the faithful ferryman, tied him
to the tree to be tortured and burnt, when the timely interposition of
some Indians from the opposite shore, who knew him and were friendly,
saved him. His son succeeded him and ran the ferry, and an enclosure
in the park preserves this spot of historic memory.
LINCOLN'S MIDNIGHT RIDE.
It was from Harrisburg that Lincoln took the famous secret midnight
ride, "in long cloak and Scotch cap," which enabled him to escape
attack and possible assassination when going to be inaugurated
President in 1861. Lincoln arrived in Philadelphia on his way to
Washington February 21st, and had arranged to visit Harrisburg next
day, address the Pennsylvania Legislature, and then proceed to
Washington by way of Baltimore. In Philadelphia General Scott and
Senator Seward informed him that he could not pass through Baltimore
at the time announced without great peril, and detectives who had
carefully examined the situation declared his life in danger. Lincoln,
however, could not believe that anyone would try to assassinate him
and made light of the matter. On the morning of February 22d he
raised a flag on Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and then went by
railway to Harrisburg. There his friends again urged him to abandon
his plan and avoid Baltimore. He visited the Legislature, and
afterwards, at his hotel, met the Governor, several prominent people
being present, among them Colonel Thomas A. Scott, then Vice-President
of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Again the subject was discussed, and he
was urged to avoid the danger threatening next day, being reminded
that the railway passenger coaches were drawn through the Baltimore
streets by horses, thus increasing the chances of doing him harm. He
heard them patiently and answered, "What would the nation think of its
President stealing into the Capital like a thief in the night?" But
they only the more strenuously insisted, and finally he yielded,
consenting to do whatever they thought best. Colonel Scott undertook
the task, and during the early evening quietly arranged a special
train to take Lincoln to Philadelphia, where he would get aboard the
regular night express and be in Washington by daylight. Colonel Ward
H. Lamon, a personal friend, was selected to attend Lincoln. As the
party left the hotel a large crowd cheered them, and the Governor,
Andrew G. Curtin, the better to conceal the intention, called out in a
loud voice, "Drive us to the Executive Mansion." This was done, and
when they had got away from the crowd the carriage was taken by a
roundabout route to the station. Lincoln and Lamon were not noticed
by the few people there, and quietly entering the car, left for
Philadelphia. As soon as they had started Scott cut every telegraph
wire leading out of Harrisburg, so nothing could be transmitted
excepting under his control. Lincoln got to Philadelphia without
trouble, was put aboard the express at midnight, and then at dawn
Scott reunited his wires and called up Washington, a group of anxious
men around him. Soon the message came back, slowly ticked out from the
instrument, "Plums delivered nuts safely." Scott knew what it meant;
he jumped to his feet, threw up his hat and shouted, "Lincoln's in
Washington." The Baltimore plotters were thus foiled, as the new
President passed quietly through that city before daylight, and
several hours earlier than they had expected him.
THE CUMBERLAND AND LEBANON VALLEYS.
Harrisburg stands in the centre of the great Appalachian Valley, where
it is bisected by the broad Susquehanna. To the southwest it stretches
away to the Potomac as the Cumberland Valley, and to the northeast it
spreads across to the Schuylkill as the fertile Lebanon Valley. The
high mountain wall of the Kittatinny bounds it on the northwest, with
all the rivers, as heretofore described, breaking out through various
"gaps." In the Colonial days, when Indian forays were frequent, the
Province of Pennsylvania defended the entrances to this fertile
valley by a chain of frontier forts located at these gaps, with
attendant block-houses, each post garrisoned by from twenty to eighty
Provincial soldiers, as its importance demanded. Benjamin Franklin,
who was then commissioned as a Colonel, was prominent in the advocacy
of these frontier defences, and he personally organized the settlers
and arranged the garrisons. Fort Hyndshaw began the chain on the
Delaware, there were other forts on the Lehigh and Schuylkill, and
Fort Henry located on the Swatara, now Lebanon, while just above
Harrisburg was Fort Hunter, commanding the passage of the Susquehanna
through the Dauphin Gap.
Over in the Cumberland Valley, about nineteen miles from Harrisburg,
is Carlisle, a town of some nine thousand people, in a rich country,
and the chief settlement of that valley. Here is located in what were
formerly the army barracks, coming down from the time when this was a
frontier post, the Government Indian Training School, where about
eight hundred Indian boys and girls are instructed, being brought from
the far western tribes to be taught the arts and methods of
civilization. These Indian children are numerous in the streets and on
the railway trains, with their straight hair, round swarthy faces and
high cheek bones, and show the surprising influence of a civilizing
education in humanizing their features and modifying their nomadic
traits. They have quite a noted military organization and band at the
School. Dickinson College, a foundation of the Methodist Church, is at
Carlisle, having begun its work in 1783, when it was named after John
Dickinson, then the President of Pennsylvania, who took great interest
in it and made valuable gifts. Among its graduates were President
James Buchanan and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Carlisle was
President Washington's headquarters in 1794, during the "Whisky
Insurrection" in Western Pennsylvania. After the United States
Government got fairly started, the Congress in 1791 imposed a tax of
seven cents per gallon on whisky. This made a great disturbance among
the frontier settlers of Pennsylvania, who were largely Scotch-Irish,
the population west of the Kittatinny to the Ohio River being then
estimated at seventy thousand. They had no market for their grain, but
they made it into whisky, which found ready sale. A horse could carry
two kegs of eight gallons each on the bridle paths across the
mountains, and it was worth a dollar a gallon in the east. Returning,
the horseback load was usually iron worth sixteen cents a pound, or
salt at five dollars a bushel. Every farmer had a still, and the
whisky thus became practically the money of the people on account of
its purchasing value. Opposition to the tax began in riots. A crowd of
"Whisky boys" from Bedford came into Carlisle and burnt the Chief
Justice in effigy, setting up a liberty pole with the words "Liberty
and No Excise on Whisky." President Washington called for troops to
enforce the law, and this angered them. One John Holcroft, a ready
writer, appeared, and wrote sharp articles against the law and the
army, over the signature of "Tom the Tinker." These were printed in
handbills, and the historian says "half the trees in Western
Pennsylvania were whitened with Tom the Tinker's notices." Officials
sent to collect the tax were roughly treated, farmers who paid it were
beaten by masked men, and one man who rented his house to a tax
collector was captured at midnight by a crowd of disguised vigilants,
who carried him into the woods, sheared his hair, tarred, feathered
and tied him to a tree.
Soon there were gathered at Carlisle an army of thirteen thousand men
from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, under Governor
Henry Lee of Virginia. President Washington and Secretary of the
Treasury Alexander Hamilton came to Carlisle, and accompanied the
troops, in October, 1794, on their march across the mountains to
Bedford. The Governors of New Jersey and Pennsylvania led the troops
of their respective States, and in the army were many Revolutionary
veterans. As they advanced they found Tom the Tinker's notices on the
trees, of which the following is a specimen:
"Brethren, you must not think to frighten us with fine arranged bits
of infantry, cavalry and artillery, composed of your watermelon armies
taken from the Jersey shores. They would cut a much better figure in
warring with crabs and oysters about the banks of the Delaware. It is
a common thing for Indians to fight your best armies in the proportion
of one to five; therefore we would not hesitate to attack this army at
the rate of one to ten."
The soldiers riddled these notices with bullets and pressed on,
hunting for "Tom Tinker's men," as the insurgents came to be called.
But they never seemed able to find them. All the people seen told how
they were forced by threats, and when asked where the persons were who
threatened them, replied, "Oh, they have run off." The army finally
reached Pittsburg, the people submitted to the law and paid the tax,
the insurrection was suppressed, and the army returned and was
disbanded. The whisky excise was peacefully collected afterwards until
the tax was repealed.
In the Lebanon Valley east of Harrisburg are important iron furnaces,
and here are the "Cornwall Ore Banks," which is one of the greatest
iron-ore deposits in the world--less rich than some others, possibly,
but having a practically exhaustless supply almost alongside these
furnaces. There are three hills of solid iron ore, one of them having
been worked long before the Revolution, the original furnace, still
existing, dating from 1742. This great Cornwall iron mine was bought
in 1737 for $675, including a large tract of land. A half-century
later $42,500 was paid for a one-sixth interest, and to-day a
one-forty-eighth interest is estimated worth upwards of $500,000.
These ores have some sulphur in them, and are therefore baked in ovens
to remove it. They yield about 50 per cent. of iron. A geologist some
time ago reported upon the ore banks that there were thirty millions
of tons of ore in sight above the water-level, being over three times
the amount taken out since the workings began in the eighteenth
century. The deposits extend to a depth of several hundred feet under
the surface, thus indefinitely multiplying the prospective yield.
THE SUSQUEHANNA HEADWATERS.
Otsego Lake, the source of the Susquehanna River, is one of the
prettiest lakes in New York State, and is at an elevation of eleven
hundred feet above tide. It is nine miles long and about a mile wide,
the Susquehanna issuing from its southern end at Cooperstown, a hamlet
of two thousand people, beautifully situated amid the high rolling
hills surrounding the lake. The name of the lake comes from the
"Ote-sa-ga rock" at the outlet, a small, round-topped, beehive-shaped
boulder a few rods from the shore, just where the lake condenses into
the river. This was the Indian Council rock, to which they came to
hold meetings and make treaties, and it was well-known among the
Iroquois and the Lenni Lenapes. James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist,
who has immortalized all this region, called the lake the
"Glimmerglass." His father, Judge William Cooper, founded the village
of Cooperstown in 1786, afterwards bringing his infant son from
Burlington, New Jersey, where he was born in 1789. Here the great
American novelist lived until his death in 1851, his grave, under a
plain horizontal slab, being in the little churchyard of Christ
Episcopal Church. There is a monument to him in Lakewood Cemetery,
about a mile distant, surmounted by a statue of his legendary hunter
"Leatherstocking," who has been described as "a man who had the
simplicity of a woodsman, the heroism of a savage, the faith of a
Christian, and the feeling of a poet." The old Cooper mansion, his
home, Otsego Hall, was burnt in 1854, and its site is marked by a rock
in the middle of the road, surrounded by a railing. "Hannah's Hill,"
named after his daughter, and commanding a magnificent view, which he
always described with rapture, is on the western shore of the lake,
just out of town. The charm of Cooper's genius and the magic of his
description have given Otsego Lake a world-wide fame. In one place he
described it as "a broad sheet of water, so placid and limpid that it
resembled a bed of the pure mountain atmosphere compressed into a
setting of hills and woods. Nothing is wanted but ruined castles and
recollections, to raise it to the level of the scenery of the Rhine."
And thus has the poet sung of it:
"O Haunted Lake, from out whose silver fountains
The mighty Susquehanna takes its rise;
O Haunted Lake, among the pine-clad mountains,
Forever smiling upward to the skies,--
A master's hand hath painted all thy beauties;
A master's mind hath peopled all thy shore
With wraiths of mighty hunters and fair maidens,
Haunting thy forest-glades forevermore."
All around Otsego Lake and its neighborhood are the scenes which
Cooper has interwoven into his novel, _The Deer-Slayer_. About seven
miles northwest are the well-known Richfield Springs (magnesia and
sulphur), near Candarago Lake. This Indian name, meaning "on the
lake," has recently been revived to supersede the old title of
Schuyler's Lake for this beautiful sheet of water, enbosomed in green
and sloping hills, which is the chief scenic charm of Richfield. To
the eastward from Otsego Lake is the romantic Cherry Valley, another
attractive summer resort, and the scene of a sad Indian massacre in
1778, the site of the old fort that was then captured being still
exhibited, with the graves of the murdered villagers, to whom a
monument has been erected. A few miles farther, in a narrow upland
wooded valley surrounded by high hills, are the Sharon Springs
(sulphur and chalybeate), which in earlier times were so popular with
our German citizens, who were attracted by the resemblance to the
Fatherland, that the place was called the "Baden-Baden of America."
The name of Sharon came from Sharon in Connecticut, and the spring
water is discharged with a crust of white and flocculent sulphur into
a stream not inappropriately called the Brimstone Brook. In this
valley, east of the springs, one of the last Revolutionary battles was
fought, Colonel Willett's American force in 1781 routing a detachment
of Tories and Indians with severe loss. There are grottoes in the
neighborhood abounding in stalactites and beautiful crystals of
sulphate of lime. Not far away is the noted Howe's Cave, an immense
cavern, said to extend for eleven miles underground, being an old
water-channel in the lower Helderberg limestone, and which has many
visitors, attracted by its fine display of stalactites and grand rock
chambers, with the usual subterranean lake and stream. All this region
was originally settled by Germans from the Palatinate.
The Susquehanna, steadily gaining in volume, flows in wayward course
down rapids and around many bends to Binghamton, near the southern
border of New York, where it receives the Chenango River, and its
elevation has declined to eight hundred and sixty feet. This is a busy
manufacturing city and railway junction, having forty thousand
inhabitants. The first settlers came in 1787, and William Bingham of
Philadelphia owning the land at the confluence of the rivers, the town
was afterwards named for him. The Chenango Canal connects the
Susquehanna waters from here with the Erie Canal, about ninety miles
northward, at Utica, the Indian word Chenango meaning "the bull
thistle." Entering Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna now flows many miles
past mountain and village, around great bends and breaking through the
Allegheny ridges, passes along the Wyoming Valley, already described,
and finally going out through the Nanticoke Gap, reaches
Northumberland, where it receives its chief tributary, the West
Branch. This great stream comes for two hundred miles from the
westward through the Allegheny ranges, passing Lewisburg, the seat of
the Baptist University of Lewisburg, Milton, and the noted lumber town
of Williamsport, famous for its great log boom. This arrangement for
collecting logs cost a million dollars, and extends about four miles
up the river above the town, with its massive piers and braces, and
will hold three hundred millions of feet of lumber. The river front is
lined with basins and sawmills. In earlier years this boom has been so
filled with pine and hemlock logs in the spring that the river could
almost anywhere be crossed on a solid floor of timber. Unfortunately,
however, the vast forests on the slopes of the Alleghenies have been
so generally cut off that the trade has seriously declined. At
Northumberland lived Dr. Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen
gas, who died there in 1804, and is buried in the cemetery.
The Susquehanna now becomes a broad river, and just below flows past
Sunbury, the railway outlet of the extensive Shamokin coal district.
This town was originally Fort Augusta, built in 1756 to guard the
Susquehanna frontier just below the junction of its two branches. In
the French and Indian War it had usually a garrison of a regiment, and
it was then regarded as the best defensive work in Pennsylvania. After
that war it gradually fell into decay, although during the Revolution
it was always a refuge for the Susquehanna frontier settlers fleeing
from Indian brutality and massacre. Many prominent officers of the
Revolutionary army received their military training at this fort. The
settlement was originally called Shamokin, from the Indian name of the
creek here falling into the Susquehanna--Schakamo-kink, meaning, like
Shackamaxon, "the place of eels." For fifty miles below Sunbury the
broad Susquehanna winds among the mountain ranges, traversing one
after another, until its channel is narrowed to pass through the great
Dauphin Gap in the Kittatinny, five miles above Harrisburg, where the
river bed has descended to an elevation of three hundred and twenty
feet above tide.
THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE JUNIATA.
A long, low bridge carries the Pennsylvania Railroad across the river
in front of Dauphin Gap, and a short distance above, in a delta of
fertile islands, the Susquehanna receives its romantic tributary, the
Juniata, flowing for a hundred miles from the heart of the
Alleghenies, and breaking out of them through a notch cut down in the
long ridge of the Tuscarora Mountain. Here is the iron-making town of
Duncannon, settled by the sturdy Scotch-Irish, who were numerous along
the Juniata and in its neighboring valleys, and who suffered greatly
from Indian forays in the early days of the frontier. Upon Duncan's
Island, the chief one in the delta, at the mouth of the Juniata, was
the place of the council-fire of the Indian tribes of all this region.
Now, this island is mainly a pleasure-ground, having spacious and
shady groves, while the canal, crossing it from the Susquehanna to the
Juniata, goes directly through an extensive Indian mound and
burial-place. We will enter the fastnesses of the Alleghenies by the
winding gorge of the "beautiful blue Juniata," flowing through
magnificent scenery from the eastern face of the main Allegheny range
out to the great river. It breaks down ridge after ridge, stretching
broadly across the country, and presents superb landscapes and
impressive mountain views. The route is a series of bends and gorges,
the river crossing successive valleys between the ridges, now running
for miles northeast along the base of a towering mountain and then
turning east or southeast to break through it by a romantic pass. The
glens and mountains, with ever-changing views, give an almost endless
panorama. Softness of outline, massiveness and variety, are the
peculiarities of Juniata scenery. The stream is small, not carrying a
great amount of water in ordinary seasons, and it seems as much by
strategy as by power to have overcome the obstacles and made its
mountain passes. The rended mountains, steep tree-covered slopes and
frequent isolated sentinel-like hills rising from the glens, have all
been moulded into rounded forms by the action of the elements, leaving
few abrupt precipices or naked rocks to mar the regularity of the
natural beauties. The valleys and lower parts of the mountain sides
are generally cultivated, the fields sloping up to the mantle of
forest crowning the flanks and summits of the ridges. Every change of
sunshine or shadow, and the steady progress of the seasons, give new
tints to these glens and mountains. At times the ravines are deep and
the river tortuous, and again it meanders across the rich flat bottom
lands of a broad valley. In its winding course among these mountain
ranges, this renowned river passes through and displays almost the
whole geological formation of Pennsylvania. The primary rocks are to
the eastward of the Susquehanna, and the bituminous coal measures
begin on the western Allegheny slope, so that the river cuts into a
rock stratification over six miles in thickness, as one after another
formation comes to the surface.
We go through the narrow Tuscarora Gap, and are journeying over the
lands of the Tuscaroras, one of the Iroquois Six Nations, who came up
from the South, and were given the name of Tuscarora, or the
"shirt-wearer," because long contact with the whites had led them to
adopt that garment. Beyond the Gap, the Tuscarora Valley is enclosed
on its northwest side by the Turkey Mountain, the next western ridge,
and it was a region of terrible Indian conflicts and massacres in the
pioneer days, when the first fort built there was burnt, and every
settler either killed or carried off into captivity. Here was fought
the "Grasshopper War" between the Tuscaroras and Delawares. They had
villages on opposite sides of the river, and one day the children
disputed about some grasshoppers. The quarrel involved first the
squaws and then the men, a bloody battle following. Mifflin, an
attractive town, is located here, and to the westward the Juniata
breaks through the next great ridge crossing its path, passing a
massive gorge formed by the Shade and Blue Mountains, flowing for
miles in the deep and narrow winding canyon between them, the
far-famed "Lewistown or Long Narrows," having the railway hanging upon
one bank and the canal upon the other. Broken, slaty shingle covers
most of the hill-slopes, and in the broad valley, above the lengthened
gorge, is Lewistown, nestling at the base of a huge mountain at the
outlet of the beautiful Kishicoquillas Valley, spreading up among the
high hills to the northward--its name meaning "the snakes are already
in their dens." The hero of this attractive region in the eighteenth
century, and then its most distinguished inhabitant, was Logan, the
chief of the Mingoes and Cayugas, whose speeches, preserved by Thomas
Jefferson, are a favorite in school declamation. He was of giant
mould, nearly seven feet high, and lived at Logan's Spring in the
valley. He was the friend of the white men, but when the frontier
became too well settled for him longer to find the deer on which he
subsisted, selling their skins to the traders, he went westward to the
Ohio River, locating near Wheeling. Here, without provocation, his
family were cruelly massacred, and this ended Logan's love for the
whites. He became a relentless foe, wreaking indiscriminate vengeance,
until killed in the Shawnee wars beyond the Ohio, having joined that
hostile tribe. The Lewistown Narrows are the finest mountain pass of
the Juniata, the peaks precipitously rising over a thousand feet above
the river, which forces a passage between them for more than eight
miles, the densely wooded cliffs so enclosing and overshadowing the
gorge as to give it an appearance of deepest gloom.
THE STANDING STONE AND SINKING SPRING.
Westward beyond the valley rises the next ridge pierced by the Juniata
in its outflow, Jack's Mountain, and its gorge is known as "Jack's
Narrows." Here penetrated Captain Jack Armstrong in the early colonial
days, a hunter and Indian trader, whose cabin was burnt and wife and
children massacred, making him always afterwards an avenging Nemesis,
roving along the Juniata Valley and killing Indians indiscriminately.
Jack's Narrows is a pass even more contracted than that below
Lewistown, and a profusion of shingle and broken stone covers its
mountain sides, the deranged limestone strata in places standing
almost upright. Mount Union is in the valley east of this pass, and
beyond it is the chief town of the Juniata, Huntingdon, which has
about eight thousand people. This was the oldest settlement on the
river, ninety-seven miles west of Harrisburg, the ancient "Standing
Stone," where the Indians of the valley for centuries met to hold
their councils. The earliest white settlers came in 1754. The original
Standing Stone of Huntingdon, erected by the Indians, was a granite
column, about fourteen feet high and six inches square, covered with
strange characters, which were the sacred records of the Oneidas. Once
the Tuscaroras stole it, but the Oneidas followed, and, fighting for
their sacred treasure, recaptured it. When the whites came along, the
Oneidas, who had joined the French, went west, carrying the stone with
them. Afterwards, a second stone, much like the first, was set up, and
a fragment of it is now preserved at Huntingdon. Here was built a
large fort anterior to the Revolution, which was a refuge for the
frontier settlers. The "Standing Stone" is engraved as an appropriate
symbol on the city seal of Huntingdon, being surrounded by a
representation of mountains, and the name of "Oneida" (the granite) is
preserved in a township across the river. Selina, the Countess of
Huntingdon, who was a benefactor of the University of Pennsylvania,
had her titled name given the city. The then University Provost, Dr.
William Smith, became owner of the town site, and thus remembered her
generosity. About fifty miles southwest of Huntingdon, amid the
mountains, is Bedford, noted for its chalybeate and sulphur springs,
discovered in 1804, which have long been a favorite resort of
Pennsylvanians on account of their healing waters. The whole country
thereabout is filled with semi-bituminous coal measures, furnishing a
lucrative traffic.
Diminishing in volume, our attractive Juniata flows through a rough
country above Huntingdon, after threading the pass in the lofty
Warrior Ridge. Extending off to the southwestward is Morrison's Cove,
a rich valley under the shadow of the long mountain ridge, which was
settled in 1755 by the Dunkards. These singular people, among whose
cardinal doctrines are peace and non-resistance, were attacked by the
Indians in 1777, who entered the valley and almost exterminated the
settlement. Most of them bowed submissively to the stroke of death,
gently saying "Gottes wille sei gethan" (God's will be done). One,
however, resisted, killed two Indians and escaped; but afterwards
returning, the Dunkard Church tried him for this breach of faith, and
he was excommunicated. In this region is the Sinking Spring, a strange
water course originally appearing in a limestone cave, where it comes
out of an arched opening, with sufficient water to turn a large mill;
but it soon disappears underground, the concealed current being heard
through fissures, bubbling far below. Then it returns to the surface,
flowing some distance, enters another cave, passing under Cave
Mountain, and finally reappears and falls into the Juniata, making, in
its peculiar waywardness, as remarkable a stream as can anywhere be
found. Here our famous Juniata River, dwindled to a little creek,
comes down the mountain side, and we penetrate farther by following up
the Little Juniata. It has brought us, through the great ridges, into
the heart of the Appalachian region, to the eastern base of the main
Allegheny Mountain, on the flanks of which are its sources. It has
displayed to us a noted valley, full of the story of early Colonial
contests, massacres and perils, the scenes of the fearless missionary
labors of Brainerd the Puritan and Loskiel the Moravian. Brainerd
recognized the pagan idolatry of the Indians, and did not hesitate to
take the Bible to their solemn religious festivals and expound its
divine principles, to spoil the incantations and frustrate the charms
of their medicine men. Once a Nanticoke pontiff got into a hot
argument with Brainerd, saying God had taught him religion and he
would never turn from it; that he would not believe in the Devil; and
he added that the souls of the dead passed to the South, where the
good lived in a fair city, while the evil hovered forever in outer
darkness. Many are the romances of the attractive Juniata:
"Gay was the mountain song
Of bright Alfarata,
Where sweep the waters of
The blue Juniata:
'Strong and true my arrows are,
In my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe
Adown the rapid river.'"
CROSSING THE MOUNTAIN TOP.
At the eastern base of the main Allegheny range a long mountain valley
stretches broadly from the far northeast to the southwest, and here is
Tyrone, a settlement of extensive iron works, and the outlet of the
greatest bituminous coal-fields of Central Pennsylvania, the
Clearfield district, the town of Clearfield being about forty miles to
the northwest. Northeast of Tyrone, this valley is called the Bald
Eagle Valley, a picturesque and fertile region; and to the southwest
it is the Tuckahoe Valley. At the base of the Bald Eagle Mountain,
thirty-three miles from Tyrone, is the town of Bellefonte, another
iron region, handling the products of the Bald Eagle and Nittany
Valleys, and receiving its name from the "Beautiful Fount" which
supplies the town with water. This is one of the most remarkable
springs in the Alleghenies, pouring out two hundred and eighty
thousand gallons of the purest water every minute. Following the
Tuckahoe Valley southward, at the base of the main Allegheny range we
come to the Pennsylvania Railroad town of Altoona, and eight miles
farther to Hollidaysburg. Each is a representative town--Hollidaysburg
of the past methods of crossing the mountain top, and Altoona of the
present.
In 1836 Mr. David Stephenson, the famous British railway engineer,
made a journey across Pennsylvania by the methods then in vogue, and
wrote that he travelled from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, three hundred
and ninety-five miles by the route taken, in ninety-one hours, at a
cost of three pounds sterling, about four cents a mile, and that one
hundred and eighteen miles of the journey, which he calls
"extraordinary," were by railroads, and two hundred and seventy-seven
miles by canals. This was the line used for twenty years, a main route
of travel from the seaboard to the West, having been put into
operation in 1834. It followed the Columbia Railroad from Philadelphia
to Columbia on the Susquehanna, the canal up the Susquehanna and
Juniata Rivers to Hollidaysburg, a portage railroad by inclined planes
over the main Allegheny Mountain ridge to Johnstown, and the canal
again, down the Conemaugh and Allegheny Rivers to Pittsburg. There
were one hundred and seventy-two miles of canal from Columbia to
Hollidaysburg, which went through more than a hundred locks and
crossed thirty-three aqueducts, having risen about six hundred feet
above the level at Columbia when it reached the eastern face of the
mountain. The canal west of Johnstown was one hundred and five miles
long, descended sixty-four locks, and went through a tunnel of one
thousand feet. The Portage Railroad of thirty-six miles crossed the
mountain by Blair's Gap, above Hollidaysburg, at twenty-three hundred
and twenty-six feet elevation, through a tunnel nine hundred feet
long. There were ten inclined planes, five on each side. The steepest
side of the Allegheny Mountain being its eastern face, the railway
from Hollidaysburg to the summit, though only ten miles long, ascended
fourteen hundred feet, while twenty miles of railway on the western
side descended eleven hundred and seventy-two feet. The cars hauled up
the planes each carried three tons of freight, and three cars were
hauled at a single draft. There could be twenty-four cars carrying
seventy-two tons passed over in one hour, which was ample for the
traffic at that time, the average business being three hundred tons of
freight a day. This amount would be carried in less than ten of the
big cars of to-day. It took passengers eight hours to go over the
mountain, halting one hour on the summit for dinner.
This route was superseded by the Pennsylvania Railroad crossing above
Altoona, opened in 1854, a road made for ordinary trains; and then
Hollidaysburg became a town of iron manufacture, losing the bustle and
business of the Portage, which was abandoned. The railroad company
acquired a large tract of land between the main Allegheny range and
the Brush Mountain to the southward, which has a deep notch, called
the "Kettle," cut down into it, opening a distant prospect of gray
mountain ridges behind. Here has been established the most completely
representative railway city in the world, having enormous railway
shops, a gigantic establishment, and a population of thirty-five
thousand, almost all in one way or another dependent on the
Pennsylvania Railroad. Altoona is at an elevation of about eleven
hundred feet above tide, and the railway climbs to the summit of the
mountain by a grade of ninety feet to the mile, winding around an
indented valley to get the necessary elevation. At its head this
valley divides into two smaller glens, with a towering crag rising
between them. Having ascended the northern side, the railway curves
around, crossing the smaller glens upon high embankments, doubling
upon itself, and mounting steadily higher by running up the opposite
side of the valley to the outer edge of the ridge. This sweeping curve
gives striking scenic effects, and is the noted Pennsylvania "Horse
Shoe," and the huge crag between the smaller glens, in which the head
of the Horse Shoe curve is partly hewn, is Kittanning Point. This
means the "great stream," two creeks issuing out of the glens uniting
below it; and here was the route, at sixteen hundred feet elevation,
of the ancient Indian trail across the mountain, the "Kittanning
Path," in their portage between the Juniata and Ohio waters. It shows
how closely the modern railroad builder has followed the route set for
him by the original road-makers among the red men. The Pennsylvania
Railroad carries four tracks over the mountain, piercing the summit by
two tunnels at about twenty-two hundred feet elevation, with two
tracks in each. The mountain rises much higher, and has coal mines,
coke ovens and miners' cabins on the very top. This is the watershed
dividing the Atlantic waters from those of the Mississippi, flowing to
the Gulf, and Gallitzin, a flourishing mining village, is the summit
station of the railway.
[Illustration: _The Conemaugh near Florence_]
GOING DOWN THE CONEMAUGH.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century there were but two white
men living in all this region. The first one there was Thomas Blair,
whose cabin was on the mountain at Blair's Gap, where the Portage
Railroad afterwards came over. The other was Michael Maguire, who came
along in 1790, and going through the Gap, concluded to settle among
the Indians about twelve miles away, at what was afterwards Loretto.
These rugged pioneers spent most of their time fighting and watching
the Indians and wild beasts, and gathered a few companions
around them. Here afterwards came Prince Demetrius Augustine
Gallitzin, who left the Russian army in 1792 and visited America,
designing to travel. He became a Catholic priest, and liking these
mountains, established a mission at Loretto in 1798, spending a
fortune in maintaining it, his missionary charge ultimately extending
over the whole mountain region. He attracted a population of about
three thousand, chiefly Germans and Irish, repeatedly refused the
episcopacy, and continued his labors until his death at Loretto in
1840. His remains lie in front of his church, surmounted by a
monument, while the centenary of this St. Michael's Church of Loretto
was marked in October, 1899, by erecting his bronze statue, the
Prelate-Prince Gallitzin being portrayed as he appeared in the
Allegheny wilderness, wearing cassock, surplice and a skull-cap in
lieu of the beretta, this being his usual head-gear at service.
Loretto, named after the city on the Adriatic, was the first nucleus
of population in this elevated district, and is about five miles north
of the railway. Loretto was the first settlement in this region, but
afterwards the coal and iron attracted the Welsh, who came in numbers,
and founded the town of Ebensburg, about eleven miles from the
railway. They gave their familiar name of Cambria to the county. Here
on the mountain side, at an elevation of over two thousand feet, are
the Cresson Springs, a noted health resort, with a half-dozen
medicinal springs, the chief being an astringent chalybeate and a
strong alum.
The route west of the mountain is down the valley of the Conemaugh, in
a district underlaid with coal, and having at every village evidence
of this industry. The Conemaugh is "the other stream" of the Indians,
and winding down its tortuous valley, with coal and iron all about,
the railway comes to the settlement of Conemaugh, which spreads into
the larger town of Johnstown, the seat of the great Cambria Steel
Works. The Conemaugh Valley is a deep canyon, and Conemaugh village
was the western terminus of the mountain portage, where the canal
began. A little flat space about a mile beyond, at the junction of
Stony Creek, was in early times an Indian village, then known from its
sachem as "Kickenapawling's Old Town." When the white men ventured
over the mountain, there came among them a hardy German pioneer named
Joseph Jahns, who built a log cabin on the flat in 1791, and from him
the cluster of little houses that grew afterwards became known as
Jahnstown. Then came the Welsh miners and iron-workers, and they set
up charcoal furnaces, and soon changed the name to Johnstown. From
this humble beginning grew the largest iron and steel establishment in
Pennsylvania. Its ores, coal and limestone were originally all dug out
of the neighboring ridges, though now it uses Lake Superior ores. The
Conemaugh Valley is here enclosed by high hills, and in the centre of
the town the railroad is carried across the river on a solid stone
bridge with low arches.
This region, on May 31, 1889, was the scene of one of the most
appalling disasters of modern times. A deluge of rain for the greater
part of two days had fallen upon the Alleghenies, and made great
freshets in both the Juniata and the Conemaugh. On the South Fork of
the Conemaugh, fifteen miles above Johnstown, is Conemaugh Lake, a
reservoir there formed by damming the stream, so that it covered a
surface of five hundred acres--the dam, a thousand feet long, being in
places one hundred feet high. This had been made as a fishing-ground
by a club of Pittsburg anglers. The excessive rains filled the lake,
and the weakened dam burst, its twenty millions of tons of waters
rushing down the already swollen Conemaugh in a mass a half-mile wide
stretching across the valley and forty to fifty feet high, carrying
everything before it. The lake level was about three hundred feet
higher than Johnstown, and every village, tree, house, and the whole
railway, with much of the soil and rocks, were carried before the
resistless flood to Johnstown, where the mass was stopped by and piled
up behind the stone railway bridge, and there caught fire, the
resistless flood, to get out, sweeping away nearly the whole town in
the valley bottom. This vast calamity destroyed from three to five
thousand lives, for no accurate estimate could be ever made, and ten
millions of property. It took the flood about seven minutes of actual
time to pass over the fifteen miles between the lake and Johnstown,
and there was left, after it had passed, a wide bed, like a great
Alpine glacial _moraine_, filled with ponderous masses of sand and
stones and wreckage of every description, the resistless torrent being
afterwards reduced to a little stream of running water. It required
many months to recover from this appalling destruction; but the people
went to work with a will and rebuilt the town, the steel works and the
railway, which for a dozen miles down the valley had been completely
obliterated. This terrible disaster excited universal sympathy, and a
relief fund amounting to nearly $3,000,000 was contributed from all
parts of the world.
LIGONIER AND HANNASTOWN.
The whole mountain district west of Johnstown is filled with coal
mines, coke ovens and iron furnaces, this being the "Pittsburg Coal
District." The Conemaugh breaks through the next western ridge, the
Laurel Mountain, and the broadening river winds along its deep valley
between high wooded hills. It is a veritable "Black Country," and ten
miles beyond, the river passes the finest mountain gorge on the
western slope of the Alleghenies, the deep and winding canyon of the
Packsaddle Narrows, by which the Conemaugh breaks out of the Chestnut
Ridge, the western border of the Allegheny ranges. For two hundred
miles the railroad has gone through or over range after range, and
this grand pass, encompassed by mountains rising twelve hundred feet
above the bottom of the gorge, is the impressive exit at the final
portal. The main railroad then leaves the Conemaugh, and goes off
southwestward along the slope of Chestnut Ridge towards Greensburg and
Pittsburg. The river unites with the Loyalhanna Creek below, and then
flows as the Kiskiminetas down to the Allegheny. The name of
Loyalhanna means the "middle stream," while the tradition is that an
impatient Indian warrior, anxious to move forward, shouted in the
night to his comrades encamped on the other river--"Giesh-gumanito"--
"let us make daylight"--and from this was derived its name of
Kiskiminetas. A branch railroad from here goes to Blairsville, named
in memory of the solitary pioneer of Blair's Gap, and another
northward leads to the town of Indiana. The great Chestnut Ridge which
the main railway runs along, gradually descending the slope, is the
last mountain the westbound traveller sees until he reaches the
Rockies. For seventy miles to the southwestward the Chestnut Ridge and
Laurel Mountain extend in parallels, their crest lines being almost
exactly ten miles apart, and enclosing the Ligonier Valley, out of
which flows northward the Loyalhanna Creek, breaking through the
Chestnut Ridge. Near this pass in 1757 was built Fort Ligonier,
another of the frontier outposts which resisted the incursions of the
French and Indians, who then held all the country to the westward. In
the Chestnut Ridge at Hillside is the "Great Bear Cave," an extensive
labyrinth of passages and spacious chambers stretching more than a
mile underground, which, like most such places, has its subterranean
river and its tale of woe. A young girl, stolen by gypsies, to escape
from them took refuge in this cave, and losing her way, perished, her
bones being found years afterwards. Explorers since have always
unwound balls of twine in this labyrinth, to be able to retrace their
steps.
In a good farming district of the Westmoreland region is Greensburg,
another railway junction where branches go southward to the
Monongahela coalfields. Robert Hanna built a house near here in the
eighteenth century, around which gathered some thirty log cabins, and
the place in course of time became known as Hannastown, prominent in
the early history of Western Pennsylvania. Here was held the first
court convened west of the Alleghenies, and here were passed the
patriotic resolutions of May 16, 1775, upon receipt of the news of the
battle of Lexington at the opening of the Revolution, which sounded
the keynote for the Declaration of Independence the following year.
Here also first appeared during the Revolution General Arthur St.
Clair, an immigrant from Scotland, the grandson of the Earl of
Roslyn, who lived in an humble house on Chestnut Ridge. He served in
the French and Indian wars, and was the British commander at Fort
Ligonier. Horrible Indian massacres and terrible retributions by the
settlers were the chief features of the Revolutionary War in
Westmoreland. At its close, the whites sent an expedition in 1782
against the Wyandottes, which was defeated. The savages soon wreaked
fearful vengeance, raiding the region in July of that year and burning
Hannastown, which was never rebuilt. Greensburg appeared soon
afterwards, however, and in 1875 it celebrated the centenary of the
Hannastown resolutions with patriotic spirit. In its Presbyterian
churchyard lie the remains of General St. Clair, who, after founding
and naming the city of Cincinnati, returned here, and died in 1818, at
the age of eighty-four, in his lonely cabin on Chestnut Ridge, in
unmerited poverty and obscurity. The stone over his grave has this
significant inscription: "The earthly remains of General Arthur St.
Clair are deposited beneath this humble monument, which is erected to
supply the place of a nobler one due from his country." Being in a
region of fine agriculture and prolific mines, Greensburg is a
prosperous and wealthy town.
BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.
Natural gas is added to coal and coke in the region beyond Greensburg,
and the villages display flaring gas torches at night for street
lamps. The whole country, north, south and west, is a network of
railways and a maze of mines, having long rows of burning coke ovens
lighting the sky with their lurid glare. Here are mined the
Westmoreland gas coals. The valley of the Monongahela River, coming up
from West Virginia, approaches from the southward, a great highway for
coal boats out to the Ohio and the West, also receiving a large coal
tribute from its branch, the Youghiogheny, flowing by crooked course
through Fayette County. Alongside the Monongahela is the great Edgar
Thomson Steel Works, one of the chief establishments of the Carnegie
Steel Company, making railway rails. Here is the famous Colonial
battlefield of Western Pennsylvania, made immortal by General
Braddock's defeat in July, 1755. This region was then a thick forest,
through which an Indian trail coming over the Monongahela led to the
junction of the two rivers forming the Ohio, where the French had
established their stockade and trading post of Fort Duquesne. Braddock
came into this region from beyond the mountains, his object being the
capture of the fort. His defeat, a great event in our Colonial
history, was due to his ignorance of the methods of Indian fighting
and his refusal to listen to those who understood it; but he paid the
penalty with his life, being shot, as was believed at the time, by one
of his own men, after having had five horses shot under him. It was
in rallying the defeated remnant that Washington, the senior surviving
officer, won his first military laurels. Braddock crossed the river
and was caught in an ambuscade, eight hundred and fifty French and
Indians surprising and defeating his force of about twenty-five
hundred British regulars and Virginia Provincial troops, the loss
being nearly eight hundred. Washington led the remnant back to
Virginia, carrying Braddock about forty miles on the retreat, when he
died. He was buried at night in the centre of the road, Washington
reading the Episcopal burial service by torchlight, and the defeated
army marched over the grave to conceal its location from the enemy. A
handsome monument is erected on the battlefield at Braddock's. And
thus, through iron mills and coal mines, amid smoke and busy industry,
the Pennsylvania Railroad enters Pittsburg, the "Iron City."
THE GREAT IRON CITY.
The Monongahela River coming from the southward, and the Allegheny
River flowing from the northward, drain the western defiles of the
Alleghenies, and at Pittsburg unite to form the Ohio River. Each comes
to the junction through a deeply-cut canyon, and at the confluence is
a triangular flat upon which the original town was built. Like most
American rivers, all these have names of Indian origin. Monongahela is
the "river of high banks, breaking off in places and falling down."
Ohio is a Seneca word, originally pronounced "O-hee-o," and meaning
the "beautiful river" or the "fair water," and Allegheny in the
language of the Delawares has much the same signification, meaning
"the fairest stream." All the Indians regarded the two as really the
same river, of which the Monongahela was a tributary. The first white
men exploring this region were the French, who came down from the
lakes and Canada, when they spread through the entire Mississippi
Valley. In 1753, however, Washington with a surveying party was sent
out by Virginia and carefully examined the site of Pittsburg,
advising, on his return, that a fort should be built there to check
the advance of the French, and the next year this was done. Scarcely
was it completed, however, when the French sent a summons to
surrender, addressed "From the Commander-in-chief of His Most
Christian Majesty's troops now on the Beautiful River to the Commander
of those of Great Britain." A French force soon appeared, and the fort
was abandoned. This began the French and Indian Colonial War that
continued seven years, the French then erecting their famous fort and
trading-post guarding the head of the Ohio, which they named after the
great French naval commander of the seventeenth century, Marquis
Abraham Duquesne. Then came Braddock's defeat in 1755, and for some
time the region was quiet. Moravian missionary influence, however,
had by 1758 detached many of the Indians from the French interest, and
after another British attack and repulse, General Forbes came with a
large force, and the French abandoned the fort and blew it up.
Immediately rebuilt by the English, a Virginia garrison occupied the
post, and it was named Fort Pitt. Then a larger fort was built at a
cost of $300,000 and garrisoned by artillery, which the enemy vainly
besieged in 1763. The next year a town site was laid out near the
fort, and in 1770 it had twenty log houses. After the long succession
of wars and massacres on that frontier had ceased, the village grew,
and business began developing--at first, boat- and vessel-building,
and then smelting and coal mining and the manufacture of glass. In
1812 the first rolling-mill started, and the war with England in that
year caused the opening of a cannon foundry, which became the Fort
Pitt Iron Works. The village of Fort Pitt had become Pittsburg, and
expanded vastly with the introduction of steam, and it became an
extensive steamboat builder for the Western waters. Railroad
connections gave it renewed impetus; natural gas used as a
manufacturing fuel was a wonderful stimulant; and it now conducts an
enormous trade with all parts of the country, and is the seat of the
greatest iron, steel and glass industries in America.
Few views are more striking than that given from the high hills
overlooking Pittsburg. Rising steeply, almost from the water's edge,
on the southern bank of the Monongahela River, is Mount Washington,
three hundred and fifty feet high. Inclined-plane railways are
constructed up the face of this hill, and mounting to the top, there
is a superb view over the town. The Allegheny River comes from the
northeast and the Monongahela from the southeast, through deep and
winding gorges cut into the rolling tableland, and uniting form the
Ohio, flowing away to the northwest also through a deep gorge,
although its bordering ridges of hills are more widely separated.
Pittsburg stands upon the low flat surface of the peninsula, above the
junction of the rivers, which has some elongated ridgy hills,
stretching eastward through the centre. Its situation and appearance
have thus not inaptly been compared to a flatiron, the point being at
the head of the Ohio, and these ridgy hills making the handle. The
city has overflowed into extensive suburbs across both rivers, the
aggregate population being more than a half-million. Numerous bridges
span the rivers, the narrow shores between the steep hills bearing a
mixed maze of railways and factories. Countless chimney-smokes and
steam-jets come up in all directions, overhanging the town like a
pall; and so impressive is the obscuration, combined with the lurid
glare of furnaces and the weird white gleam of electric lights, that
the elevated view down into Pittsburg seems a veritable pandemonium.
So startling is it on a lowering day that it has been pointedly
described by one who thus for the first time looked upon the "Smoky
City," far down in its deep basin among the high hills, as appearing
like "Hell with the lid off." There are plenty of railways in the
scene, and scores of odd-looking, stumpy-prowed little steamboats
built high above the water, having huge stern-wheels to drive them,
with their noses thrust up on the sloping levee along the river bank,
whereon is piled the cargoes, chiefly of iron products. The swift
current turns all the sterns down stream, so that they lie diagonally
towards the shore. Fleets of flat, shallow coal barges are moored
along, waiting to be made up into tows for their journey down the
Ohio, as Pittsburg has an extensive river trade, covering over twenty
thousand miles of Western waters. Out of the weird and animated scene
there come all sorts of busy noises, forges and trip-hammers pounding,
steam hissing, railroad trains running, whistles screeching,
locomotives puffing, bells ringing, so that with the flame jets
rising, and the smokes of all colors blowing about, there is got a
good idea of the active industries of this very busy place.
PITTSBURG DEVELOPMENT.
This wonderful industrial development all came within the nineteenth
century. There is still preserved as a relic of its origin the little
block-house citadel of the old Fort Pitt, down near the point of the
peninsula where the rivers join. This has recently been restored by
the Daughters of the American Revolution--a small square building with
a pyramidal roof. The surrounding stockade long ago disappeared. There
is in the Pittsburg City Hall an inscribed tablet from Fort Pitt
bearing the date 1764. The old building, which was the scene of
Pittsburg's earliest history, for it stands almost on the spot
occupied by Fort Duquesne, is among modern mills and storehouses,
about three hundred feet from the head of the Ohio. Pittsburg, after
an almost exclusive devotion to manufacturing and business, began some
years ago to cultivate artistic tastes in architecture, and has some
very fine buildings. There is an elaborate Post-office and an
interesting City Hall on Smithfield Street; but the finest building of
all, and one of the best in the country, is the magnificent Romanesque
Court-house, built at a cost of $2,500,000, and occupying a prominent
position on a hill adjoining Fifth Avenue. There is a massive jail of
similar architecture, and a "Bridge of Sighs" connects them, a
beautifully designed arched and stone-covered bridge, thrown for a
passageway across an intervening street. The main tower, giving a
grand view, rises three hundred and twenty feet over the architectural
pile, and, as in Venice, the convicted prisoner crosses the bridge
from his trial to his doom. There are attractive churches, banks and
business buildings, and eastward from the city, near Schenley Park, is
the attractive Carnegie Library and Museum in Italian Renaissance,
with a capacity for two hundred thousand volumes, a benefaction of Mr.
Andrew Carnegie, originally costing $1,100,000, to which he has
recently added $1,750,000 for its enlargement. The residential section
is mainly on the hills east of Pittsburg and across the Allegheny
River in Allegheny City, there being many attractive villas in
beautiful situations on the surrounding highlands.
But the great Pittsburg attraction is the multitude of factories that
are its pride and create its prosperity. Some of these are among the
greatest in the world--the Edgar Thomson Works and Homestead Works of
the Carnegie Steel Company, the Duquesne Steel Works, the Keystone
Bridge Company, and others. The Edgar Thomas mills make over a million
tons of rails a year, and at Homestead fifteen hundred thousand tons
of steel will be annually produced, this being the place where
nickel-steel armor-plates for the navy are manufactured. They largely
use natural gas, and employ at times ten thousand men at the two great
establishments. The Duquesne Works, just above Homestead on the
Monongahela, have the four largest blast furnaces in the world,
producing twenty-two hundred tons of pig-iron daily. The Keystone
Bridge Works cover seven acres, and have made some of the greatest
steel bridges in existence. The Westinghouse Electrical Works
manufacture the greatest dynamos, including those of the Niagara
Power Company, and the Westinghouse Air-Brake Works is also another
extensive establishment. In the Pittsburg district, covering about two
hundred square miles, the daily product of mines and factories is
estimated at $6,000,000.
The two men whose names are most closely connected with Pittsburg's
vast industrial development are Andrew Carnegie and George
Westinghouse. Carnegie was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1837, and
his father, a potter, brought him to Pittsburg when eleven years old.
He began life as a telegraph messenger boy, attracted the attention of
Colonel Thomas A. Scott, and was by him brought into the service of
the Pennsylvania Railroad. Then he entered business, and became the
greatest developer of the iron and steel industries of Pittsburg and
its wealthiest resident. He some time ago sold out his interests to
the Carnegie Steel Company, in which he is largely interested.
Westinghouse, born in New York State in 1846, combined with business
tact the genius of the inventor. He invented and developed the railway
air-brake now in universal use, has established a complete electrical
lighting and power system, and was the chief adapter of natural gas to
manufacturing and domestic uses, being the inventor of many ingenious
contrivances for its introduction and economical employment. He had a
gas well almost at his door, for Pittsburg overlaid a great deposit.
The enormous coal measures underlying and surrounding the city have
been its most stable basis for industry and profit, as the Pittsburg
coal-field is one of enormous output. The deposits of Lake Superior
furnish the ores for its furnaces, and the railroad development is
such that each enormous establishment now has its special railroad to
fetch in the ores from Lake Erie, where they are brought by vessels.
Across in Allegheny City, where most of these ore-bringing roads go
out, about one hundred acres in the centre of the city are reserved
for the attractive Allegheny Park, one portion rising in a very steep
hill, almost at the edge of the Allegheny River. Upon its top, seen
from afar, stands a Soldiers' Monument, a graceful column, erected in
memory of four thousand men of Allegheny County who fell in the Civil
War. Soldier statues guard the base, and look out upon the smokes and
steam jets of the busy city below, and thousands climb up there to
enjoy the grand view.
COAL, COKE AND GAS.
The four counties adjoining Pittsburg turn out over thirty millions of
tons of bituminous coal in a year. To carry this coal away, besides
railways, the city has about a million and a half of tonnage of river
craft of various kinds, a greater tonnage than all the Mississippi
River ports put together. Its coal boats go everywhere throughout the
Western water ways, and two thousand miles down the Ohio and
Mississippi to New Orleans. Its stumpy but powerful little tugs, with
their stern-wheels, will safely convey fleets of shallow flatboats,
sometimes over twenty thousand tons of coal being carried in a single
tow. These flatboats are collected in the rivers about Pittsburg,
waiting for the proper stage of water on the Ohio; and to regulate the
depth at the city the curious movable dam was constructed at Davis's
Island, four miles below Pittsburg, at a cost of $1,000,000, the dam
opening when necessary to let freshets through, and having a lock five
hundred feet long and one hundred and ten feet wide to pass the boats.
The Monongahela River above Pittsburg has for miles a series of coal
mines in the high bordering banks, the river being lined with coal
"tipples," which load the flatboats; and it is also provided with a
series of dams, which aid navigation and divide the channel into a
succession of "pools." The very crooked Youghiogheny flows in at
McKeesport, fifteen miles above Pittsburg, another river of coal
mines, whose name was given as a signification of its crookedness by
the matter-of-fact Indians, the word signifying "the stream flowing a
contrary, roundabout course." This river comes northward out of the
chief coke district of America, in the flanks of the long Chestnut
Ridge, the Connellsville coke region sometimes turning out ten
millions of tons annually from its ovens. Railways run in there on
both river banks to Connellsville, a town of six thousand people, in
the midst of the coke ovens, and about fifty-six miles south of
Pittsburg.
Pittsburg is decreasing its use of natural gas for manufacturing, as
the diminishing supply and greater distance it has to be brought are
making it too costly for the iron and glass works, which are returning
again to coal and coke, but the city is still said to use forty-five
thousand millions of cubic feet in a year, mostly for domestic
purposes. Pittsburg stands in a great but partly exhausted natural-gas
district. The gas is stored under pressure beneath strata of rock,
being set free when these are pierced. This is a gaseous member of the
paraffin series, of which petroleum is a liquid member, and is mainly
marsh-gas, the "fire-damp" of the miner. It originates in the
decomposition of animal and vegetable life, and usually has but little
odor, whilst its illuminating power is low, but in fuel value eight
cubic feet equal one pound of coal. It was first used at Fredonia, New
York, in 1821, for lighting purposes, being procured from a well. The
natural-gas region is the part of Pennsylvania west of the
Alleghenies, extending into New York, Ohio and West Virginia; and gas
is also found in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Kansas. It is held
under enormous pressure within the pockets beneath the rocks, and when
first reached in drilling, the tension has been known to equal a
thousand pounds per square inch. It is not uncommon, when a well is
drilled, to have all the tools and casing-pipe blown out, while an
enormous thickness of masonry has to be constructed to hold down the
cap that covers the well. Its use began in Pittsburg in 1886, the
chief field of supply then being Murrysville, about twenty miles east
of the city, while there are also other fields southwest and east of
Pittsburg. The pipes underlie all the streets, and a main route of
supply is along the bed of the Allegheny River. There are said to be
about sixteen hundred miles of pipes laid down to lead the gas to
Pittsburg from the different fields.
PETROLEUM.
The great petroleum fields lie in and near the Pittsburg region, in
the basin of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, and extend from New York
southwest to West Virginia, and also into Ohio. This region has had
enormous yields in different parts of the river basin, the wells,
however, ultimately dwindling as their supplies are drawn out. The
petroleum industry, which has been one of the greatest in
Pennsylvania, has been gradually all absorbed by the Standard Oil
Company, which is probably the most extensive industrial combination
in America, and certainly the most powerful. Yet we are told that
those financial magnates began their wonderful career with an
aggregate capital of only $24,000, largely borrowed money. There have
been forty millions of barrels of petroleum taken from this great
basin in a single year. The oil wells are bored in many places, south,
southwest, north and northeast of Pittsburg. The "Panhandle Railroad,"
which crosses West Virginia to the Ohio, exhibits many of them. A
branch of this railroad goes to Canonsburg, and thence to the town of
Washington, on the old "National Road," thirty miles from Pittsburg.
At Canonsburg was founded in 1773 Jefferson College, in a log cabin,
which has now become the Jefferson Theological Seminary of the
Presbyterian Church. Washington is a town of about four thousand
people, rambling over a pleasant hilly region in Southwestern
Pennsylvania, having as its chief institution Washington and Jefferson
College, also a Presbyterian foundation, started in 1806 in what was
then a remote Scotch-Irish colony beyond the mountains. Near this town
in 1888 were struck the greatest petroleum wells the world ever knew.
One of them, the Jumbo well, in sixty days after the first strike had
poured out one hundred and forty thousand barrels of oil, flowing a
steady circular stream of almost white oil, about five inches in
diameter, at the rate of forty-two hundred gallons an hour. Another
well, afterwards bored not far away, in its freshness of infancy
poured out sixty-three hundred gallons an hour. Additional wells were
bored with almost the same results; but they all afterwards dwindled,
and finally ceasing a free flow, had to be pumped. This is the
universal experience of all the oil regions, the "gushers," soon after
the great strikes, giving out, as the store of petroleum in the
reservoirs beneath becomes exhausted. But all this shows how enormous
is the natural wealth of the Pittsburg district--oil, coal, coke and
gas, with iron, steel and glass, electricity and railways,
contributing to the wonderful prosperity.
The greatest petroleum field, however, was up the Allegheny River, in
Northwestern Pennsylvania, and the first wells bored to obtain it were
sunk at Titusville, on Oil Creek, in 1859. The early settlers knew of
the appearance of oil about the headwaters of the Allegheny in New
York and Pennsylvania, and the name of Oil Creek was given a stream
for this reason in Allegheny County, New York, and also to the one in
Venango County, Pennsylvania. The Indians had long collected the oil
on the shores of Seneca Lake in New York, a course that the white
settlers followed, and it was for years sold as a medicine by the name
of Seneca or Genesee oil. When its commercial value for illuminating
purposes began to be recognized, Colonel E. L. Drake went to
Titusville to see if it could be obtained in sufficient quantities. He
bored the first well about a mile south of Titusville, and on August
26, 1859, the oil was struck at a depth of seventy-one feet. The drill
suddenly sunk into the cavity of the rock beneath, and the oil rose
within a few inches of the surface. A small pump was introduced which
brought out four hundred gallons daily, and then a large pump,
increasing the daily flow to a thousand gallons. Soon a steam-engine
was applied, and the flow continued uninterrupted for weeks.
Titusville had at the time three hundred people. Many wells were sunk
in the neighborhood with varying success, and the product of the Oil
Creek district became so large that the market could not absorb it,
and at the beginning of 1861, with two thousand wells in operation,
the price declined to twenty-five cents per barrel. The two great
wells were the Empire, originally yielding twenty-five hundred barrels
daily, and the Phillips, nearly four thousand barrels. In 1863 the
production had slackened, but the uses had expanded, and prices rose
proportionately. Vast fortunes were then rapidly made, and as soon
squandered. In the first twelve years of the development of this
district, which extended over about four hundred square miles, there
were taken from some four thousand wells forty-two millions of barrels
of oil, which were marketed for $163,000,000. At first it was carried
away by the railroads, of which several sent branches into the
district, but there have since been laid extensive lines of pipes
which convey it in various directions, and largely to New York and
Philadelphia for foreign export. When this district was at the height
of its yield it produced four hundred millions of gallons a year.
ASCENDING THE ALLEGHENY.
From Pittsburg, through bold and pleasing scenery, we ascend the
Allegheny River, the broad channel flowing grandly around stately
bends enclosed between high hills. Thirty miles above Pittsburg the
Kiskiminetas comes in, and in a region of coal mines and furnaces is
found the town of Kittanning, which retains the name of the Indian
village standing there in Colonial days. This original Indian village
was attacked by Colonel Armstrong and three hundred troops at dawn on
August 8, 1757, and the Indians, who sided with the French, refusing
to surrender, they were pretty much all killed and their village
burnt. Armstrong's name is preserved in the county. Beyond is Brady's
Bend, a great curve of the river, and here are seen the derricks of
many deserted oil wells, as the farther journey above for miles also
discloses. This was the Modoc oil district. The Morrison well was
struck in 1872, yielding five hundred barrels daily, and immediately a
town was laid out, not inappropriately called Greece City, and it soon
had a large population. This was a prolific oil region at one time,
and back from the river were the well-known oleaginous towns of Modoc
City, Karns City and Petrolia. The Allegheny River gradually leads us
up to Venango County, which was the chief oil region. Franklin, the
capital of the county, has about five thousand inhabitants, and is
built at the mouth of French Creek, the site of the old French Fort
Venango, which Indian word meant "a guiding mark on a tree." It stood
on a commanding ridge, and was one of the chain of posts the French
built from the lakes across to the Ohio, to hold their possessions,
dating from 1753. The French had a large garrison there, but after
Canada was captured the English got possession, and in 1763 it was the
scene of a terrible massacre, the Indians taking it, murdering the
entire garrison, and slowly roasting the commandant to death.
Five miles above, Oil Creek flows into the Allegheny, and here is Oil
City, the petroleum headquarters. It has had a varying history, being
once almost destroyed by flood and twice by fire, but maintains its
supremacy and is a complete oil town--the air filled with petroleum
odors, and the lower streets saturated with the fluid. On the
Allegheny, nine miles from Oil City, is Oleopolis, and a short
distance inland is Pithole City, which was one of the famous oil towns
whose rise and decline were so phenomenal. A few farmers here tried to
get a scanty subsistence from the rocky and almost barren soil, where,
on a hill, there was a fissure two to four feet wide, called the
"pithole," from which came out at intervals hot air and bad smells.
This was on the Holmden farm, which had been nominally valued at five
dollars an acre. Somebody thought he detected the smell of oil among
the odors coming up, and a well was bored. It struck oil in the winter
of 1864-65, and was the greatest strike made down to that time--the
United States Well yielding seven thousand barrels daily. Multitudes
flocked thither, and in six months Pithole City arose in the
wilderness with fifteen thousand inhabitants, two theatres, an opera
house, a daily newspaper, and seventy-two hotels of various degrees.
Numerous wells were sunk, and the oil sold at $5 to $8 per barrel,
being readily sent to the seaboard. The Holmden farm was soon sold for
$4,000,000. There were some amazing speculative trades made. The story
is told of a well striking oil and a speculative bystander at once
buying a three-fourths interest in it for $18,000, agreeing to pay the
money next day. Turning away from the seller, he met a man seeking
such an investment, and promptly resold his interest for $75,000,
receiving immediate payment. The yield of this region was so prolific
that railroads and pipe lines were soon constructed to carry the oil
away. Pithole had its great boom in the autumn of 1866, wells being
bored in every direction, and real estate fetching enormous prices.
One old fellow who had a few acres of arid land in the centre of the
excitement sold his farm and hovel for $800,000, paid him on the spot
in $1000 notes; and then he sorrowfully bemoaned, as he took a last
look at the hovel he had occupied all his life, "Now I haint got any
home." The rise of this wonderful town was rapid, and its downfall
came all too soon. The oil supply became exhausted, the speculators
left, the inhabitants dwindled in number, and by 1870 Pithole had
reverted almost to its original condition. The chief hotel, which had
cost $31,000 to build, was afterwards sold for $100, and the
population had declined in 1873 to nine families.
The valley of Oil Creek is filled with derricks and oil tanks, having
a few pumping engines at work, but most of the derricks are over
abandoned wells. Eighteen miles up Oil Creek is Titusville, and when
the oil yield was at its height, about 1865, this valley had a
population of seventy-five thousand people. Titusville is pleasantly
built in the broadened intervale, surrounded by hills, the streets
being wide and straight, and the residences comfortable, each in its
garden enclosure. There are oil refineries, and iron works which make
engines, tubing and other supplies; and the town, which has eight
thousand people, is a headquarters for the Standard Oil Company.
Twenty-seven miles farther northward is Corry, a prominent railroad
centre, at the northern entrance to the Pennsylvania "Oil Dorado," as
the region has been popularly called. Its name of Corry was that of
the farmer who originally cultivated the soil when the place became a
railway station in 1861, and the location of oil refineries then began
its prosperity. There are now about six thousand inhabitants. It is
within a short distance of the New York State boundary, and marks the
northern limit of the Pennsylvania oil region. This whole district,
once the prominent petroleum field of Pennsylvania, has been eclipsed,
however, by other and more prolific oil basins. Fortunes were made
here, but most of the wealth passed away; and the history of the
Pennsylvania petroleum trade and its vicissitudes, with the absorption
of everything of value by the Standard Oil Company, has emphasized the
truth so pointedly told by Robert Burns, that "The best laid schemes
o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley." Its wonderful tide of prosperity and
its subsequent ebb recall Shelley's lines "To Men of England":
"The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears."
VISITING THE SUNNY SOUTH.
V.
VISITING THE SUNNY SOUTH.
Sir Walter Raleigh -- Roanoke Island -- Virginia Dare --
Potatoes -- Tobacco -- Carolina -- Cape Hatteras -- Cyclones --
Wilmington -- Fort Fisher -- Blockade Running -- Charleston --
Palmetto Trees -- John C. Calhoun -- Fort Moultrie -- Osceola's
Grave -- Fort Sumter -- Opening of the Civil War -- The Swamp
Angel -- St. Michael's Church -- Port Royal -- Savannah --
General Oglethorpe -- Count Pulaski -- Fort Pulaski --
Bonaventure Cemetery -- Okifenokee Swamp -- Jacksonville -- The
Alligator -- Oranges -- Land of Flowers -- Juan Ponce de Leon
-- Ferdinand de Soto -- The Huguenots -- Pedro Menendez --
Dominique de Gourgues -- Florida Peculiarities -- Cumberland
Sound -- St. Mary's River -- Cumberland Island -- Jekyll Island
-- Amelia Island -- Fernandina -- Dungeness -- General Greene
-- Light Horse Harry -- St. Augustine -- Matanzas River --
Anastasia Island -- Coquina -- Fort San Marco -- Fort Marion --
Grand Hotels -- Dade's Massacre -- Coa-coo-chee, the Wildcat --
Ormond -- Daytona -- New Smyrna -- The Southern Cassadega --
Indian River -- Titusville -- Rockledge -- Fort Pierce --
Jupiter Inlet -- Palm Beach -- Miami -- Biscayne Bay -- St.
John's River -- Mandarin -- Palatka -- Ocklawaha River -- Lake
Apopka -- Lake Eustis Region -- Ocala -- The Silver Spring --
Navigating the Ocklawaha -- Lake George -- Volusia -- Lake
Monroe -- Enterprise -- Sanford -- Winter Park -- Orlando --
Lake Tohopekaliga -- Kissimmee River -- Lake Okeechobee -- The
Everglades -- Lake Arpeika -- The Seminoles -- Suwanee River --
Cedar Key -- Tallahassee -- Achille Murat -- Wakulla Spring --
Appalachicola -- Pensacola -- Homosassa -- Tampa -- Charlotte
Harbor -- Punta Gorda -- Caloosahatchie River -- Fort Myers --
Cape Romano -- Cape Sable -- Florida Keys -- Coral Building --
The Gulf Stream -- Key West -- Fort Taylor -- Sand Key -- Dry
Tortugas -- Fort Jefferson -- Florida Attractions.
CAROLINA.
Sir Walter Raleigh, of chivalrous memory, sent the first English
colony to America in the sixteenth century. He was a half-brother of
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the English explorer, and had previously
accompanied Gilbert to Newfoundland. He sent out an expedition in
1584, which selected Roanoke Island, south of the Chesapeake, for a
settlement, and for this enterprise Queen Elizabeth knighted Raleigh,
gave him a grant of the whole country, and directed that the new land
be named in her honor, Virginia. In 1585-86 colonizing expeditions
were sent to Roanoke, but they did not prosper. The colonists
quarrelled with the Indians, and in the latter year the Governor
returned to England for provisions and reinforcements, leaving behind
with the colony his daughter, Mrs. Dare, and a granddaughter, nine
days old, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the new land.
Then came the Spanish Armada to conquer England, and the long war with
Spain. Nobody went to succor the little band of exiles on Roanoke
Island for three years, and when they did, the settlement was
obliterated, the hundred colonists and little Virginia Dare had
disappeared, and no tidings of them were ever obtained. Thus perished
Raleigh's colony; and, his means being exhausted, he was discouraged
and sent no more expeditions out to America. His enterprise failed in
making a permanent settlement, but it gave two priceless gifts to
Europe. The returning Governor took back to England the potato, which
Raleigh planted on his Irish estate and which has proved the salvation
of old Erin, and also the Virginia tobacco, which he taught the people
to smoke, and the fragrant weed became the solace of the world.
No further attempts at colonization were made until the seventeenth
century, when new grants were issued, and the country was named
Carolina in honor of King Charles I. The Atlantic Coast south of the
Chesapeake Bay entrance is low and bordered by sand beaches, which for
most of the distance in front of North Carolina are far eastward of
the mainland, with broad sounds and river estuaries between. These
long and narrow beaches protrude in some cases a hundred miles into
the ocean and form dangerous shoals, the extensive Albemarle and
Pamlico Sounds being enclosed by them, the former stretching fifty
miles and the latter seventy-five miles into the land. Out in front of
Pamlico Sound projects the shoulder of Cape Hatteras into the
Atlantic, the outer point of a low, sandy island, with shoals
extending far beyond it, and marked by the great beacon of this
dangerous coast, a flashing light one hundred and ninety feet high.
Here is the principal storm factory of the southern coast, noted for
cyclonic disturbances and dreaded by the mariner. Upon the outer
Diamond Shoals the Government has long tried in vain to erect a
lighthouse. A lightship is kept there, but is frequently blown from
her moorings and drifts ashore. The Gulf Stream, coming with warm and
speedy current up from Florida, is here diverged out into the ocean by
the shoulder of Hatteras; and, similarly, the whirling West India
cyclones of enormous area come along with their resistless energy,
destroying everything in their paths. In the terrific hurricane of the
autumn of 1899 a wind velocity of one hundred and sixty miles an hour
was reached momentarily, and the anemometer at Hatteras was blown down
after having recorded a velocity of one hundred and twenty miles. The
actual force exerted by one of these great cyclones in its work of
devastation, which uproots trees, demolishes buildings and strews the
coast with wrecks, has been calculated as equalling one thousand
million horse-power.
WILMINGTON AND FORT FISHER.
The interior of North Carolina adjoining the Sounds is largely swamp
land, and the broad belt of forest, chiefly pines, which parallels the
coast all along the Atlantic seaboard. Through this region the railway
extends southward from Virginia past Weldon to Wilmington, an
uninteresting route among the swamps and pine lands, showing sparse
settlement and poor agriculture, the wood paths exhibiting an
occasional ox-team or a stray horseman going home with his supplies
from the cross-roads store, a typical representative of the
"tar-heels of Carolina." The railway crosses the deep valley of
Roanoke River, and then over the Tar and Neuse Rivers, traversing the
extensive district that provides the world's greatest supply of naval
stores--the tar, pitch, turpentine, rosin and timber that are so
largely shipped out of the Cape Fear River from Wilmington. This is
the chief city of North Carolina, having about twenty thousand people,
and is located on the Cape Fear River twenty-six miles from its mouth.
The city spreads along the eastern shore upon the peninsula between it
and the ocean. The first settlement antedates the Revolution, when the
inhabitants, who were sturdy patriots, drove out the royal Governor
and made Fort Johnson, at the mouth of the river, an American
stronghold. Upon the secession of the Carolinas in 1860-61 this fort
was occupied by the Confederates and replaced by the larger work on
Federal Point, between the river and the sea, known as Fort Fisher.
Owing to the peculiar location and ease of entrance, the Cape Fear
River became famous in the Civil War as a haven for blockade-runners,
the effective defense made by Fort Fisher fully protecting this
traffic. As the Union blockade of the Southern harbors became more
completely effective with the progress of the war, this finally was
about the only port that could be entered, and an enormous traffic was
kept up between Wilmington and Nassau, on the British island of New
Providence, in the Bahamas, not far away, some three hundred fleet
foreign steamships safely running the blockade into Cape Fear River
during 1863 and 1864. The notoriety of this traffic, from which
enormous profits were made, became world-wide, and it was decided late
in 1864 that Fort Fisher had to be captured, in order to make the
Southern blockade entirely effective. A joint land and naval attack
was made by General Butler and Admiral Porter in December, 1864, but
they were obliged to retire without seriously damaging the fort. Then
General Butler ineffectively attempted to blow up the fort by
exploding a powder-boat near it. Finally a new expedition was landed
in January, 1865, under General Terry, and in coöperation with the
navy, which made a fierce bombardment, they captured the fort on the
15th, after severe loss, the works being partially destroyed the
following day by the accidental explosion of the powder magazine. This
capture ended the blockade-running at Wilmington, and had much to do
with precipitating the fall of Richmond in the following April.
[Illustration: _On the Ashley, near Charleston, S. C._]
CHARLESTON AND FORT SUMTER.
The railway from Wilmington to the South at first goes westward
through a region largely composed of swamps, and then entering South
Carolina turns southward past Florence to Charleston. The country is a
variation of pine barrens and morass, sparsely inhabited, but raising
much cotton, with many bales brought to the stations for shipment.
There is a much larger population of blacks than of whites.
Charleston, the metropolis of South Carolina, is an active seaport
with sixty-five thousand inhabitants, having a good export trade in
cotton, timber, naval stores, rice, fruits and phosphate rock, of
which there are extensive deposits on Ashley River nearby. It is a
low-lying city, built upon a peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper
Rivers, just inland from the ocean, and having a good harbor. Its many
wooden houses are varied by more pretentious ones of brick and stone,
but there is an air of decadence produced by the traces still
remaining of the earthquake of 1886, which destroyed the greater part
of the buildings and killed many people. The dwelling architecture of
Charleston presents the tropical features of open verandas, spacious
porticos and broad windows looking out upon gardens in which the
palmetto tree grows, typical of South Carolina, the "Palmetto State."
At the point of the peninsula between the rivers is the Battery, a
park and popular promenade overlooking the harbor, with Fort Sumter
down on its little shoal-like island, seen as a small dark streak upon
the distant horizon. The first settlements in this part of South
Carolina were made on the west bank of Ashley River, but the town,
which had been named in honor of King Charles II., in 1680 was
transferred to its present site. Charleston was prominent in the
Revolution, its troops under Colonel Moultrie repelling a British
attack upon Sullivan's Island in 1776; but the city was captured by
Sir Henry Clinton in 1780 after an obstinate defense. Before the Civil
War it was the chief cotton-shipping port of America, though it is now
surpassed by the Gulf ports and by Savannah. The great memory in the
city of that time of its greatest prosperity is of the apostle of
"State Rights," the South Carolina statesman, John C. Calhoun, who
died in 1850. His statue stands in Citadel Square, and his grave is in
St. Philip's churchyard.
The broad estuary of Charleston harbor is completely landlocked, and
has an entrance from the sea about a mile wide. On the southern side
is Fort Moultrie, which was enlarged from the battery that repulsed
the British attack in 1776, on Sullivan's Island, this now being a
favorite summer resort, and dotted with wooden cottages facing the
sea. Just behind the fort is the grave of Osceola, the famous chief of
the Seminoles, who long carried on war in the Florida everglades, but
was captured and brought a prisoner to Fort Moultrie, dying in 1838.
Fort Sumter, three miles below Charleston, stands upon a shoal of
about three acres, out in mid-channel, which is protected from the
water encroachment by stone rip-rapping. It was faced with brick
during the Civil War, but the work has since been modernized. At the
opening of the war, Major Anderson occupied this fort with the small
force of seventy-five men, which, after the secession of South
Carolina from the Union, December 20, 1860, had been transferred
thither from Fort Moultrie, the State troops immediately seizing
Moultrie and all the other forts around the harbor, and the Federal
public buildings in Charleston. They also constructed new batteries on
Morris Island, the nearest land to Fort Sumter. On January 9, 1861,
the Government at Washington sent the steamer "Star of the West" into
the harbor with provisions and a reinforcement of two hundred and
fifty troops. The first shot of the Civil War was on that day fired at
her from Morris Island, and the ship being struck by this and
subsequent shots, her commander abandoned the project and withdrew.
There was a good deal of negotiation and delay afterwards, the
Government, on April 8th, finally determining to provision Fort
Sumter, as Anderson's supplies would be exhausted on the 15th, and so
informing the Governor of South Carolina. On the 11th, General
Beauregard, commanding the State forces, demanded the surrender of the
fort, which was refused. Major Anderson was notified early next
morning that the fort would be fired upon in one hour, and cannonading
began at 4.20 A.M. on the 12th. A fleet of vessels appeared off the
harbor at noon with provisions, exchanged signals with the fort, but
made no attempt to land, and on the 13th terms of surrender were
arranged by which Major Anderson and his little command marched out on
the 14th with the honors of war, saluting the American flag with
fifty guns. This bombardment and evacuation set the North in a blaze
of patriotic excitement and began the Civil War.
The naval forces of the United States attacked Fort Sumter in April,
1863, but were repulsed, the monitor "Keokuk" being so seriously
injured that she afterwards sunk. Subsequently, the Union troops
landed on Morris Island, erected batteries, and in August partly
destroyed the works at Sumter; and its bombardment, and also that of
Charleston, continued with but brief intermission till the war closed
in 1865. On Morris Island was set up the original "long-range gun,"
General Gillmore's "Swamp Angel" now adorning a drinking-fountain at
Trenton, New Jersey; and its ability, until it unfortunately burst, to
shoot its bolts into Charleston, then regarded as an almost impossible
distance to carry a projectile, attracted the attention of gunnery
experts throughout the world. Its conspicuous mark was the white spire
of St. Michael's Church up in the beleaguered city. This famous old
church, dating from 1752, was struck six times during these attacks
and seriously damaged. It was also partly demolished by a cyclone in
1885, and nearly destroyed by the earthquake of 1886; but it has been
since restored, and its prominent steeple commands a good view.
Charleston, however, seems to have always been used to this sort of
thing. Its statue of William Pitt in front of the City Hall had
the right arm broken off by a British cannon-shot in 1780. But if the
city is thus somewhat in dilapidation, its grand development of
foliage and flowers gives a compensation. Everywhere in the suburbs
and in the streets and gardens are seen magnificent azaleas,
magnolias, camellias, and the famous live oak, which flourish in
luxuriance and add to the charms of this restful South Carolina
metropolis.
THE CITY OF SAVANNAH.
The seacoast of South Carolina and Georgia is composed largely of
deeply indented bays, with many islands, tortuous bayous, and a
labyrinth of water ways bordered by dense vegetation. Southward from
Charleston harbor to the Savannah River many creeks provide a system
of inland navigation and form fertile islands. There are two capacious
Sounds, St. Helena and Port Royal, the latter being one of the finest
harbors in the world, and the rendezvous of the American North
Atlantic naval squadron when in these waters. This was the place of
first landing of the original South Carolina colonists before they
went to the Ashley River, and its chief town now is Beaufort, on St.
Helena Island. These coast islands raise the famous "sea-island
cotton," and the whole lowland region produces prolific crops of rice.
The adjacent land is generally swampy, and its chief industry, outside
of cultivating the fields, is the working of the extensive phosphate
deposits, which are manufactured into fertilizers. The railway,
largely constructed on piles, passes through much marsh and morass,
crosses swift-running dirty streams, and over the swamps and among the
pine timber, varied by the oak, bay tree and laurel, which the humid
atmosphere has hung with garlands of sombre gray moss and clusters of
ivy and other creeping plants. The festooned moss, overrunning and
often destroying the foliage of the trees, gives the scene a weird and
ghostly appearance. The railway route is bordered by an apparently
almost impenetrable jungle, the few settlements are widely separated,
and population is sparse, seeming to be chiefly negroes dressed in
ancient-looking clothing ornamented with patches. The few whites who
appear are bilious and yellowish, their complexions and garb being
alike of the butternut hue, while both races seem to talk the same
dialect. Thus moving farther southward, the Carolina "tar-heels" are
replaced by the "crackers" and "butternuts," looking as if they had
been rolled for a generation in the clayey soils drained by the
Edisto, Coosawhatchie and Savannah Rivers and their neighboring
streams, and who, farther inland, are the "clay-eaters" of Georgia.
Then crossing the Savannah River, the route is upon the level lowlands
down its Georgia bank, and into the city of Savannah, arriving amid a
vast collection of rosin and pitch barrels, cotton bales and timber.
Savannah--derived from the Spanish word _sabana_, a "meadow or
plain"--is known popularly as the "Forest City," and is built upon a
bluff along the river shore, eighteen miles from the sea. It has fifty
thousand people and a large export trade in naval stores, rice, timber
and cotton, in the latter export being second only to New Orleans. It
received great impetus after the Civil War, owing to its excellent
railway connections with the interior, and is now the chief port of
the Southern Atlantic coast. The city extends upon a level sandy
plain, stretching back from the bluff shore along the river, has broad
streets crossing at right angles, with small parks at the
intersections, and many trees border the streets and fill the parks,
so that it is fairly embowered in foliage, thus presenting an
attractive and novel appearance. This adornment makes Savannah the
most beautiful city of the coast--the oak, palmetto and magnolia, with
the holly, orange, creeping ivy and clustering vines, setting the
buildings in a framework of delicious green. The business quarter is
along the bluff, where the ships moor alongside the storehouses, which
have their upper stories on a level with the busy Bay Street at its
top. Much of the present beauty of the city is due to the foresight of
its founder who laid out the plan--General Oglethorpe, who selected
this place in 1733 for the capital of his Province of Georgia, the
youngest of the original thirteen colonies.
General James Edward Oglethorpe was a native of London and an officer
in the British army, who, being of philanthropic tendencies, obtained
a grant of the Province from King George for the purpose of providing
an asylum for the poor debtors of England and a home for the
Protestants of all nations. After founding the city and receiving a
colony of Protestants from Salzburg, he visited England and brought
out John and Charles Wesley in 1735, and got George Whitefield to come
and preach to the colonists in 1737. War breaking out with Spain, he
attacked Florida, carrying his invasion to the gates of St. Augustine,
but was repulsed. He returned to England in 1743, but though he lived
until 1785 as a retired general upon half-pay, he never revisited
America. The British captured Savannah in the Revolution, and repulsed
a combined French and American attempt to recapture it in 1779. In
this attack Count Pulaski fell, and the spot, now Monterey Square,
near the centre of the city, is marked by the Pulaski Monument, one of
the noblest shafts in America. Count Pulaski is the patron saint of
Savannah, and Fort Pulaski, named in his honor, guards the Savannah
River entrance from the sea. During the Civil War, however, this fort
was practically useless, as it was captured by the Unionists in 1862,
and Tybee Roads, the harbor at the entrance, was hermetically sealed
throughout the war by the blockading fleet. General Sherman's
triumphant march through Georgia ended in December, 1864, at
Savannah, and his headquarters are still pointed out, opposite Madison
Square. Savannah has a fine pleasure-ground in Forsyth Park, with its
wealth of trees and ornamental shrubbery, and the adjoining Parade
Ground containing the Confederate Soldiers' Monument. The favorite
route to the southern suburbs is the famous Thunderbolt Shell Road
leading to Thunderbolt River, and noted for its avenues of live oaks
draped with Spanish moss. Here is also the favorite burial-place, the
Bonaventure Cemetery, where the graves and tombstones are laid out
alongside passages embowered by live oaks, their wide-stretching,
gaunt and angular limbs being richly garlanded with the gray moss and
encircled by creeping ivy. The long vista views under these sombre
archways have an elfish look, peculiarly appropriate for a city of the
dead, and it would take little imagination to conjure up the spirits
of the departed and see them wandering beneath these canopies of
shrouds.
THE CITY OF JACKSONVILLE.
Southward from Savannah, the railway route to Florida renews the
monotonous landscape of woods and swamps. For ninety miles it goes in
an almost straight line southwest through the pine belt of Southern
Georgia, crossing the Ogeechee and Altamaha Rivers to Waycross, and
then, turning to the southeast, proceeds in another almost straight
line for about an equal distance towards the coast, and crosses St.
Mary's River into Florida. It traverses the edge of the noted
Okifenokee Swamp of Georgia, the Indian "weaving, shaking, water," a
moist and mushy region of mystery and legend, drained by the poetic
Suwanee, the Indian "Echo river," which has been made the theme of a
favorite melody. This stream flows through Florida into the Gulf of
Mexico, while on the eastern side the extensive swamp overflows into
the winding St. Mary's River leading to the Atlantic. To the
southward, the pine woods of Florida grow out of a sandy soil nearly
as level as a floor, in which almost every depression and fissure
seems filled with water, and the balsamic odors of these pines,
combined with the mildness of the winter climate, give an indication
of the attractions which make Florida so popular as a resort for the
Northern people. The route finally reaches the broad St. John's River
at the Florida metropolis, Jacksonville, a Yankee city in the South,
bearing the name of the famous President, General Andrew Jackson, and
having thirty thousand population, largely of Northern birth. This is
the centre of the railway system of Florida and of most of the
business of the State, having a large export trade in timber, naval
stores, phosphates, oranges and other Florida products. To the
visitor, probably the first most forcible impression is made by the
free growth of oranges along the streets and in the house gardens. The
city stands upon the northern and outer bank of a magnificent bend of
St. John's River, this noble stream, which flows northward from
Southern Florida, being a mile wide, and sweeping around to the
eastward at Jacksonville to reach the sea about twenty-five miles
beyond, its navigation having been improved by dredging and
constructing jetties to maintain a channel through the bar at the
mouth. The business section is near the shore, and the railways come
down to the wharves; while, as the curving river stretches away to the
southward, the bank is lined with rows of fine suburban villas,
occupied by the business men who have built their comfortable homes
amid the oranges, oleanders, magnolias and banana trees. The river has
low tree-clad shores, and far over on the opposite bank are more
villas and orange groves.
Jacksonville is well supplied with hotels and lodging-houses, which
accommodate the crowds of winter visitors from the North, and it
spreads into various suburban villages reached by steamboats and hard
shell roads. It is the great _entrepôt_ for Florida, standing at the
northern verge, the salubrious and equable climate being the
attraction, for frost is rare, and the winters are usually clear and
dry and give a most magnificent atmosphere. Rows of splendid oaks line
the streets, and form fine archways of green, giving a delicious
shade. Besides the orange, the alligator is also a Jacksonville
attraction, live ones being kept as pets, little ones sent northward
in boxes for gifts, and dead ones of all sizes prepared for
ornaments. This reptile is the type and emblem of Florida; his skin
and teeth are worked into fantastic shapes, and his curious bones and
formation do duty in the make-up of many "Florida curiosities." In
fact, outside of the timber, which is most prolific, the best known
Florida crops are the alligator and the orange. Although frosts have
killed many in late years, yet the product of the orange trees is
still large, Southern Florida containing the most famous orange
groves, especially along the Indian River and on the lakes of the
upper St. John's River, where they are usually planted on the southern
borders of the lakes, so that the frost is killed by the winds
carrying it over the water, and thus the orange trees are protected.
THE LAND OF FLOWERS.
In the early sixteenth century there flourished a valiant Spaniard of
noble birth, a grandee of Aragon, who had taken part in the conquest
of Grenada, Don Juan Ponce de Leon. He had accompanied Columbus on one
of his American voyages, and in 1510 was appointed Governor of Puerto
Rico. The bold Don Juan had become somewhat worn by a life of
dangerous buccaneering and romantic adventure, and being rather
advanced in years he was losing the attractiveness which had long
added charms to his gallantries. From the Indians of Puerto Rico he
heard of an island off to the northwestward, which they called Bimini,
and he listened with wonder and constantly increasing interest to the
tales they told of an extraordinary and miraculous spring which it
contained that would restore youth to the aged and health to the
decrepit--the "Fountain of Perpetual Youth." They described it as
being in a region of surpassing beauty, and said there were found
abundant gold and many slaves in this land of promise. The rugged old
warrior was fired with the prospect of restored youth, and soon
secured from the king a grant of Bimini. In March, 1513, he sailed
with a large expedition from Puerto Rico, discovered some of the
Bahama Islands, coasted along the mainland to latitude 30° 8' north,
and on Easter Sunday, April 8th, landed a short distance south of St.
John's River and took possession, calling the country Florida, from
"Pasqua Florida," the Spanish name for the day. He did not find the
magic spring, however, but he did discover a fairy scene, a land
filled with a profusion of fruits and flowers. Though he subsequently
diligently searched for it, he unfortunately never found the
miraculous fountain. He explored the Gulf Coast, and returned to the
quest again in 1521, when he got into quarrels with the Indians, was
mortally wounded in a combat, and went back to Cuba to die.
Another Spanish grandee, fired with zeal for gold and conquest,
appeared upon the scene somewhat later in the sixteenth century.
Ferdinand de Soto, a native of Jerez, whose only heritage was his
sword and shield, had accompanied various expeditions to Darien and
Nicaragua, and in 1532 joined Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, where
he acquired great wealth, with which he returned to Spain. Soon after,
being anxious for more adventure, he was appointed Governor of Cuba
and Florida, and given a commission to explore and settle the Spanish
possessions in the latter country, then including the whole northern
coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In May, 1539, he sailed from Havana with
a large fleet and six hundred men, coasted around Florida and landed
at Tampa Bay on the Gulf side, where his explorations ashore began in
July. Fabulous stories had been told him of the wealth of the country
by those who had been there, and De Soto's plan was to go everywhere
in search of gold. He captured Indians for guides, and found a
Spaniard, Juan Ortiz, whom they had taken captive several years
before, but who was now living with them as a friend, knew their
language and became interpreter. Then De Soto, by his aid, began a
most difficult exploration, advancing through thick woods, north and
east, amid tangled undergrowth, over bogs and marshes, crossing rivers
and lakes, fighting the Indians who resented his cruelties, for he
made them his slaves and bearers of burdens, tortured and killed them
if they resisted. But he found no gold, though he pushed steadily
onward, and turning westward in the quest, his numbers growing
smaller and the survivors weaker under the weight of their privations.
He travelled a long distance, crossing Northern Florida and Georgia
into the Carolinas, and probably to Tennessee, descending the Alabama
River, and having a battle with the Indians near Mobile Bay in
October, 1540; then turning again northward, crossing the Mississippi
River, which he discovered in May, 1541, near the Chickasaw Bluffs,
exploring it nearly to the mouth of the Missouri, and then turning
southward he sailed down the river, and finally died of fever near the
mouth of Red River in May, 1542. During the three years' wanderings
nearly half his force had perished in battle, or of privation and
disease. The Indians were in awe of him and believed him immortal, and
a panic therefore seized his surviving followers, who feared
annihilation if the savages discovered that De Soto was dead. So they
quietly buried him at night, from a boat in midstream, sinking the
corpse in the great Father of Waters. Discouraged and almost hopeless,
his followers managed to build some small vessels, and the next year
arrived safely in Mexico.
Neither of these expeditions succeeded in colonizing Florida, but they
left a feeling of hatred among the Indians, caused by the Spanish
cruelties, which always afterwards existed. In 1564 some French
Huguenots, led by René de Loudonnière, attempted making a settlement
at the mouth of St. John's River, and built Fort Caroline there. News
of this reached Spain, and in 1565 another colonization expedition was
sent out under Don Pedro Menendez d'Aviles, which set sail from Cadiz,
and on St. Augustine's Day, August 28th, landed not far from where
Ponce de Leon had made his first invasion, and founded a colony which
he named St. Augustine, in honor of his day of arrival. As soon as
Menendez was established on shore he attacked the Huguenots at St.
John's River, and hanged such of them as had escaped being killed in
the battle, declaring that he did this because they were Protestants.
Some of them who had been away from the fort at the time were
afterwards shipwrecked near St. Augustine, and these he also captured
and put to death. The French Fort Caroline was then garrisoned by the
Spaniards, its name changed to Fort San Mateo, and they also fortified
with redoubts both sides of the river entrance. The story of the
atrocities of Menendez was received with indignation in France, but
the King, controlled by intrigue, dared do nothing, such was his fear
of the power of Spain.
Full vengeance was afterwards taken, however. Dominique de Gourgues, a
French gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan, who hated the Spaniards with a
mortal hatred, took up the quarrel, sold his inheritance, borrowed
money, and equipped a small expedition of three vessels and one
hundred and eighty men. He concealed his real object, and sailing for
some time through the tropical seas, finally came to Cuba, when he
first made known his purpose to his followers. He landed at St. Mary's
River, opening communication with the Indians, and a joint attack upon
the Spaniards to the southward was arranged. In May, 1568, the fort
and redoubts at St. John's River were stormed and taken, a few
Spaniards being captured alive, all the rest having been slain in the
combat. Gourgues was shown nearby the trees whereon Menendez had
hanged the French prisoners when he first took the fort, having placed
over them the inscription "Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans." He
hanged his Spanish prisoners on the same trees, and over them was also
nailed an inscription, burned with a hot iron on a tablet of pine,
"Not as Spaniards, but as Traitors, Robbers and Murderers." Gourgues'
mission of vengeance was fulfilled. His Indian allies demolished the
fort and the redoubts at the mouth of the river. He then sailed home
with his expedition, landing at Rochelle on the day of Pentecost,
where the Huguenots greeted him with all honor, and whilst he was
scorned at court and lived for some years in obscurity, Queen
Elizabeth showed him great favor; and as he was going overland to join
the army of Portugal to once more fight his enemies, the Spaniards, he
fell ill at Tours and died. The French made no more attempts at
settlement in Florida, and the Spaniards afterwards possessed it,
though frequently being at war with the English. Spain finally ceded
the "Land of Flowers" to the United States, which took final
possession in 1821.
SOME FLORIDA PECULIARITIES.
Florida is a strange region, yet most attractive. The traveller
regards its surface as mainly a monotonous level of forest and swamp,
with fruit and floral embellishments, but it in fact rises by an
almost insensible ascent from the coast towards the interior, where
there is a central summit ridge all along the peninsula of about three
hundred feet elevation, covered with pine woods. Most of the surface,
however, is but a few feet above the sea-level, these "flatlands," as
they are called, being grass-grown savannahs, pine woods, swamps and
cabbage-palm thickets. The southern part of the peninsula is the
region of the everglades, which have been formed by successive dykes
of coral, built by the industrious little insect long ago. The upper
part of this region is occupied by the extensive but shallow waters of
Lake Okeechobee, which merges insensibly into the everglades south and
east, the Seminoles calling this grass-grown and spongy region, which
is still the abode of some remnants of the tribe, Pa-ha-yo-kee,
meaning "much grass in water." These everglades are penetrated in all
directions by tortuous water channels of slight depth; and at frequent
intervals in the whole district there are wooded islands possessing
fertile soils and covered with dense tropical vegetation. These
islands are said to have been surrounded by the sea in bygone ages,
and they then stood in the same relation to the mainland as do the
present Southern Florida reefs and keys. Wide tracts of cypress swamp
separate the everglades from the Gulf of Mexico, while in Southern
Florida they approach within a few miles of the Atlantic Coast, being
separated by an intervening dyke of coral, crossed by frequent streams
of rapid current, for the everglades are far from being stagnant
swamps. There are also many other extensive swamps in the State.
The Florida seacoast is usually protected by sand beaches which are
quite hard, and are separated from the mainland by interior lagoons.
The mangrove and the coral, constantly growing, are ever encroaching,
however, on the sea-waters, and thus Florida seems to have been
constructed. The country is full of water courses, lakes and springs,
some of the latter being regarded as among the most remarkable in the
world, the famous Silver Spring near Ocala being estimated as
discharging three hundred millions of gallons daily. There are
countless springs along the coasts, and one of these bursts up in the
sea near St. Augustine, two miles off shore, with a torrent so
vigorous that the ocean waves break over the column of fresh water as
if it were a sunken reef. Scientific investigators are amazed at the
vast amounts of water everywhere visible and discharged from these
springs, and with only the narrow and low peninsula for a watershed,
the problem as to where the vast water supply comes from baffles
solution. Some of the Florida lakes are subject to remarkable
fluctuations of level, and one of them, Lake Jackson, ran suddenly dry
at the time of the Charleston earthquake in 1886, but after a few
weeks the water began returning, and it soon resumed its natural
proportions.
CUMBERLAND SOUND.
The memory of the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II., the
victor of the battle of Culloden, in Scotland, where he defeated the
Pretender in 1746, is preserved in America in the name of Cumberland
Sound, the finest harbor on the Southern Atlantic Coast. St. Mary's
River, coming out of Okifenokee swamp to make the northern boundary of
Florida, flows an erratic course, boxing the compass in every
direction until it finally heads eastward and debouches in Cumberland
Sound, among a group of islands forming a large landlocked harbor.
This river and sound, the boundary between Georgia and Florida, were,
prior to the Revolution, a disputed frontier between the English and
the Spaniards. To the northward of the entrance from the sea is
Cumberland Island in Georgia, then comes Jekyll Island, with its
magnificent club-house and elaborate cottages, and then St. Simon's
Bay, having as its chief port the busy lumber-shipping town of
Brunswick. To the southward of the Cumberland entrance is Amelia
Island in Florida. The sound behind Amelia and Cumberland Islands is a
magnificent roadstead, capable of floating at safe anchorage an
enormous fleet. Amelia Island is a long, narrow sand bank with much
foliage upon it, stretching about fourteen miles down the Florida
coast to Nassau Sound. On the sea front of this island is one of the
finest sand beaches on the Atlantic. Behind it is the arm of the sea
known as Amelia River, and the port of Fernandina, thirty-six miles
northeast of Jacksonville, having at the point of the island, guarding
the entrance to its harbor, old Fort Clinch, a superannuated
brick-work battery, formerly of great importance, but now of little
use, though it was somewhat strengthened to meet the exigencies of the
recent Spanish War.
The French Huguenots first came along here and settled, as they did at
the St. John's River entrance, and they called the island Garde. They
found here a powerful Indian tribe, whose chief, the "Cacique of
Garde," their historian described as "handsome and noble," and his
queen as "beautiful and modest," and the same authority says they had
"five handsome daughters." The French were engaged in desultory
quarrels with the Spaniards south of them at St. Augustine, and the
young gallants of the colony, in the intervals of the warfare,
alternately courted and jilted the Indian maidens, the result being a
savage attack and massacre; and finally, between Indian and Spanish
enmity, the settlement disappeared. But the English, made of sterner
stuff, ultimately came along, settling Georgia, and giving British
names to the islands, the rivers and the Sound, which they still
retain. For a long time this was disputed territory between the
English and the Spaniards, the latter claiming everything northward to
Carolina. General Oglethorpe marched through here to attack St.
Augustine, and in 1763 the British held Amelia Island, extending the
little fort to almost its present proportions, and laying out a town
behind it, while to the southward the Countess of Egmont established
an indigo plantation, which flourished for a brief period. Spain
ultimately got the island, and it came into American possession with
Florida in 1821. A little town with sandy streets, a pretty park, much
foliage, delicious air bringing the balsam of the pines and the tonic
of the sea, and hotels accommodating the influx of winter visitors,
make up the Fernandina of to-day. Its beach on the ocean front, more
than a mile away, is one of the finest in existence, hard as a floor,
level and broad, stretching as far as eye can see, and having a grand
surf booming upon it.
On Cumberland Island is the estate of Dungeness. General Nathaniel
Greene of Rhode Island, one of Washington's most trusted officers, was
the commander of the Revolutionary armies in the South in 1780-81
which drove the British out of that section, gained the victory of
Cowpens in South Carolina, and compelled the withdrawal of Cornwallis
to Yorktown, which ended in his surrender. After the close of the war,
in gratitude for his great services, the people of Georgia presented
him with this estate of about ten thousand acres. He made it his home
for a time, but it afterwards passed away from his family, and being
neglected, the old coquina stone mansion was burnt. The house has
since been reconstructed, and a picturesque avenue of moss-hung live
oaks a mile long stretches over the island near it to the sea. In a
little cemetery on the estate are the graves of General Greene's widow
and daughter. Here is also the grave of "Light Horse Harry" of the
Revolution (the father of General Robert E. Lee), who died abroad in
1818. He had visited and loved Dungeness, and requested to be buried
there. Oaks and palmettos embower these modest graves, which are
carefully preserved.
ANCIENT ST. AUGUSTINE.
St. Augustine, thirty-six miles southeast of Jacksonville, on the
seacoast, is the oldest city in the United States, founded by Menendez
in 1565, and existing to this day with the characteristics of a
Spanish town of the sixteenth century, which have been also reproduced
in the architecture of most of the newer buildings. A small inlet from
the ocean, about fifteen miles south of the mouth of St. John's
River, stretches its arms north and south, the latter arm, called
Matanzas River, seeking the sea again about eighteen miles below. It
thus forms Anastasia Island, sheltering the harbor like a breakwater,
and behind it the city is built, being protected by a sea-wall nearly
a mile long, built of coquina or shell-stone. Another arm of the sea,
called San Sebastian River, is a short distance inland, so that the
town site is really upon a peninsula. About five thousand people
reside permanently in St. Augustine, a few of Spanish descent, and
more of them the offspring of a colony of Minorcans who came in 1769,
but in winter the Northern visitors to the palatial hotels swell the
population to over ten thousand. The town is built on a level sandy
plain, and the older streets are narrow, being only a few feet wide
and without sidewalks. The projecting balconies of some of the ancient
houses almost touch those opposite. The old streets are paved with
coquina and the old houses are built of it, this curious
shell-limestone, quarried on Anastasia Island, hardening upon exposure
to the air. A few streets running north and south, crossed by others
at right angles, and a broader front street bordered by the sea-wall
which makes a fine promenade, compose the town. This sea-wall of
coquina is capped with granite, and was built after the American
occupation of the city. At its northern end is Fort Marion and at the
southern end St. Francis Barracks, the United States military post,
so named because it occupies the site of the old Convent of St.
Francis, having some of its coquina walls incorporated in the present
structure. The harbor in front, which in past centuries sheltered so
many Spanish fleets and those of Spanish enemies as well, is now
chiefly devoted to yachting.
When Menendez and his Spaniards first landed they built a wooden fort
commanding the harbor entrance, surrounded by pine trees, which they
named San Juan de Pinos. This was afterwards replaced by Fort San
Marco, constructed of coquina, which was nearly a hundred years
building, and was finished in 1756. Upon the transfer of Florida to
the United States this became Fort Marion. It is a well-preserved
specimen of the military architecture of the eighteenth century, built
on Vauban's system, covering about four acres, with bastions at the
corners, each protected by a watch-tower, and is surrounded by a moat,
the walls being twenty-one feet high. The fort is in reasonably good
preservation, and is said to have been constructed mainly by the labor
of Indians. It took so long to build and cost so much under the
wasteful Spanish system that one sovereign wrote that it had almost
cost its weight in gold; yet it was regarded then as supremely
important to be finished, being the key to the Spanish possession of
Florida. Over the sally-port at the drawbridge are carved the Spanish
arms and an inscription recording the completion of the fort in 1756,
when Ferdinand VI. was King of Spain and Don Hereda Governor of
Florida. It mounted one hundred of the small guns of those days, and
the interior is a square parade ground, surrounded by large casemates.
Upon each side of the casemate opposite the sally-port is a niche for
holy water, and at the farther end the Chapel. Dungeons and
subterranean passages abound, of which ghostly tales are told. This
fort is the most interesting relic of the ancient city, a picturesque
place, with charms even in its dilapidation.
There are other quaint structures in this curious old town. A gray
gateway about ten feet wide, flanked by tall square towers, marks the
northern entrance to the city, the ditch from the fort passing in
front of it. In one of the streets is the palace of the Spanish
Governors, since changed into a post-office. The official centre of
the city is a public square, the Plaza de la Constitucion, having a
monument commemorating the Spanish Liberal Constitution of 1812, and
also a Confederate Soldiers' Monument. This square fronts on the
sea-wall, and alongside it and stretching westward is the Alameda,
known as King Street, leading to the group of grand hotels recently
constructed in Spanish and Moorish style, which have made modern St.
Augustine so famous. These are the Ponce de Leon, the Alcazar and the
Cordova, with the Casino, adjoined by spacious and beautiful gardens.
These buildings reproduce all types of the Hispano-Moorish
architecture, with many suggestions from the Alhambra. The Ponce de
Leon, the largest, is three hundred and eighty by five hundred and
twenty feet, enclosing an open court, and its towers rise above the
red-tiled roofs to a height of one hundred and sixty-five feet, the
adornments in colors being very effective. To the southward of the
town, adjoining the barracks, is the military cemetery, where a
monument and three white pyramids tell the horrid story of the Dade
massacre during the Seminole War. Major Dade, a gallant officer, and
one hundred and seven men, were ambushed and massacred by eight
hundred Indians in December, 1835, and their remains afterwards
brought here and interred under the pyramids. Opposite the barracks is
what is claimed to be the oldest house in the United States, occupied
by Franciscan monks from 1565 to 1580, and afterwards a dwelling. It
has been restored, and contains a collection of historical relics.
St. Augustine has had a chequered history. In 1586, Queen Elizabeth's
naval hero, Sir Francis Drake, sailing all over the world to fight
Spaniards, attacked and plundered the town and burnt the greater part
of it. Then for nearly a century the Indians, pirates, French, English
and neighboring Georgians and Carolinians made matters lively for the
harried inhabitants. In 1763 the British came into possession, but
they ceded it back to Spain twenty years later, the town then
containing about three hundred householders and nine hundred negroes.
It became American in 1821, and was an important military post during
the subsequent Seminole War, which continued several years. It was
early captured by the Union forces during the Civil War, and was a
valuable stronghold for them. This curious old town has many
traditions that tell of war and massacre and the horrible cruelties of
the Spanish Inquisition, the remains of cages in which prisoners were
starved to death being shown in the fort. Its best modern story,
however, is told of the escape of Coa-coo-chee, the Seminole chief,
whose adventurous spirit and savage nature gained him the name of the
"Wild Cat." The ending of the Seminole War was the signing of a treaty
by the older chiefs agreeing to remove west of the Mississippi.
Coa-coo-chee, with other younger chiefs, opposed this and renewed the
conflict. He was ultimately captured and taken to Fort Marion.
Feigning sickness, he was removed into a casemate giving him air,
there being an aperture two feet high by nine inches wide in the wall
about thirteen feet above the floor, and under it a platform five feet
high. Here, while still feigning illness, he became attenuated by
voluntary abstinence from food, and finally one night squeezed himself
through the aperture and dropped to the bottom of the moat, which was
dry. Eluding all the guards, he escaped and rejoined his people. The
flight caused a great sensation, and there was hot pursuit. After some
time he was recaptured, and being taken before General Worth, was used
to compel the remnant of the tribe to remove to the West. Worth told
him if his people were not at Tampa in twenty days he would be killed,
and he was ordered to notify them by Indian runners. He hesitated, but
afterwards yielded, and the runners were given twenty twigs, one to be
broken each day, so they might know when the last one was broken his
life would pay the penalty. In seventeen days the task was
accomplished. The tribe came to Tampa, and the captive was released,
accompanying his warriors to the far West. This ended most of the
Indian troubles in Florida, but some descendants of the Seminoles
still exist in the remote fastnesses of the everglades.
THE FLORIDA EAST COAST.
All along the Atlantic shore of Florida south of St. Augustine are
popular winter resorts, their broad and attractive beaches, fine
climate and prolific tropical vegetation being among the charms that
bring visitors. Ormond is between the ocean front and the pleasant
Halifax River, its picturesque tributary, the Tomoka, being a favorite
resort for picnic parties. A few miles south on the Halifax River is
Daytona, known as the "Fountain City," and having its suburb, "the
City Beautiful," on the opposite bank. New Smyrna, settled by
Minorcan indigo planters in the eighteenth century, is on the northern
arm of Indian River. Here are found some of the ancient Indian shell
mounds that are frequent in Florida, and also the orange groves that
make this region famous. Inland about thirty miles are a group of
pretty lakes, and in the pines at Lake Helen is located the "Southern
Cassadaga," or Spiritualists' Assembly. For more than a hundred and
fifty miles the noted Indian River stretches down the coast of
Florida. It is a long and narrow lagoon, parallel with the ocean, and
is part of the series of lagoons found on the eastern coast almost
continuously for more than three hundred miles from St. Augustine
south to Biscayne Bay, and varying in width from about fifty yards to
six or more miles. They are shallow waters, rarely over twelve feet
deep, and are entered by very shallow inlets from the sea. The Indian
River shores, stretching down to Jupiter Inlet, are lined with
luxuriant vegetation, and the water is at times highly phosphorescent.
Upon the western shore are most of the celebrated Indian River orange
groves whose product is so highly prized. At Titusville, the head of
navigation, where there are about a thousand people, the river is
about, at its widest part, six miles. Twenty miles below, at
Rockledge, it narrows to about a mile in width, washing against the
perpendicular sides of a continuous enclosing ledge of coquina rock,
with pleasant overhanging trees. Here comes in, around an island, its
eastern arm, the Banana River, and to the many orange groves are added
plantations of the luscious pineapple. Various limpid streams flow out
from the everglade region at the westward, and Fort Pierce is the
trading station for that district, to which the remnant of the
Seminoles come to exchange alligator hides, bird plumage and snake
skins for various supplies, not forgetting "fire-water." Below this is
the wide estuary of St. Lucie River and the Jupiter River, with the
lighthouse on the ocean's edge at Jupiter Inlet, the mouth of Indian
River.
Seventeen miles below this Inlet is Palm Beach, a noted resort,
situated upon the narrow strip of land between the long and narrow
lagoon of Lake Worth and the Atlantic Ocean. Here are the vast Hotel
Royal Poinciana and the Palm Beach Inn, with their cocoanut groves,
which also fringe for miles the pleasant shores of Lake Worth.
Prolific vegetation and every charm that can add to this American
Riviera bring a crowded winter population. The Poinciana is a tree
bearing gorgeous flowers, and the two magnificent hotels, surrounded
by an extensive tropical paradise, are connected by a wide avenue of
palms a half-mile long, one house facing the lake and the other the
ocean. There is not a horse in the settlement, and only one mule,
whose duty is to haul a light summer car between the houses. The
vehicles of Palm Beach are said to be confined to "bicycles,
wheel-chairs and jinrickshas." Off to the westward the distant horizon
is bounded by the mysterious region of the everglades. Far down the
coast the railway terminates at Miami, the southernmost railway
station in the United States, a little town on Miami River, where it
enters the broad expanse of Biscayne Bay, which is separated from the
Atlantic by the first of the long chain of Florida keys. Here are many
fruit and vegetable plantations, and the town, which is a railway
terminal and steamship port for lines to Nassau, Key West and Havana,
is growing. Nassau is but one hundred and seventy-five miles distant
in the Bahamas, off the Southern Florida coast, and has become a
favorite American winter tourist resort.
ASCENDING ST. JOHN'S RIVER.
The St. John's is the great river of Florida, rising in the region of
lakes, swamps and savannahs in the lower peninsula, and flowing
northward four hundred miles to Jacksonville, then turning eastward to
the ocean. It comes through a low and level region, with mostly a
sluggish current; is bordered by dense foliage, and in its northern
portion is a series of lagoons varying in width from one to six miles.
The river is navigable fully two hundred miles above Jacksonville. The
earlier portion of the journey is monotonous, the shores being distant
and the landings made at long piers jutting out over the shallows
from the villages and plantations. At Mandarin is the orange grove
which was formerly the winter home of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Magnolia
amid the pines is a resort for consumptives; and nearby is Green Cove
Springs, having a large sulphur spring of medicinal virtue. In all
directions stretch the pine forests; and the river water, while clear
and sparkling in the sunlight, is colored a dark amber from the swamps
whence it comes. The original Indian name of this river was We-la-ka,
or a "chain of lakes," the literal meaning, in the figurative idea of
the savage, being "the water has its own way." It broadens into
various bays, and at one of these, about seventy-five miles south of
Jacksonville, is the chief town of the upper river, Palatka, having
about thirty-five hundred inhabitants and a much greater winter
population. It is largely a Yankee town, shipping oranges and early
vegetables to the North; and across the river, just above, is one of
the leading orange plantations of Florida--Colonel Hart's, a Vermonter
who came here dying of consumption, but lived to become, in his time,
the leading fruit-grower of the State. Above Palatka the river is
narrower, excepting where it may broaden into a lake; the foliage is
greener, the shores more swampy, the wild-fowl more frequent, and the
cypress tree more general. The young "cypress knees" can be seen
starting up along the swampy edge of the shore, looking like so many
champagne bottles set to cool in the water. The river also becomes
quite crooked, and here is an ancient Spanish and Indian settlement,
well named Welaka, opposite which flows in the weird Ocklawaha River,
the haunt of the alligator and renowned as the crookedest stream on
the continent.
[Illustration: _On the Ocklawaha_]
GOING DOWN THE OCKLAWAHA.
The Ocklawaha, the "dark, crooked water," comes from the south, by
tortuous windings, through various lakes and swamps, and then turns
east and southeast to flow into St. John's River, after a course of
over three hundred miles. It rises in Lake Apopka, down the Peninsula,
elevated about a hundred feet above the sea, the second largest of the
Florida Lakes, and covering one hundred and fifty square miles. This
lake has wooded highlands to the westward, dignified by the title of
Apopka Mountains, which rise probably one hundred and twenty feet
above its surface. To the northward is a group of lakes--Griffin,
Yale, Eustis, Dora, Harris and others--having clear amber waters and
low shores, which are all united by the Ocklawaha, the stream finally
flowing northward out of Lake Griffin. This is a region of extensive
settlement, mainly by Northern people. The mouth of the Ocklawaha is
sixty-five miles from Lake Eustis in a straight line, but the river
goes two hundred and thirty miles to get there. To the northward of
this lake district is the thriving town of Ocala, with five thousand
people, in a region of good agriculture and having large
phosphate beds, the settlement having been originally started as a
military post during the Seminole War. About five miles east of Ocala
is the famous Silver Spring, which is believed to have been the
"fountain of perpetual youth," for which Juan Ponce de Leon vainly
searched. It is the largest and most beautiful of the many Florida
springs, having wonderfully clear waters, and covers about three
acres. The waters can be plainly seen pouring upwards through fissures
in the rocky bottom, like an inverted Niagara, eighty feet beneath the
surface. It has an enormous outflow, and a swift brook runs from it, a
hundred feet wide, for some eight miles to the Ocklawaha.
This strange stream is hardly a river in the ordinary sense, having
fixed banks and a well-defined channel, but is rather a tortuous but
navigable passage through a succession of lagoons and cypress swamps.
Above the Silver Spring outlet, only the smallest boats of light draft
can get through the crooked channel. This outlet is thirty miles in a
direct line from the mouth of the river at the St. John's, but the
Ocklawaha goes one hundred and nine miles thither. The swampy border
of the stream is rarely more than a mile broad, and beyond it are the
higher pine lands. Through this curious channel, amid the thick
cypress forests and dense jungle of undergrowth, the wayward and
crooked river meanders. The swampy bottom in which it has its course
is so low-lying as to be undrainable and cannot be improved, so that
it will probably always remain as now, a refuge for the sub-tropical
animals, birds, reptiles and insects of Florida, which abound in its
inmost recesses. Here flourishes the alligator, coming out to sun
himself at mid-day on the logs and warm grassy lagoons at the edge of
the stream, in just the kinds of places one would expect to find him.
Yet the alligator is said to be a coward, rarely attacking, unless his
retreat to water in which to hide himself is cut off. He thus becomes
more a curiosity than a foe. These reptiles are hatched from eggs
which the female deposits during the spring, in large numbers, in
muddy places, where she digs out a spacious cavity, fills it with
several hundred eggs, and covering them thickly with mud, leaves
nature to do the rest. After a long incubation the little fellows come
out and make a bee-line for the nearest water. The big alligators of
the neighborhood have many breakfasts on the newly-born little ones,
but some manage to grow up, after several years, to maturity, and
exhibit themselves along this remarkable river.
It is almost impossible to conceive of the concentrated crookedness of
the Ocklawaha and the difficulties of passage. It is navigated by
stout and narrow flat-bottomed boats of light draft, constructed so as
to quickly turn sharp corners, bump the shores and run on logs without
injury. The river turns constantly at short intervals and doubles upon
itself in almost every mile, while the huge cypress trees often
compress the water way so that a wider boat could not get through.
There are many beautiful views in its course displaying the noble
ranks of cypress trees rising as the stream bends along its bordering
edge of swamps. Occasionally a comparatively straight river reach
opens like the aisle of a grand building with the moss-hung cypress
columns in long and sombre rows on either hand. At rare intervals fast
land comes down to the stream bank, where there is some cultivation
attempted for oranges and vegetables. Terrapin, turtles and water-fowl
abound. When the passenger boat, after bumping and swinging around the
corners, much like a ponderous teetotum, halts for a moment at a
landing in this swampy fastness, half-clad negroes usually appear,
offering for sale partly-grown baby alligators, which are the prolific
crop of the district. Various "Turkey bends," "Hell's half-acres,"
"Log Jams," "Bone Yards" and "Double S Bends" are passed, and at one
place is the "Cypress Gate," where three large trees are in the way,
and by chopping off parts of their roots, a passage about twenty feet
wide had been secured to let the boats through. There are said to be
two thousand bends in one hundred miles of this stream, and many of
them are like corrugated circles, by which the narrow water way, in a
mile or two of its course, manages to twist back to within a few feet
of where it started. At night, to aid the navigation, the lurid glare
of huge pine-knot torches, fitfully blazing, gives the scene a weird
and unnatural aspect. The monotonous sameness of cypress trunks,
sombre moss and twisting stream for many hours finally becomes very
tiresome, but it is nevertheless a most remarkable journey of the
strangest character possible in this country to sail down the
Ocklawaha.
LOWER FLORIDA AND THE SEMINOLES.
South of the mouth of the Ocklawaha the St. John's River broadens into
Lake George, the largest of its many lakes, a pretty sheet of water
six to nine miles wide and twelve miles long. Volusia, the site of an
ancient Spanish mission, is at the head of this lake, and the
discharge from the swift but narrow stream above has made sand bars,
so that jetties are constructed to deepen the channel. For a long
distance the upper river is narrow and tortuous, with numerous islands
and swamps, the dark coffee-colored water disclosing its origin; but
the Blue Spring in one place is unique, sending out an ample and rich
blue current to mix with the amber. Then Lake Monroe is reached, ten
miles long and five miles wide, the head of navigation, by the regular
lines of steamers, one hundred and seventy miles above Jacksonville.
Here are two flourishing towns, Enterprise on the northern shore and
Sanford on the southern, both popular winter resorts, and the latter
having two thousand people. The St. John's extends above Lake Monroe,
a crooked, narrow, shallow stream, two hundred and fourteen miles
farther southeastward to its source. The region through which it there
passes is mostly a prairie with herds of cattle and much game, and is
only sparsely settled. The upper river approaches the seacoast, being
in one place but three miles from the lagoons bordering the Atlantic.
To the southward of Lake Monroe are the winter resorts of Winter Park
and Orlando, the latter a town of three thousand population. There are
numerous lakes in this district, and then leaving the St. John's
valley and crossing the watershed southward through the pine forests,
the Okeechobee waters are reached, which flow down to that lake. This
region was the home of a part of the Seminole Indians, and
Tohopekaliga was their chief, whom they revered so highly that they
named their largest lake in his honor. The Kissimmee River flows
southward through this lake, and then traverses a succession of lakes
and swamps to Lake Okeechobee, about two hundred miles southward by
the water-line. Kissimmee City is on Lake Tohopekaliga, and extensive
drainage operations have been conducted here and to the southward,
reclaiming a large extent of valuable lands, and lowering the
water-level in all these lakes and attendant swamps.
From Lake Tohopekaliga through the tortuous water route to Lake
Okeechobee, and thence by the Caloosahatchie westward to the Gulf of
Mexico, is a winding channel of four hundred and sixty miles, though
in a direct line the distance is but one hundred and fifty miles.
Okeechobee, the word meaning the "large water," covers about twelve
hundred and fifty square miles, and almost all about it are the
everglades or "grass water," the shores being generally a swampy
jungle. This district for many miles is a mass of waving sedge grass
eight to ten feet high above the water, and inaccessible excepting
through narrow, winding and generally hidden channels. In one locality
a few tall lone pines stand like sentinels upon Arpeika Island,
formerly the home of the bravest and most dreaded of the Seminoles,
and still occupied by some of their descendants. The name of the
Seminole means the "separatist" or "runaway" Indians, they having
centuries ago separated from the Creeks in Georgia and gone southward
into Florida. From the days of De Soto to the time of their
deportation in the nineteenth century the Spanish, British, French and
Americans made war with these Seminole Indians. Gradually they were
pressed southward through Florida. Their final refuge was the green
islands and hummocks of the everglades, and they then clung to their
last homes with the tenacity of despair. The greater part of this
region is an unexplored mystery; the deep silence that can be actually
felt, everywhere pervades; and once lost within the labyrinth, the
adventurer is doomed unless rescued. Only the Indians knew its
concealed and devious paths. On Arpeika Island the Cacique of the
Caribs is said to have ruled centuries ago, until forced south out of
Florida by the Seminoles. It was at times a refuge for the buccaneer
with his plunder and a shrine for the missionary martyr who planted
the Cross and was murdered beside it. This island was the last retreat
of the Seminoles in the desultory war from 1835 to 1843, when they
defied the Government, which, during eight years, spent $50,000,000
upon expeditions sent against them. Then the attempt to remove all of
them was abandoned, and the remnant have since rested in peace, living
by hunting and a little trading with the coast settlements. The names
of the noted chiefs of this great race--Osceola, Tallahassee,
Tohopekaliga, Coa-coo-chee and others--are preserved in the lakes,
streams and towns of Florida. Most of the deported tribe were sent to
the Indian Territory. There may be three or four hundred of them still
in the everglades, peaceful, it is true, yet haughty and suspicious,
and sturdily rejecting all efforts to educate or civilize them. They
celebrate their great feast, the "Green Corn Dance," in late June; and
they have unwavering faith in the belief that the time will yet come
when all their prized everglade land will be theirs again, and the
glory of the past redeemed, if not in this world, then in the next
one, beyond the "Big Sleep."
WESTERN FLORIDA.
Westward from Jacksonville, a railway runs through the pine forests
until it reaches the rushing Suwanee River, draining the Okifenokee
swamp out to the Gulf, just north of Cedar Key. This stream is best
known from the minstrel song, long so popular, of the _Old Folks at
Home_. Beyond it the land rises into the rolling country of Middle
Florida, the undulating surface sometimes reaching four hundred feet
elevation, and presenting fertile soil and pleasant scenery, with a
less tropical vegetation than the Peninsula of Florida. Here is
Tallahassee, the capital of the State, one hundred and sixty-five
miles from Jacksonville, a beautiful town of four thousand population,
almost embedded in flowering plants, shrubbery and evergreens, and
familiarly known from these beauties as the "Floral City," the gardens
being especially attractive in the season of roses. The Capitol and
Court-house and West Florida Seminary, set on a hill, are the chief
public buildings. In the suburbs, at Monticello, lived Prince Achille
Murat, a son of the King of Naples, who died in 1847, and his grave is
in the Episcopal Cemetery. There are several lakes near the town, one
of them the curious Lake Miccosukie, which contracts into a creek,
finally disappearing underground. The noted Wakulla Spring, an immense
limestone basin of great depth and volume of water, with wonderful
transparency, is fifteen miles southward.
Some distance to the westward the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers join
to form the Appalachicola River, flowing down to the Gulf at
Appalachicola, a somewhat decadent port from loss of trade, its
exports being principally lumber and cotton. The shallowness of most
of these Gulf harbors, which readily silt up, destroys their
usefulness as ports for deep-draft shipping. The route farther
westward skirts the Gulf Coast, crosses Escambia Bay and reaches
Pensacola, on its spacious harbor, ten miles within the Gulf. This is
the chief Western Florida port, with fifteen thousand people, having a
Navy Yard and much trade in lumber, cotton, coal and grain, a large
elevator for the latter being erected in 1898. The Spaniards made this
a frontier post in 1696, and the remains of their forts, San Miguel
and San Bernardo, can be seen behind the town, while near the outer
edge of the harbor is the old-time Spanish defensive battery, Fort San
Carlos de Barrancos. The harbor entrance is now defended by Fort
Pickens and Fort McRae. Pensacola Bay was the scene of one of the
first spirited naval combats of the Civil War, when the Union forces
early in 1862 recaptured the Navy Yard and defenses. The name of
Pensacola was originally given by the Choctaws to the bearded
Europeans who first settled there, and signifies the "hair people."
THE FLORIDA GULF COAST.
The coast of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico has various attractive
places, reached by a convenient railway system. Homosassa is a popular
resort about fifty miles southwestward from Ocala. A short distance in
the interior is the locality where the Seminoles surprised and
massacred Major Dade and his men in December, 1835, only three
soldiers escaping alive to tell the horrid tale. The operations
against these Indians were then mainly conducted from the military
post of Tampa, and thither were taken for deportation the portions of
the tribe that were afterwards captured, or who surrendered under the
treaty. When Ferdinand de Soto entered this magnificent harbor on his
voyage of discovery and gold hunting, he called it Espiritu Sancto
Bay. It is from six to fifteen miles wide, and stretches nearly forty
miles into the land, being dotted with islands, its waters swarming
with sea-fowl, turtles and fish, deer abounding in the interior and on
some of the islands, and there being abundant anchorage for the
largest vessels. This is the great Florida harbor and the chief winter
resort on the western coast. It was the main port of rendezvous and
embarkation for the American forces in the Spanish War of 1898. The
head of the harbor divides into Old Tampa and Hillsborough Bays, and
on the latter and at the mouth of Hillsborough River is the city,
numbering about twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The great hotels
are surrounded by groves with orange and lemon trees abounding, and
everything is invoked that can add to the tourist attractions. The
special industry of the resident population is cigar-making. Port
Tampa is out upon the Peninsula between the two bays, several miles
below the city, and a long railway trestle leads from the shore for a
mile to deep water. Upon the outer end of this long wharf is Tampa
Inn, built on a mass of piles, much like some of the constructions in
Venice. The guests can almost catch fish out of the bedroom windows,
and while eating breakfast can watch the pelican go fishing in the
neighboring waters, for this queer-looking bird, with the duck and
gull, is everywhere seen in these attractive regions. An outer line of
keys defends Tampa harbor from the storms of the Gulf. There are many
popular resorts on the islands and shores of Tampa Bay, and regular
lines of steamers are run to the West India ports, Mobile and New
Orleans. All the surroundings are attractive, and a pleased visitor
writes of the place: "Conditions hereabouts exhilarate the men; a
perpetual sun and ocean breeze are balm to the invalid and an
inspiration to a robust health. The landscape affords uncommon
diversion, and the sea its royal sport with rod and gaff."
Farther down the coast is Charlotte Harbor, also deeply indented and
sheltered from the sea by various outlying islands. It is eight to ten
miles long and extends twenty-five miles into the land, having
valuable oyster-beds and fisheries, and its port is Punta Gorda. Below
this is the projecting shore of Punta Rassa, where the outlet of Lake
Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchie River, flows to the sea, having the
military post of Fort Myers, another popular resort, a short distance
inland, upon its bank. The Gulf Coast now trends to the southeast,
with various bays, in one of which, with Cape Romano as the guarding
headland, is the archipelago of "the ten thousand islands," while
below is Cape Sable, the southwestern extremity of Florida. To the
southward, distant from the shore, are the long line of Florida Keys,
the name coming from the Spanish word _cayo_, an island. This
remarkable coral formation marks the northern limit of the Gulf
Stream, where it flows swiftly out to round the extremity of the
Peninsula and begin its northern course through the Atlantic Ocean.
Although well lighted and charted, the Straits of Florida along these
reefs are dangerous to navigate and need special pilots. Nowhere
rising more than eight to twelve feet above the sea, the Keys thus
low-lying are luxuriantly covered with tropical vegetation. From the
Dry Tortugas at the west, around to Sand's Key at the entrance to
Biscayne Bay, off the Atlantic Coast, about two hundred miles, is a
continuous reef of coral, upon the whole extent of which the little
builder is still industriously working. The reef is occasionally
broken by channels of varying depth, and within the outer line are
many habitable islands. The whole space inside this reef is slowly
filling up, just as all the Keys are also slowly growing through
accretions from floating substances becoming entangled in the myriad
roots of the mangroves. The present Florida Reef is a good example of
the way in which a large part of the Peninsula was formed. No less
than seven old coral reefs have been found to exist south of Lake
Okeechobee, and the present one at the very edge of the deep water of
the Gulf Stream is probably the last that can be formed, as the little
coral-builder cannot live at a greater depth than sixty feet. The Gulf
Stream current is so swift and deep along the outer reef that there is
no longer a foundation on which to build.
The Gulf Stream is the best known of all the great ocean currents. The
northeast and southeast trade-winds, constantly blowing, drive a great
mass of water from the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean Sea, and
westward through the passages between the Windward Islands, which is
contracted by the converging shores of the Yucatan Peninsula and the
Island of Cuba, so that it pours between them into the Gulf of Mexico,
raising its surface considerably above the level of the Atlantic.
These currents then move towards the Florida Peninsula, and pass
around the Florida Reef and out into the Atlantic. It is estimated by
the Coast Survey that the hourly flow of the Gulf Stream past the
reef is nearly ninety thousand million tons of water, the speed at the
surface of the axis of the stream being over three and one-half miles
an hour. To conceive what the immensity of this flow means, it is
stated that if a single hour's flow of water were evaporated, the salt
thus produced would require to carry it one hundred times the number
of ocean-going vessels now afloat. The Gulf Stream water is of high
temperature, great clearness and a deep blue color; and when it meets
the greener waters of the Atlantic to the northward, the line of
distinction is often very well defined. At the exit to the Atlantic
below Jupiter Inlet the stream is forty-eight miles wide to Little
Bahama Bank, and its depth over four hundred fathoms.
There are numerous harbors of refuge among the Florida Keys, and that
at Key West is the best. This is a coral island seven miles long and
one to two miles broad, but nowhere elevated more than eleven feet
above the sea. Its name, by a free translation, comes from the
original Spanish name of _Cayo Hueso_, or the Bone Island, given
because the early mariners found human bones upon it. Here are twenty
thousand people, mostly Cubans and settlers from the Bahamas, the
chief industry being cigar-making, while catching fish and turtles and
gathering sponges also give much employment. There are no springs on
the island, and the inhabitants are dependent on rain or distillation
for water. The air is pure and the climate healthy, the trees and
shrubbery, with the residences embowered in perennial flowers, giving
the city a picturesque appearance. Key West has a good harbor, and as
it commands the gateway to and from the Gulf near the western
extremity of the Florida coral reef, it is strongly defended, the
prominent work being Fort Taylor, constructed on an artificial island
within the main harbor entrance. The little Sand Key, seven miles to
the southwest, is the southernmost point of the United States. Forty
miles to the westward is the group of ten small, low and barren
islands known as the Dry Tortugas, from the Spanish _tortuga_, a
tortoise. Upon the farthest one, Loggerhead Key, stands the great
guiding light for the Florida Reef, of which this is the western
extremity, the tower rising one hundred and fifty feet. Fort Jefferson
is on Garden Key, where there is a harbor, and in it were confined
various political prisoners during the Civil War, among them some who
were concerned in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln.
Here, with the encircling waters of the Gulf all around us, terminates
this visit to the Sunny South. As we have progressed, the gradual
blending of the temperate into the torrid zone, with the changing
vegetation, has reminded of Bayard Taylor's words:
"There, in the wondering airs of the Tropics,
Shivers the Aspen, still dreaming of cold:
There stretches the Oak from the loftiest ledges,
His arms to the far-away lands of his brothers,
And the Pine tree looks down on his rival, the Palm."
And as the journey down the Florida Peninsula has displayed some of
the most magnificent winter resorts of the American Riviera, with
their wealth of tropical foliage, fruits and flowers, and their
seductive and balmy climate, this too has reminded of Cardinal
Damiani's glimpse of the "Joys of Heaven":
"Stormy winter, burning summer, rage within these regions never,
But perpetual bloom of roses and unfading spring forever;
Lilies gleam, the crocus glows, and dropping balms their scents
deliver."
Along this famous peninsula the sea rolls with ceaseless beat upon
some of the most gorgeous beaches of the American coast. To the
glories of tropical vegetation and the charms of the climate, Florida
thus adds the magnificence of its unrivalled marine environment.
Everywhere upon these pleasant coasts--
"The bridegroom, Sea,
Is toying with his wedded bride,--the Shore.
He decorates her shining brow with shells,
And then retires to see how fine she looks,
Then, proud, runs up to kiss her."
TRAVERSING THE PRAIRIE LAND.
VI.
TRAVERSING THE PRAIRIE LAND.
The Northwest Territory -- Beaver River -- Fort McIntosh --
Mahoning Valley -- Steubenville -- Youngstown -- Canton --
Massillon -- Columbus -- Scioto River -- Wayne Defeats the
Miamis -- Sandusky River -- Findlay -- Natural Gas Fields --
Fort Wayne -- Maumee River -- The Little Turtle -- Old
Tippecanoe -- Tecumseh -- Battle of Tippecanoe -- Harrison
Defeats the Prophet -- Tecumseh Slain in Canada -- Indianapolis
-- Wabash River -- Terre Haute -- Illinois River -- Springfield
-- Lincoln's Home and Tomb -- Peoria -- The Great West -- Lake
Erie -- Tribe of the Cat -- Conneaut -- The Western Reserve --
Ashtabula -- Mentor -- Cleveland -- Cuyahoga River -- Moses
Cleaveland -- Euclid Avenue -- Oberlin -- Elyria -- The Fire
Lands -- Sandusky -- Put-in-Bay Island -- Perry's Victory --
Maumee River -- Toledo -- South Bend -- Chicago -- The
Pottawatomies -- Fort Dearborn -- Chicago Fire -- Lake Michigan
-- Chicago River -- Drainage Canal -- Lockport -- Water Supply
-- Fine Buildings, Streets and Parks -- University of Chicago
-- Libraries -- Federal Steel Company -- Great Business
Establishments -- Union Stock Yards -- The Hog -- The Board of
Trade -- Speculative Activity -- George M. Pullman -- The
Sleeping Car -- The Pioneer -- Town of Pullman -- Agricultural
Wealth of the Prairies -- The Corn Crop -- Whittier's Corn
Song.
THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.
Beyond the Allegheny ranges, which are gradually broken down into
their lower foothills, and then to an almost monotonous level, the
expansive prairie lands stretch towards the setting sun. From their
prolific agriculture has come much of the wealth and prosperity of
the United States. The rivers flowing out of the mountains seek the
Mississippi Valley, thus reaching the sea through the Great Father of
Waters. Among these rivers is the Ohio, and at its confluence with the
Beaver, near the western border of Pennsylvania, was, in the early
days, the Revolutionary outpost of Fort McIntosh, a defensive work
against the Indians. All about is a region of coal and gas, extending
across the boundary into the Mahoning district of Ohio, the Mahoning
River being an affluent of the Beaver. Numerous railroads serve its
many towns of furnaces and forges. To the southward is Steubenville on
the Ohio, and to the northward Youngstown on the Mahoning, both busy
manufacturing centres. Salem and Alliance are also prominent, and some
distance northwest is Canton, a city of thirty thousand people, in a
fertile grain district, the home of President William McKinley.
Massillon, upon the pleasant Tuscarawas River, in one of the most
productive Ohio coal-fields, preserves the memory of the noted French
missionary priest, Jean Baptiste Massillon, for all this region was
first traversed, and opened to civilization, by the French religious
explorers from Canada who went out to convert the Indians.
In the centre of the State of Ohio is the capital, Columbus, built on
the banks of the Scioto River, a tributary of the Ohio flowing
southward and two hundred miles long. This river receives the
Olentangy or Whetstone River at Columbus, in a region of great
fertility, which is in fact the characteristic of the whole Scioto
Valley. The Ohio capital, which has a population of one hundred and
twenty thousand, large commerce and many important manufacturing
establishments, dates from 1812, and became the seat of the State
Government in 1816. The large expenditures of public money upon
numerous public institutions, all having fine buildings, the wide,
tree-shaded streets, and the many attractive residences, have made it
one of the finest cities in the United States. Broad Street, one
hundred and twenty feet wide, beautifully shaded with maples and elms,
extends for seven miles. The Capitol occupies a large park surrounded
with elms, and is an impressive Doric building of gray limestone,
three hundred and four feet long and one hundred and eighty-four feet
wide, the rotunda being one hundred and fifty-seven feet high. There
are fine parks on the north, south and east of the city, the latter
containing the spacious grounds of the Agricultural Society. Almost
all the Ohio State buildings, devoted to its benevolence, justice or
business, have been concentrated in Columbus, adding to its
attractions, and it is also the seat of the Ohio State University with
one thousand students. Railroads radiate in all directions, adding to
its commercial importance.
In going westward, the region we are traversing beyond the
Pennsylvania boundary gradually changes from coal and iron to a rich
agricultural section. As we move away from the influence of the
Allegheny ranges, the hills become gentler, and the rolling surface is
more and more subdued, until it is smoothed out into an almost level
prairie, heavily timbered where not yet cleared for cultivation. This
was the Northwest Territory, first explored by the French, who were
led by the Sieur de la Salle in his original discoveries in the
seventeenth century. The French held it until the conquest of Canada,
when that Dominion and the whole country west to the Mississippi River
came under the British flag by the treaty of 1763. After the
Revolution, the various older Atlantic seaboard States claiming the
region, ceded sovereignty to the United States Government, and then
its history was chequered by Indian wars until General Wayne conducted
an expedition against the Miamis and defeated them in 1794, after
which the Northwest Territory was organized, and the State of Ohio
taken out of it and admitted to the Union in 1803, its first capital
being Chillicothe. It was removed to Zanesville for a couple of years,
but finally located at Columbus.
Beyond the Scioto the watershed is crossed, by which the waters of the
Ohio are left behind and the valley of Sandusky River is reached, a
tributary of Lake Erie. Here is Bucyrus, in another prolific natural
gas region, the centre of which is Findlay. At this town, in 1887, the
inhabitants, who had then had just one year of natural gas
development, spent three days in exuberant festivity, to show their
appreciation of the wonderful discovery. They had thirty-one gas wells
pouring out ninety millions of cubic feet in a day, all piped into
town and feeding thirty thousand glaring natural gas torches of
enormous power, which blew their roaring flames as an accompaniment to
the oratory of John Sherman and Joseph B. Foraker, who were then
respectively Senator and Governor of Ohio. The soldiers and firemen
paraded, and a multitude of brass bands tried to drown the Niagara of
gas which was heard roaring five miles away, while the country at
night was illuminated for twenty miles around. But the wells have
since diminished their flow, although the gas still exists; while
another field with a prolific yield is in Fairfield County, a short
distance southeast of Columbus. Over the State boundary in Indiana is
yet another great gas-field covering five thousand square miles in a
dozen counties, with probably two thousand wells and a yield which has
reached three thousand millions of cubic feet in a day. This gas
supplies many cities and towns, including Chicago, and it is one of
the greatest gas-fields known. In the same region there are also large
petroleum deposits.
Not far beyond the State boundary is Fort Wayne, the leading city of
Northern Indiana, having forty thousand population, an important
railway centre, and prominent also in manufactures. It stands in a
fertile agricultural district, and being located at the highest part
of the gentle elevation, beyond the Sandusky Valley, diverting the
waters east and west, it is appropriately called the "Summit City."
Here the Maumee River is formed by the confluence of the two streams
St. Joseph and St. Mary, and flows through the prairie towards the
northeast, to make the head of Lake Erie. The French, under La Salle,
in the eighteenth century established a fur-trading post here, and
erected Fort Miami, and in 1760 the British penetrated to this then
remote region and also built a fort. During the Revolution this
country was abandoned to the Indians, but when General Wayne defeated
the Miamis in 1794 he thought the place would make a good frontier
outpost to hold the savages in check, and he then constructed a strong
work, to which he gave the name of Fort Wayne. Around this post the
town afterwards grew, being greatly prospered by the Wabash and Erie
Canal, and by the various railways subsequently constructed in all
directions. All this prairie region was the hunting-ground of the
Miamis, whose domain extended westward to Lake Michigan, and southward
along the valley of the Miami River to the Ohio. They were a warlike
and powerful tribe, and their adherence to the English during the
Revolution provoked almost constant hostilities with the settlers who
afterwards came across the mountains to colonize the Northwest
Territory. Under the leadership of their renowned chief
Mishekonequah, or the "Little Turtle," they defeated repeated
expeditions sent against them, until finally beaten by Wayne.
Subsequently they dwindled in importance, and when removed farther
west, about 1848, they numbered barely two hundred and fifty persons.
OLD TIPPECANOE.
Some distance westward is the Tippecanoe River, a stream flowing
southwest into the Wabash, and thence into the Ohio. The word
Tippecanoe is said to mean "the great clearing," and on this river was
fought the noted battle by "Old Tippecanoe," General William Henry
Harrison, against the combined forces of the Shawnees, Miamis and
several other tribes, which resulted in their complete defeat. They
were united under Elskwatawa, or the "Prophet," the brother of the
famous Tecumseh. These two chieftains were Shawnees, and they preached
a crusade by which they gathered all the northwestern tribes in a
concerted movement to resist the steady encroachments of the whites.
The brother, who was a "medicine man," in 1805 set up as an inspired
prophet, denouncing the use of liquors, and of all food, manners and
customs introduced by the hated "palefaces," and confidently predicted
they would ultimately be driven from the land. For years both chiefs
travelled over the country stirring up the Indians. General Harrison,
who was the Governor of the Northwest Territory, gathered his forces
together and advanced up the Wabash against the Prophet's town of
Tippecanoe, when the Indians, hoping to surprise him, suddenly
attacked his camp, but he being prepared, they were signally defeated,
thus giving Harrison his popular title of "Old Tippecanoe," which had
much to do with electing him President in 1840. Some time after this
defeat the War of 1812 broke out, when Tecumseh espoused the English
cause, went to Canada with his warriors, and was made a
brigadier-general. He was killed there in the battle of the Thames, in
Ontario Province, and it is said had a premonition of death, for,
laying aside his general's uniform, he put on a hunting-dress and
fought desperately until he was slain. Tecumseh was the most famous
Indian chief of his time, and the honor of killing him was claimed by
several who fought in the battle, so that the problem of "Who killed
Tecumseh?" was long discussed throughout the country.
The State of Indiana was admitted into the Union in 1816, and in its
centre, built upon a broad plain, on the east branch of White River,
is its capital and largest city, Indianapolis, having two hundred
thousand population. This is a great railway centre, having lines
radiating in all directions, and it also has extensive manufactures
and a large trade in live stock. The city plan, with wide streets
crossing at right angles, and four diagonal avenues radiating from a
circular central square, makes it very attractive; and the residential
quarter, displaying tasteful houses, ornate grounds and shady streets,
is regarded as one of the most beautiful in the country. The State
Capitol, in a spacious park, is a Doric building with colonnade,
central tower and dome, and in an enclosure on its eastern front is
erected one of the finest Soldiers' and Sailors' Monuments existing,
rising two hundred and eighty-five feet, out-topping everything
around, having been designed and largely constructed in Europe. There
are also many prominent public buildings throughout the city.
Indianapolis, first settled in 1819, had but a small population until
the railways centred there, the Capitol being removed from Corydon in
1825. The Wabash River, to which reference has been made, receives
White River, and is one of the largest affluents of the Ohio, about
five hundred and fifty miles long, being navigable over half that
length. It rises in the State of Ohio, flows across Indiana, and,
turning southward, makes for a long distance the Illinois boundary.
Its chief city is Terre Haute, the "High Ground," about seventy miles
west of Indianapolis, another prominent railroad centre, having
forty-five thousand people, with extensive manufactures. It is
surrounded by valuable coal-fields, is built upon an elevated plateau,
and, like all these prairie cities, is noted for its many broad and
well-shaded streets. It was founded in 1816.
THE GREAT WEST.
Progressing westward, the timbered prairie gradually changes to the
grass-covered prairie, spreading everywhere a great ocean of
fertility. Across the Wabash is the "Prairie State" of Illinois, its
name coming from its principal river, which the Indians named after
themselves. The word is a French adaptation of the Indian name
"Illini," meaning "the superior men," the earliest explorers and
settlers having been French, the first comers on the Illinois River
being Father Marquette and La Salle. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century their little settlements were flourishing, and the
most glowing accounts were sent home, describing the region, which
they called "New France," on account of its beauty, attractiveness and
prodigious fertility, as a new Paradise. There were many years of
Indian conflicts and hostility, but after peace was restored and a
stable government established, population flowed in, and Illinois was
admitted as a State to the Union in 1818. The capital was established
at Springfield in 1837, an attractive city of about thirty thousand
inhabitants, built on a prairie a few miles south of Sangamon River, a
tributary of the Illinois, and from its floral development and the
adornment of its gardens and shade trees, Springfield is popularly
known as the "Flower City." There is a magnificent State Capitol with
high surmounting dome, patterned somewhat after the Federal Capitol
at Washington. Springfield has coal-mines which add to its prosperity,
but its great fame is connected with Abraham Lincoln. He lived in
Springfield, and the house he occupied when elected President has been
acquired by the State and is on public exhibition. After his
assassination in 1865, his remains were brought from Washington to
Springfield, and interred in the picturesque Oak Ridge Cemetery, in
the northern suburbs, where a magnificent monument was erected to his
memory and dedicated in 1874. About sixty miles north of Springfield,
the Illinois River expands into Peoria Lake, and here came La Salle
down the river in 1680, and at the foot of the lake established a
trading-post and fort, one of the earliest in that region. When more
than a century had elapsed, a little town grew there which is now the
busy industrial city of Peoria, famous for its whiskey and glucose,
and turning out products that annually approximate a hundred millions,
furnishing vast traffic for numerous railroads. It is the chief city
of the "corn belt," and is served by all the prominent trunk railway
lines.
Like the pioneers of a hundred years ago, we have left the Atlantic
seaboard, crossed the Allegheny Mountains and entered the expansive
"Northwest Territory," which in the first half of the nineteenth
century was the Mecca of the colonist and frontiersman. This was then
the region of the "Great West," though that has since moved far
beyond the Mississippi. Its agricultural wealth made the prosperity of
the country for many decades, and its prodigious development was
hardly realized until put to the test of the Civil War, when it poured
out the men and officers, and had the staying qualities so largely
contributing to the result of that great conflict. Gradually
overspread by a network of railways, the numerous "cross-roads" have
expanded everywhere into towns and cities, almost all patterned alike,
and all of them centres of rich farming districts. Coal, oil and gas
have come to minister to its manufacturing wants, and thus growing
into mature Commonwealths, this prolific region in the later decades
has been itself, in turn, contributing largely to the tide of
migration flowing to the present "Great Northwest," a thousand miles
or more beyond. It presents a rich agricultural picture, but little
scenic attractiveness. Everywhere an almost dead level, the numerous
railways cross and recross the surface in all directions at grade, and
are easily built, it being only necessary to dig a shallow ditch on
either side, throw the earth in the centre, and lay the ties and
rails. Nature has made the prairie as smooth as a lake, so that hardly
any grading is necessary, and the region of expansive green viewed out
of the car window has been aptly described as having "a face but no
features," when one looks afar over an ocean of waving verdure.
LAKE ERIE.
This vast prairie extends northward to and beyond the Great Lakes, and
it is recorded that in the early history of the proposed legislation
for the "Northwest Territory," Congress gravely selected as the names
of the States which were to be created out of it such ponderous
conglomerates as "Metropotamia," "Assenispia," "Pelisipia" and
"Polypotamia," titles which happily were long ago permitted to pass
into oblivion. Northward, in Ohio, the region stretches to Lake Erie,
the most southern and the smallest of the group of Great Lakes above
Niagara. It is regarded as the least attractive lake, having neither
romances nor much scenery. Yet, from its favorable position, it
carries an enormous commerce. It is elliptical in form, about two
hundred and forty miles long and sixty miles broad, the surface being
five hundred and sixty-five feet above the ocean level. It is a very
shallow lake, the depth rarely exceeding one hundred and twenty feet,
excepting at the lower end, while the other lakes are much deeper, and
in describing this difference of level it is said that the surplus
waters poured from the vast _basins_ of Superior, Michigan and Huron,
flow across the _plate_ of Erie into the deep _bowl_ of Ontario. This
shallowness causes it to be easily disturbed, so that it is the most
dangerous of these fresh-water seas, and it has few harbors, and those
very poor, especially upon the southern shore. The bottom of the lake
is a light, clayey sediment, rapidly accumulated from the wearing away
of the shores, largely composed of clay strata. The loosely-aggregated
products of these disintegrated strata are frequently seen along its
coast, forming cliffs extending back into elevated plateaus, through
which the rivers cut deep channels. Their mouths are clogged by
sand-bars, and dredging and breakwaters have made the harbors on the
southern shore, around which have grown the chief towns--Dunkirk,
Erie, Ashtabula, Cleveland, Sandusky and Toledo. The name of Lake Erie
comes from the Indian "tribe of the Cat," whom the French called the
"Chats," because their early explorers, penetrating to the shores of
the lake, found them abounding in wild cats, and thus they gave the
same name to the cats and the savages. In their own parlance, these
Indians were the "Eries," and in the seventeenth century they numbered
about two thousand warriors. In 1656 the Iroquois attacked and almost
annihilated them.
The Lake Erie ports in the "Buckeye State" of Ohio, so called from the
buckeye tree, are chiefly harbors for shipping coal and receiving ores
from the upper lakes, their railroads leading to the great industrial
centres to the southward. Near the eastern boundary of Ohio is
Conneaut, on the bank of a wide and deep ravine, formed by a small
river, broadening into a bay at the shore of the lake, the name
meaning "many fish." Here landed in 1796 the first settlers from
Connecticut, who entered the "Western Reserve," as all this region was
then called. On July 4th of that year, celebrating the national
anniversary, "they pledged each other in tin cups of lake water,
accompanied by a salute of fowling-pieces," and the next day began
building the first house on the Reserve, constructed of logs, and long
known as "Stow Castle." Conneaut is consequently known as the
"Plymouth of the Western Reserve," as here began the settlements made
by the Puritan New England migration to Ohio. On deep ravines making
their harbors are Ashtabula, an enormous _entrepôt_ for ores, and a
few miles farther westward, Painesville, on Grand River, named for
Thomas Paine. Beyond is Mentor, the home of the martyred President
Garfield, whose large white house stands near the railway. All along
here, the southern shore of Lake Erie is a broad terrace at eighty to
one hundred feet elevation above the water, while farther inland is
another and considerably higher plateau. Each sharp declivity facing
northward seems at one time to have been the actual shore of the lake
when its surface before the waters receded was much higher than now.
The outer plateau having once been the overflowed lake bed, is level,
excepting where the crooked but attractive streams have deeply cut
their winding ravines down through it to reach Lake Erie.
THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
Thus we come to Cleveland, the second city in Ohio, having four
hundred thousand people, and extensive manufacturing industries. It is
the capital of the "Western Reserve" and the chief city of Northern
Ohio, its commanding position upon a high bluff, falling off
precipitously to the edge of the water, giving it the most attractive
situation on the shore of Lake Erie. Shade trees embower it, including
many elms planted by the early settlers, who learned to love them in
New England, and hence it delights in the popular title of the "Forest
City." Were not the streets so wide, the profusion of foliage might
make Cleveland seem like a town in the woods. The little Cuyahoga
River, its name meaning "the crooked stream," flows with wayward
course down a deeply washed and winding ravine, making a valley in the
centre of the city, known as "the Flats," and this, with the tributary
ravines of some smaller streams, is packed with factories and
foundries, oil refineries and lumber mills, their chimneys keeping the
business section constantly under a cloud of smoke. Railways run in
all directions over these flats and through the ravines, while, high
above, the city has built a stone viaduct nearly a half-mile long,
crossing the valley. Here are the great works of the Standard Oil
Company, controlling that trade, and several of the petroleum magnates
have their palaces in the city.
Old Moses Cleaveland, a shrewd but unsatisfied Puritan of the town of
Windham, Connecticut, became the agent of the Connecticut Lead
Company, who brought out the first colony in 1796 that landed at
Conneaut. They explored the lake shore, and selecting as a good
location the mouth of Cuyahoga River, Moses wrote back to his former
home that they had found a spot "on the bank of Lake Erie which was
called by my name, and I believe the child is now born that may live
to see that place as large as old Windham." In little over a century
the town has grown far beyond his wildest dreams, although it did not
begin to expand until the era of canals and railways, and it was not
so long ago that the people in grateful memory erected a bronze statue
of the founder. One of the local antiquaries, delving into the
records, has found why various original settlers made their homes at
Cleveland. He learned that "one man, on his way farther West, was laid
up with the ague and had to stop; another ran out of money and could
get no farther; another had been to St. Louis and wanted to get back
home, but saw a chance to make money in ferrying people across the
river; another had $200 over, and started a bank; while yet another
thought he could make a living by manufacturing ox-yokes, and he
stayed." This earnest investigator continues: "A man with an
agricultural eye would look at the soil and kick his toe into it, and
then would shake his head and declare that it would not grow white
beans--but he knew not what this soil would bring forth; his hope and
trust was in beans, he wanted to know them more, and wanted potatoes,
corn, oats and cabbage, and he knew not the future of Euclid Avenue."
On either side of the deep valley of "the Flats" stretch upon the
plateau the long avenues of Cleveland, with miles of pleasant
residences, surrounded by lawns and gardens, each house isolated in
green, and the whole appearing like a vast rural village more than a
city. This pleasant plan of construction had its origin in the New
England ideas of the people. Yet the city also has a numerous
population of Germans, and it is recorded that one of the early
landowners wrote, in explaining his project of settlement: "If I make
the contract for thirty thousand acres, I expect with all speed to
send you fifteen or twenty families of prancing Dutchmen." These
Teutons came and multiplied, for the original Puritan stock can hardly
be responsible for the vineyards of the neighborhood, the music and
dancing, and the public gardens along the pleasant lake shore, where
the crowds go, when work is over, to enjoy recreation and watch the
gorgeous summer sunsets across the bosom of the lake which are the
glory of Cleveland. Upon the plateau, the centre of the city, is the
Monumental Park, where stand the statue of Moses Cleaveland, the
founder, who died in 1806, and a fine Soldiers' Monument, with also a
statue of Commodore Perry. This Park is an attractive enclosure of
about ten acres, having fountains, gardens, monuments and a little
lake, and it is intersected at right angles by two broad streets, and
surrounded by important buildings. One of the streets is the chief
business highway, Superior Street, and the other leads down to the
edge of the bluff on the lake shore, where the steep slope is made
into a pleasure-ground, with more flower-beds and fountains and a
pleasant outlook over the water, although at its immediate base is a
labyrinth of railroads and an ample supply of smoke from the numerous
locomotives. A long breakwater protects the harbor entrance, and out
under the lake is bored the water-works tunnel.
There extends far to the eastward, from a corner of the Monumental
Park, Cleveland's famous street--Euclid Avenue. The people regard it
as the handsomest highway in America, in the combined magnificence of
houses and grounds. It is a level avenue of about one hundred and
fifty feet width, with a central roadway and stone footwalks on either
hand, shaded by rows of grand overarching elms, and bordered on both
sides by well-kept lawns. This is the public highway, every part being
kept scrupulously neat, while a light railing marks the boundary
between the street and the private grounds. For a long distance this
noble avenue is bordered by stately residences, each surrounded by
ample gardens, the stretch of grass, flowers and foliage extending
back from one hundred to four hundred feet between the street and the
buildings. Embowered in trees, and with all the delights of garden and
lawn seen in every direction, this grand avenue makes a delightful
driveway and promenade. Upon it live the multi-millionaires of
Cleveland, the finest residences being upon the northern side, where
they have invested part of the profits of their railways, mills,
mines, oil wells and refineries in adorning their homes and
ornamenting their city. This splendid boulevard, in one way, is a
reproduction of the Parisian Avenue of the Champs Elysées and its
gardens, but with more attractions in the surroundings of its
bordering rows of palaces. Here live the men who vie with those of
Chicago in controlling the commerce of the lakes and the affairs of
the Northwest. Plenty of room and an abundance of income are necessary
to provide each man, in the heart of the city, with two to ten acres
of lawns and gardens around his house, but it is done here with
eminent success. About four miles out is the beautiful Wade Park,
opposite which are the handsome buildings of the Western Reserve
University, having, with its adjunct institutions, a thousand
students. Beyond this, the avenue ends at the attractive Lake View
Cemetery, where, on the highest part of the elevated plateau, with a
grand outlook over Lake Erie, is the grave of the assassinated
President Garfield. His imposing memorial rises to a height of one
hundred and sixty-five feet.
CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO.
Thirty-five miles southwest of Cleveland, and some distance inland
from Lake Erie, is Oberlin, where, in a fertile and prosperous
district, is the leading educational foundation of Northern
Ohio--Oberlin College--named in memory of the noted French
philanthropist, and established in 1833 by the descendants of the
Puritan colonists, to carry out their idea of thorough equality in
education. It admits students without distinction of sex or color, and
has about thirteen hundred, almost equally divided between the sexes,
occupying a cluster of commodious buildings. To the westward is the
beautiful ravine of Black River, which gets out to the lake by falling
over a rocky ledge in two streams, and on the peninsula formed by its
forks is the town of Elyria. Maria Ely was the wife of the founder of
the settlement, who named it after her in this peculiar reversible
way. This romantic stream bounds the "Fire Lands" of the Western
Reserve, a tract of nearly eight hundred square miles abutting on the
lake shore, which Connecticut set apart for colonization by her
people, who had been sufferers from destructive fires in the towns of
New London, Fairfield and Norwalk on Long Island Sound. They secured
this wilderness in the early part of the nineteenth century, and their
chief town is Sandusky, with twenty-five thousand population. Here
lived most of the Eries, the Indian "tribe of the Cat," who fished in
Sandusky Bay, its upper waters being an archipelago of little green
islands abounding with water fowl. They were known to the adjoining
tribes as the "Neutral Nation," for they maintained two villages of
refuge on Sandusky River, between the warlike Indians of the east and
the west, and whoever entered their boundaries was safe from pursuit,
the sanctuary being rigidly observed. The early French missionaries
who found them in the seventeenth century speak of these anomalous
villages among the savages as having then been long in existence.
The name of Sandusky is a corruption of a Wyandot word meaning
"cold-water pools," the French having originally rendered it as
Sandosquet. The shores are low, but there is a good harbor and much
trade, and here is located the Ohio State Fish Hatchery. The railroads
are laid among the savannahs and lagoons, and one of the suburban
stations has been not inaptly named Venice. There are extensive
vineyards on the flat and sunny shores of the bay, and this is one of
the most prolific grape districts in the State. Sandusky Bay is a
broad sheet of water, in places six miles wide, and about twenty miles
long. Sandusky has a large timber trade, being noted for the
manufacture of hard woods. Out beyond the bold peninsula, protruding
into the lake at the entrance to the bay, is a group of islands
spreading over the southwestern waters of Lake Erie, of which Kelly's
Island is the chief, an archipelago formed largely from the _detritus_
washed out of the Detroit, Maumee and various other rivers flowing
into the head of the lake. Here the Erie Indians had a fortified
stronghold, whose outlines can still be traced. The most noted of the
group is Put-in-Bay Island, now a popular watering-place, which got
its name from Commodore Perry, who "put in" there with the captured
British fleet at the naval battle of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813. It
was from this place, just after his victory, that he sent the historic
despatch, giving him fame, "We have met the enemy and they are ours."
The killed of both fleets were buried side by side near the beach on
the island, the place being marked by a mound. The lovely sheet of
water of Put-in-Bay glistens in front, having the towns of
villa-crowned Gibraltar Island upon its surface. Vineyards and roses
abound, these islands, like the adjacent shores, being noted for their
wines.
The Maumee River, coming up from Fort Wayne, flows into the head of
Lake Erie, the largest stream on its southern coast. It comes from the
southwest through the region of the "Black Swamp," a vast district,
originally morass and forest, which has been drained to make a most
fertile country. This "miserable bog," as the original settlers
denounced it, when they were jolted over the rude corduroy roads that
sustained them upon the quaking morass, has since become the "prolific
garden" and "magnificent forest" described by the modern tourist. The
Maumee Valley was an almost continual battle-ground with the Indians
when "Mad Anthony Wayne" commanded on that frontier, he being called
by them the "Wind," because "he drives and tears everything before
him." For a quarter of a century border warfare raged along this
river, then known as the "Miami of the Lakes," and its chief
settlement, Toledo, passed its infancy in a baptism of blood and fire.
It was at the battle of Fallen Timbers, fought in 1794, almost on the
site of Toledo, that Wayne gave his laconic and noted "field orders."
General William Henry Harrison, then his aide, told Wayne just before
the battle he was afraid he would get into the fight and forget to
give "the necessary field orders." Wayne replied: "Perhaps I may, and
if I do, recollect that the standing order for the day is, charge the
rascals with the bayonets." Toledo is built on the flat surface on
both sides of the Maumee River and Bay, which make it a good harbor,
stretching six miles down to Lake Erie. There are a hundred thousand
population here, and this energetic reproduction of the ancient
Spanish city has named its chief newspaper the _Toledo Blade_. The
city has extensive railway connections and a large trade in lumber and
grain, coal and ores, and does much manufacturing, it being well
served with natural gas. A dozen grain elevators line the river
banks, and the factory smokes overhang the broad low-lying city like a
pall. To the westward, crossing the rich lands of the reclaimed swamp,
is the Indiana boundary, that State being here a broad and level
prairie, which also stretches northward into Michigan. The chief town
of Northern Indiana is South Bend, named from the sweeping southern
bend of St. Joseph River, on which it is built. This stream rises in
Michigan, and flows for two hundred and fifty miles over the prairie,
going down into Indiana and then back again to empty into Lake
Michigan. South Bend is noted for its carriage- and wagon-building
factories, and has several flourishing Roman Catholic institutions,
generally of French origin. To the westward spreads the level prairie,
with scant scenic attractions, though rich in agriculture, to the
shores of Lake Michigan, being gridironed with railways as Chicago is
approached.
THE GREAT CITY OF THE LAKES.
The second city in the United States, with a population approximating
two millions, Chicago, the metropolis of the prairies, seems destined
for unlimited growth. It has absorbed all the outlying towns, and now
embraces nearly two hundred square miles. It has a water-front on Lake
Michigan of twenty-six miles, and its trade constantly grows. It
pushes ahead with boundless energy, attracting the shrewdest men of
the West to take part in its vast and profitable enterprises, and is
in such a complete manner the depot and storehouse for the products
and supplies of goods for the enormous prairie region around it, and
for the entire Northwest, and the country out to the Rocky Mountains
and Pacific Ocean, that other Western cities cannot displace or even
hope to rival it. Yet it is a youthful giant, of quick and marvellous
development, but few of its leading spirits having been born within
its limits, nearly all being attracted thither by its paramount
advantages. The prominent characteristics of Chicago are an
overhanging pall of smoke; streets crowded with quick-moving, busy
people; a vast aggregation of railways, vessels, elevators and traffic
of all kinds; a polyglot population drawn from almost all races; and
an earnest devotion to the almighty dollar. Its name came from the
river, and is of Indian origin, regarded as probably a corruption of
"Cheecagua," the title of a dynasty of chiefs who controlled the
country west and south of Lake Michigan. This also was a word applied
in the Indian dialect to the wild onion growing luxuriantly on the
banks of the river, and they gave a similar name to the thunder which
they believed the voice of the Great Spirit, and to the odorous animal
abounding in the neighborhood that the white man knew as the
"polecat." These were rather incongruous uses for the same word, but
the suggestion has been made that all can be harmonized if Chicago is
interpreted as meaning "strong," the Indians, being poorly supplied
with words, usually selecting the most prominent attribute in giving
names. All these things are in one way or another "strong," and it is
evident that prodigious strength exists in Chicago.
As elsewhere throughout the Northwest, the French missionaries were
here the earliest explorers, Father Marquette coming in 1673, and
afterwards Hennepin, Joliet and La Salle, whose names are so
numerously reproduced in the Northwestern States. The French built at
the mouth of the river Fort Chicagou, for a trading-post, and held it
until the English conquered Canada. When the earlier American settlers
ventured to this frontier, the Indians on Lake Michigan were the
Pottawatomies, and were hostile. The Government in 1804 built Fort
Dearborn, near the mouth of the Chicago River, to control them. These
Indians joined in the crusade of the Prophet and Tecumseh, and when
the war with England began in 1812, attacked and captured the fort,
massacring the garrison. The post was subsequently re-established, and
the Indians were ultimately removed west of the Mississippi. Not long
afterwards it was said the first purchase of the site of Chicago took
place, wherein a large part of the land now occupied was sold for a
pair of boots. When the town plot was originally surveyed, twelve
families were there in addition to the garrison of Fort Dearborn, and
in 1831 it had one hundred people. In 1833 the town government was
organized, and it had five hundred and fifty inhabitants and one
hundred and seventy-five buildings. Five trustees then ruled Chicago,
and collected $49 for the first year's taxes. Collis P. Huntington,
the Pacific Railway manager, says that in 1835, being possessed of a
good constitution and a pair of mules, but little else, he was out
that way prospecting, and found at Chicago nothing but a swamp and a
few destitute farmers, all anxious to move. One of these farmers came
to him with the deed of his farm of two thousand acres, and offered to
trade it for his pair of mules. Huntington adds: "I was not very
favorably impressed with the settlement and declined his offer, and
finally continued my travel west, and that farm is to-day the business
centre of Chicago."
In 1837 Chicago got its first city charter, and it then had about
forty-two hundred people. The rapid growth since has been
unparalleled, especially when, after 1850, its commercial enterprise
began attracting wide attention, the population then being about
thirty thousand. In 1855, to get above the swamp and improve the
drainage, the level of the entire city was raised seven feet, huge
buildings being elevated bodily while business was progressing, an
enterprise mainly accomplished by the ingenious devices which first
gave prominence to the late George M. Pullman. The population almost
quadrupled and its trade increased tenfold in the decade 1850-60, and
in 1870 the population was over three hundred thousand, and it had
become a leading American city. Yet Chicago has had terrible setbacks
in its wonderful career, the most awful being the fire in October,
1871, the greatest of modern times, which raged for three days, burned
over a surface of nearly four square miles and until practically
nothing remained in the district to devour, destroyed eighteen
thousand buildings, two hundred lives, and property valued at
$200,000,000, leaving a hundred thousand people homeless--a calamity
that excited the sympathies of the world, which gave relief
contributions aggregating $7,000,000. Yet while the embers were
smoking, this enterprising people set to work to rebuild their city
with a will and a progress which caused almost as much amazement as
the original catastrophe. The recovery was complete; the city which
had been of wood was rebuilt of brick and stone and iron and steel,
and its progress since has developed an energy not before equalled. It
has been beautified by grand parks and boulevards, and by the
construction of palatial residences and business blocks, and of
enormous office buildings, the tall "sky-scrapers" having been first
invented and built in Chicago. In 1893 the World's Columbian
Exhibition, to celebrate the discovery of America, was held at Chicago
on a vast scale and with remarkable success. The city has long been,
also, a favorite meeting-place for the great political Conventions
nominating candidates for President and Vice-President of the United
States, its large hotel capacity and immense halls giving advantages
for these enormous assemblages.
CHICAGO'S ADMIRABLE LOCATION.
The position of Chicago at the southwestern extremity of Lake
Michigan, with prairies of the greatest fertility stretching hundreds
of miles south and west, makes the city the primary food-gatherer and
supply-distributor of the great Northwest, and this has been the chief
cause of its growth. In September, 1833, the Pottawatomies agreed to
sell their prairie homes to the United States and migrate to
reservations farther West, and seven thousand of them assembled in
grand council at Chicago, and sold the Government twenty millions of
acres of these prairies around Lake Michigan, in Indiana, Illinois and
Michigan, for $1,100,000. Thus was this fertile domain opened to
settlement. In the Indian dialect, Michigan means the "great water,"
and it is the largest lake within the United States, being three
hundred and twenty miles long and seventy broad, and having an average
depth of one thousand feet, with the surface elevated five hundred and
seventy-eight feet above the ocean level. On the Chicago side this
extensive lake has but a narrow watershed, the Illinois River,
draining the region to the westward, being formed only sixty-five
miles southwest of the lake by the junction of the Kankakee and
Desplaines Rivers. This narrow and very low watershed, considered in
connection with the enormous capacity of the Illinois River valley,
which is at a much lower level and appears as if worn by a mighty
current in former times, is regarded by geologists as an evidence of
the probability that the Lake Michigan waters may in past ages have
found their way to that outlet and flowed through the Illinois and
Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf. The diminutive bayou of the Chicago
River, with its two short and tortuous branches, made Chicago the
leading lake port, and thus brought trade, so that early in the race
it far outstripped all its Western rivals. Every railroad of
prominence sought an outlet or a feeder at Chicago, and the title of a
"trunk line" was adopted for a line of rails between Chicago and the
seaboard. The surrounding prairie for miles is crossed in all
directions by railways, and a large part of the city and suburbs is
made up of huge stations, car-yards, elevators, storehouses and
cattle-pens, almost overwhelming visitors with the prodigious scale of
their elaborate perplexity. The maze of railways and streets on the
level surface, all crossing at grade, as it has spread over miles of
prairie and grown into such enormous proportions, presents a most
serious problem, with which the city and the railways are now dealing
on a comprehensive plan, by which it is hoped that before long the
grade-crossings will be eliminated.
Another problem, found even more serious as the city grew, was the
drainage. In former years the sewage was discharged into the Chicago
River and Lake Michigan. The river became a most malodorous stream in
consequence, and as it had practically no descent, the current would
scarcely flow, and the lake, from which the city water-supply was
drawn, was more and more polluted. With the customary enterprise of
these wonderful people, however, they decided to make the only change
feasible, which was to take advantage of the descending watershed
towards Desplaines River and change their sewerage system so that it
would all discharge in that direction. The problem was solved by the
construction of the most expensive drainage works in the world, and a
complete change of the sewers, at a cost altogether approximating
$40,000,000. St. Louis and the towns along the Desplaines fought the
scheme, and there was protracted litigation, but the very existence of
Chicago depended on the result. The great drainage canal was completed
connecting the Chicago River South Branch with Desplaines River at
Lockport, twenty-eight miles southwest, where it discharges the
outflow from Lake Michigan, which then flows past Joliet, and
ultimately into Illinois River. This huge canal, opened in January,
1900, reverses the flow of the Chicago River, which now draws in about
three hundred thousand cubic feet of water per minute from Lake
Michigan and flushes the canal, which is also to be made available for
shipping. Thus the Chicago River flows towards its source with a free
current, and Lake Michigan has been purified. The canal has quite a
descent to Lockport, and the water-power is to be availed of in
generating electricity. The city water-supply is drawn from cribs out
in the lake through four systems of tunnels, aggregating twenty-two
miles, furnishing an ample service, and pumping-stations in various
locations elevate the water in towers to secure sufficient head for
the flow into the buildings. The chief of these towers, a solid stone
structure alongside the lake, rises one hundred and sixty feet, the
huge pumping-engines forcing a vast stream constantly over its top.
[Illustration: _Lincoln Monument, Lincoln Park, Chicago_]
FEATURES OF CHICAGO.
Chicago is the world's greatest grain, lumber and cattle market. It
attracts immigrants from everywhere, and all flourish in native
luxuriance, although occasionally they are compelled to bow to the
power of the law by the military arm when civil forces are exhausted.
Everything seems to go on without much hindrance, and thus this
wonderful city secures its rapid growth and completely cosmopolitan
character. While proud of their amazing progress, the people seem
generally so engrossed in pushing business enterprises and piling up
fortunes that they have little time to think of much else. Yet
somebody has had opportunity to plan the adornment of the city by a
magnificent series of parks and boulevards encircling it. The broad
expanse of prairie was low, level and treeless originally, but
abundant trees have since been planted, and art has made little lakes
and miniature hills, beautiful flower-gardens and abundant shrubbery,
thus producing pleasure-grounds of rare attractions. Michigan Avenue
and Drexel and Grand Boulevards, leading to the southern system of
parks and Lake Shore Drive on the north side of Chicago River, are the
finest residential streets. The huge Auditorium fronting on Michigan
Avenue was erected at a cost of $3,500,000, includes a hotel and
theatre, and is surmounted with a tower rising two hundred and seventy
feet, giving a fine view over the city and lake. Out in front is the
Lake Park, with railways beyond near the shore, and a fine bronze
equestrian statue of General John A. Logan, who died in 1886 and is
buried in the crypt beneath the monument. Michigan Avenue begins at
Chicago River alongside the site of old Fort Dearborn, now
obliterated, and it stretches far south, a tree-lined boulevard
adorned by magnificent residences.
Chicago River, with its entrance protected by a wide-spreading
breakwater, is the harbor of the city, and, like its railways, carries
the trade. Tunnels conduct various streets under it, and a multitude
of bridges go over it, all of them opening to let vessels pass. They
are mostly swinging bridges, but some are ingenious constructions,
which roll, and lift and fold, and in various curious ways open the
channel for the shipping. Huge elevators line the river banks, with
vessels alongside, into which streams of grain are poured, while
multitudes of cars move in and out, under and around them, bringing
the supply from the farm to the storage-bins. In the business section,
as elsewhere, the streets are wide, thus accommodating the throngs who
fill them, and there are fine city and national buildings, a new
Post-office of large size and imposing architecture being in course of
construction. The Chicago Public Library, completed in 1897, is a
grand structure, costing $2,000,000, and having about three hundred
thousand volumes. The University of Chicago, in the southern suburbs,
is destined to become one of the leading institutions of learning in
America. It began instruction in 1892, and now has some twenty-four
hundred students, and endowments of $15,000,000, largely the gifts of
John D. Rockefeller. The University grounds cover twenty-four acres,
and when the plan is completed there will be over forty buildings. Its
libraries contain three hundred and fifty thousand volumes. The great
Yerkes Observatory, adjunct to this University, is at Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin, seventy miles distant, and has the largest refracting
telescope in the world, with forty-inch lens and a tube seventy feet
long. On the northern side of the city is the Newberry Library, with
$3,000,000 endowment and two hundred thousand volumes, including
admirable musical and medical collections, and the Crerar Library,
with $2,000,000 endowment, principally for scientific works, is being
established on the south side. Chicago's greatest industrial
establishment is the Federal Steel Company, having enormous
rolling-mills and foundries in various parts of the city, and also at
Joliet on Desplaines River. Its South Chicago Rolling Mills occupy
over three hundred acres. The manufacture of agricultural machinery is
represented by two enormous establishments, the McCormick Harvesting
Machine Company on the southwest side and the Deering Works in the
northwestern district.
CHICAGO BUSINESS ENERGY.
As the elevators of Chicago represent its traffic in grain, and
contain usually a large proportion of what is known as the "visible
supply," so do the vast lumber-yards along Chicago River often store
up an enormous product of the output from the "Great North Woods,"
covering much of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and spreading
across the Canadian border. The third great branch of traffic is
represented by the Union Stock Yards in the southwestern suburbs.
These yards in a year will handle eight millions of hogs, four
millions of cattle, four millions of sheep and a hundred thousand
horses, over two-thirds of the hogs and cattle being killed in the
yards and sent away in the form of meat, and the whole annual traffic
being valued at $250,000,000. The yards cover three hundred acres, and
with the packing-houses employ twenty-five thousand men, and they have
twenty miles of water-troughs and twenty-five miles of feeding-troughs,
and are served by two hundred and fifty miles of railway-tracks. The
hog is a potential factor in American economy, being regarded as the
most compact form in which the corn crop of the country can be
transported to market. The corn on the farm is fed to the hog, and the
animal is sent to Chicago as a package provided by nature for its
economical utilization. The Union Stock Yards make a complete town,
with its own banks, hotels, Board of Trade, Post-office, town-hall,
newspaper and special Fire Department. The extensive enclosure is
entered by a modest, gray sandstone turreted gateway, surmounted by a
carved bull's head, emblematic of its uses. The Horse Market is a
large pavilion, seating four thousand people. From this vast emporium,
with its enormous packing-houses, are sent away the meat supplies that
go all over the world, the product being carried out in long trains of
canned goods and refrigerator cars, the most ingenious methods of
"cold storage" being invented for and used in this widely extended
industry.
The active traffic of the grain and provision trades of Chicago is
conducted in the building of the Board of Trade, a tall and imposing
structure at the head of La Salle Street, which makes a fitting close
to the view along that grand highway. It is one of the most elaborate
architectural ornaments of the city, and its surmounting tower rises
three hundred and twenty-two feet from the pavement. The fame of this
grand speculative arena is world-wide, and the animated and at times
most exciting business done within marks the nervous beating of the
pulse of this metropolis of food products. The interior is a
magnificent hall, lighted by high-reaching windows and surmounted by a
central skylight elevated nearly a hundred feet above the floor.
Impressive columns adorn the sides, and the elaborate frescoes above
are in keeping with its artistic decoration. Upon the spacious floor,
between nine and one o'clock, assemble the wheat and corn, and pork,
lard, cattle and railway kings in a typical scene of concentrated and
boiling energy feeding the furnace in which Chicago's high-pressure
business enterprise glows and roars. These speculative gladiators have
their respective "pits" or amphitheatres upon the floor, so that they
gather in huge groups, around which hundreds run and jostle, the scene
from the overlooking gallery, as the crowds sway and squirm, and with
their calls and shouting make a deafening uproar, being a veritable
Bedlam. Each "pit" deals in a specific article, while in another space
are detachments of telegraph operators working with nimble fingers to
send instant reports of the doings and prices to the anxious outer
world. High up on the side of the grand hall, in full view of all, are
hung large dials, whose moving hands keep momentary record of the
changes in prices made by the noisy and excited throngs in the "pits,"
thus giving notice of the ruling figures for the next month's
"options" on wheat, corn and "short-ribs." There are tables for
samples, and large blackboards bearing the figures of market
quotations elsewhere. This Chicago Board of Trade has been the scene
of some of the wildest speculative excitements in the country, as its
shouting and almost frenzied groups of traders in the "pits" may make
or break a "corner," and here in fitful fever concentrates the
business energy of the great Metropolis of the Lakes.
PULLMAN AND THE SLEEPING-CAR.
Another Chicago specialty of wide fame is the railway sleeping-car,
brought to its present high stage of development by one of the most
prominent Chicagoans, the late George M. Pullman. The earliest
American sleeping-car was devised by Theodore T. Woodruff, who
constructed a small working model in 1854 at Watertown, New York, and
subsequently building his car, first ran it on the New York Central
Railroad in October, 1856, charging fifty cents for a berth. George M.
Pullman was originally a cabinet-maker in New York State, and moved
when a young man to Chicago. His first fame in that city, as already
stated, came from the ingenious methods he devised, when the grade of
the town was elevated to secure better drainage, for raising the
buildings by putting hundreds of jackscrews under them, trade
continuing uninterrupted during the process. Pullman, subsequently to
that time, travelled occasionally between Chicago and Buffalo, and one
night got into Woodruff's car. He was stretched out upon the vibrating
couch for some two hours, but could not sleep, and his eyes being
widely open, and the sight wandering all about the car, he struck upon
a new idea. When he left the car he had determined to develop from his
brief experience a plan destined to expand into a complete home upon
wheels for the traveller, either awake or sleeping. In 1859 he turned
two ordinary railway coaches into sleeping-cars and placed them upon
night trains between Chicago and St. Louis, charging fifty cents per
berth, his first night's receipts being two dollars. He ran these
experimental coaches about five years before he felt able to carry out
his ideal plan, and he then occupied fully a year in constructing his
model sleeping-car, the "Pioneer," at Chicago, at a cost of $18,000.
But when completed the car was so heavy, wide and high that no railway
could undertake running it, as it necessitated cutting off station
platforms and elevating the tops of bridges before it could pass by.
Thus he had a white elephant on his hands for a time. In April, 1865,
President Lincoln's assassination shocked the country, and the
funeral, with its escort of mourning statesmen, was progressing from
Washington to Chicago, on the way to the grave at Springfield. The
nation watched its progress, and the railways transporting the
_cortége_ were doing their best. The manager of the road from Chicago
to Springfield used the "Pioneer" in the funeral train, taking several
days to prepare for it by sending out gangs of men to cut off the
station platforms and alter the bridges. Pullman's dream was realized;
his "coach of the future," with its escort of statesmen, carried the
dead President to his grave and became noted throughout the land. A
few weeks later, General Grant, fresh from the conquest of the
Rebellion, had a triumphal progress from the camp to his home in
Illinois. Five days were spent in clearing the railway between Detroit
and Galena, where he lived, and the "Pioneer" carried Grant over that
line.
These successes made Pullman's fortune, and the business of his
company grew rapidly afterwards, it being now an enormous concern with
$70,000,000 capital, controlling practically all the sleeping-cars of
this country and many abroad. The main works are at the Chicago suburb
of Pullman, ten miles south of the centre of the city, where there are
about twelve thousand population, most of the people being connected
with the works, which are an extensive general car-building
establishment. Pullman was built as a model town, with every
improvement calculated to add to the comfort and health of the
working-people, being also provided with its own library, theatre,
and a tasteful arcade, in which are various shops. It was at Pullman
in 1894 that the great strike took place which ultimately involved a
large portion of the railways of the country, causing much rioting and
bloodshed, and finally requiring the intervention of the Federal
troops to maintain the peace. After a protracted period of turmoil,
the strike failed.
THE CORN CROP.
Chicago is the _entrepôt_ for the great prairie region spreading from
the Alleghenies westward beyond the Mississippi. Here grows the grain
making the wealth of the land, and feeding the cattle, hogs and sheep
that are poured so liberally into the Union Stock Yards of the Lake
City. Upon the crops of this vast prairie land depends the prosperity
of the country. Wall Street in New York and the Chicago Board of Trade
are the market barometers of this prosperity, for the prairie farmer,
as he may be rich and able to spend money, or poor so that he cannot
even pay his debts, controls the financial outlook in America. The
traveller, as he glides upon this universal prairie land, east, south
and west of Chicago, viewing its limitless fertility seen far away in
every direction over the monotonous level, as if looking across an
ocean, cannot help recalling Wordsworth's pleasant lines:
"The streams with softest sound are flowing,
The grass you almost hear it growing,
You hear it now, if e'er you can."
Then, as the crops ripen and are garnered, and the wealth of the
prairie is turned into food for the world, there comes with the
advancing autumn the ripening of the greatest crop of America, and the
mainstay of the country, the Indian corn. It is wonderful to think
that the first corn crop of the United States planted by white men at
Jamestown, Virginia, on a field of forty acres in 1608, has grown to
an annual yield approximating twenty-three hundred million bushels.
This prolific crop is the banner product of the great prairie, and
Whittier in his "Corn Song" has recorded its glories:
"Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has autumn poured
From out the lavish horn!
"Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;
"We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest fields with snow.
"Through vales of grass and meads of flowers,
Our plows their furrows made,
While on the hills, the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.
"We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.
"All through the long bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and fair,
And waved in hot midsummer's noon
Its soft and yellow hair.
"And now, with autumn's moonlit eves,
Its harvest time has come,
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.
"There, richer than the fabled gift
Apollo showered of old,
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,
And knead its meal of gold.
"Let vapid idlers loll in silk
Around their costly board;
Give us the bowl of samp and milk
By homespun beauty poured!
"Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth
Sends up its smoky curls,
Who will not thank the kindly earth,
And bless our farmer girls!
"Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit,
The wheat-field to the fly;
"But let the good old corn adorn
The hills our fathers trod;
Still let us for his golden corn
Send up our thanks to God!"
GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST.
VII.
GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST.
The Great Lakes -- Sieur de La Salle -- Lake St. Clair -- Lake
Huron -- Detroit -- Ann Arbor -- Mackinac Island -- Sault
Sainte Marie -- Lake Superior -- Lake Nepigon -- Thunder Bay --
Port Arthur -- Kakabika Falls -- The Pictured Rocks --
Marquette -- Keweenaw -- Iron and Copper -- Houghton -- Lake
Gogebic -- Superior City -- Duluth -- Messabi and Vermillion
Ranges -- Green Bay -- Wisconsin -- Milwaukee -- Waukesha --
Madison -- Rock Island -- Davenport -- Moline Rapids -- Dubuque
-- Iowa -- Black Hawk -- Minnesota -- La Crosse -- Lake Pepin
-- Falls of St. Anthony -- St. Paul -- Minneapolis -- Fort
Snelling -- Flour and Lumber -- Lake Minnetonka -- Minnehaha
Falls -- Hiawatha and Minnehaha -- Source of the Mississippi --
Itasca Lake -- Minnesota River -- Red River of the North --
Ancient Lake Agassiz -- Sioux Falls -- Fargo -- Great Wheat
Farms -- Manitoba -- Rat Portage -- Keewatin -- Winnipeg --
Hudson Bay Company -- Dakota -- Bismarck -- The Bad Lands --
Yellowstone River -- Montana -- Big Horn River -- Custer
Massacre -- Livingston -- Cinnabar Mountain -- Yellowstone
National Park -- Mammoth Hot Springs -- Norris Geyser Basin --
Firehole River -- Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins --
Yellowstone Lake and Falls -- The Grand Canyon -- Two-Ocean
Pond -- Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way.
THE GREAT LAKES.
René Robert Cavelier, the Sieur de La Salle, was the chief French
pilgrim and adventurer in the seventeenth century who explored the
Great Lakes and valley of the Mississippi, and secured for his country
the vast empire of Louisiana, stretching from Canada to the Gulf. His
explorations were made in 1669 and again in 1678, and like all the
discoverers of that early time he was hunting for the water way
thought to lead to the South Sea and provide a route to China. The
historian Parkman describes La Salle as one of the most remarkable
explorers whose names live in history; the hero of a fixed idea and
determined purpose; an untiring pilgrim pushing onward towards the
goal he was never to attain; the pioneer who guided America to the
possession of her richest heritage. Throughout the northwest his
memory is preserved in the names of rivers, towns, and otherwise, and
his maps and narratives gave the earliest geography of the Lakes and
the vast and prolific region obtained from France in the Louisiana
cession.
The Great Lakes on the northern border of the United States are the
largest bodies of fresh water on the globe. They carry an enormous
commerce, nearly a hundred thousand men being employed by the fleet of
lake vessels, which approximates two millions tonnage. At the head of
Lake Erie the waters of Detroit River pour in, draining the upper
lakes, this stream, about twenty-five miles long, flowing from Lake
St. Clair and broadening from a half-mile to four miles width at its
mouth. Lake St. Clair is elevated five hundred and thirty feet, but is
small, being about twenty-five miles in diameter, and shallow, only
about twenty feet deep. The navigation of its shallows is intricate,
and is aided by a long canal through the shoals at the upper end,
where the St. Clair River discharges, a strait about forty miles long,
flowing south from Lake Huron. This great lake is at five hundred and
eighty feet elevation, and in places seventeen hundred feet deep,
covering twenty-four thousand square miles, and containing many
islands. At its northern end, Lakes Superior and Michigan join it by
various straits and water ways beyond Mackinac Island. Westward of
Lakes Ontario and Erie, and between them and Lake Huron, a long
peninsula of the Dominion of Canada projects southward into the United
States, terminating opposite Detroit. Similarly, to the westward of
Lake Huron, and between it and Lake Michigan, the State of Michigan
has its lower peninsula projecting upward to Canada. The Canadian
projection, which is part of Ontario Province, is unfortunately
located, being almost surrounded by these expansive lakes, having
bleak, cold winds sweeping across them and seriously impeding its
agriculture. The surface has little charm of scenery and the
population is sparse. The trunk railways, however, find this an almost
direct route from Western New York to Detroit and Chicago, and various
roads traverse it, coming out on the Detroit River and the
swift-flowing St. Clair River, which are crossed both by car-ferry and
tunnel. At the outlet of Lake Huron, St. Clair River is less than a
thousand feet wide between Point Edward and Fort Gratiot, and here
and at Ports Sarnia and Huron the low and level shores are lined with
docks, elevators and other accessories of commerce. This river brings
vast amounts of sand down out of Lake Huron with its swift current,
which are deposited on the St. Clair Flats beyond its mouth, keeping
that lake shallow, and requiring the long ship canal to maintain
navigation. Below Lake St. Clair, the wider Detroit River presents
many fine bits of scenery, while the city of Detroit spreads for
several miles along the northwestern bank, and has Windsor opposite,
on the Canadian shore. Pretty islands dot the broadening stream below
Detroit, and the varying width, with the bluffs on the Canadian side,
and the meadows, fields and forests of Michigan, give lovely views.
DETROIT AND MACKINAC.
Detroit means "the strait," and the original Indian names for the
river mean "the place of the turned channel." The early visitors who
reached it by boat at night or in dark weather, and were inattentive
to the involved currents, always remarked, as the Indians did before
them, that owing to these extraordinary involutions of the waters,
when the sun appeared again it always seemed to rise in the wrong
place. The French under La Salle were the first Europeans who passed
through the river, and in 1701 the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, who
received grants from Louis XIV., came and founded Fort Pontchartrain
there, naming it after the French Minister of Marine, around which a
settlement afterwards grew, to which the French sent colonists at
intervals. The British got possession in 1760, and it successfully
resisted the conspiracy and attacks of the Ojibway Indian chief
Pontiac for over a year, the garrison narrowly escaping massacre. The
United States, after the Revolution, sent out General St. Clair as
Governor, and his name was given the lake to the northward. Detroit
was a frontier post in the War of 1812, being alternately held by
British and Americans. In 1824 it had about fifteen hundred people and
became a city. It now has three hundred and fifty thousand population,
and its commercial importance may be estimated from the fact that the
whole enormous traffic of the Lakes passes in front of the city during
the seven months that navigation is open, the procession of craft
often reaching sixty thousand vessels in the season. Detroit also has
extensive and varied manufactures. It has a gradually rising surface
and broad and well-paved streets on a rectangular plan, with several
avenues radiating from a centre, like the spokes of a wheel. The
central square is the Campus Martius, an expansion, about a half-mile
from the river, of Woodward Avenue, the chief street. Here is an
elaborate City Hall, the principal public building, having in front a
magnificent Soldiers' Monument. The suburbs are attractive, and there
are various pleasant parks and rural cemeteries, the leading Park of
Belle Isle, covering seven hundred acres, being to the northeastward,
with a good view over Lake St. Clair. Fort Wayne, the elaborate
defensive work of Detroit, is on the river just below the city, and
has a small garrison of regular troops. It is yet incomplete, and is
designed to be the most extensive fortification on the northern
frontier, commanding the important passage between Lakes Huron and
Erie and the railway routes east and west.
The peninsula of Michigan was originally covered with the finest
forests, so that lumbering has always been a leading industry of the
people. The greater portion of its pine woods, however, has been cut
off, so that that branch is declining; but its ample supply of hard
woods has made the State a great manufacturer of furniture, which is
shipped all over the country. Thirty-eight miles west of Detroit, on
the Huron River, is the city of Ann Arbor, with a population of
fifteen thousand. Here are the extensive buildings of the University
of Michigan, the leading educational establishment of the northwest,
attended by over three thousand students, of whom a large number are
young women. It is richly endowed, and has departments of law and
medicine, as well as of literature and science, a large library and an
observatory. The State makes a liberal annual contribution for its
support, raised by taxation, it being governed by eight regents
elected by the people. At the northern extremity of the Michigan
Peninsula is the Strait of Mackinac, through which Lake Michigan
discharges into Lake Huron. This water way is about four miles wide.
In the strait is Mackinac Island, about nine miles in circumference,
which was early held by the French on account of its strategic
importance, but, being taken by the English in 1760, was captured by
Pontiac when he organized the Indian revolt against the British in
1763, and all its inhabitants massacred. It is now a military post and
reservation of the United States. This rocky and wooded island
contains much picturesque scenery, and is a favorite summer resort,
its weird legends, fresh breezes, good fishing and clear waters being
the attraction. It was an early post of the northwestern fur-traders,
and here was founded one of the frontier trading-stations of the Astor
Fur Company in the early nineteenth century by John Jacob Astor of New
York, the building in the little village being still known as the
Astor House.
LAKE SUPERIOR.
To the northward of Mackinac, Lake Superior discharges into Lake Huron
through the Sault Sainte Marie Strait, the "Leap of St. Mary." This
strait of St. Mary is a winding and most beautiful stream, sixty-two
miles long, being a succession of expansions into lakes and
contractions into rivers, dotted with pretty islands and having some
villages on the banks. The chief attraction is the Sault, or "Leap,"
which is a rapid of about eighteen feet descent, the navigation being
maintained through capacious modern systems of locks and ship canals
provided by both the United States and Canada. To the westward is the
great Lake Superior, the largest fresh-water lake on the globe, three
hundred and sixty miles long and covering thirty-two thousand square
miles, with a coast-line of about fifteen hundred miles. It is
elevated about six hundred feet above the ocean level, and has a depth
averaging one thousand feet. Nearly two hundred rivers and creeks flow
into it, draining a region of a hundred thousand square miles. There
are a few islands in the eastern and western portions, but all the
centre of the lake is a vast unbroken sheet of water, and generally of
a low temperature, the deeper waters being only 39° in summer. The
early French missionaries, who were the first explorers, told their
interesting story of Lake Superior in Paris in 1636, and in their
published account speak of its coasts as resembling a bended bow, of
which the north shore makes the arc of the bow, the south shore the
chord, and the great Keweenaw Point, projecting far from the southern
shore, represents the arrow. Superior has generally a rock-bound
coast, displaying impressive beauties of scenery, particularly on the
northern shore, where the beetling crags and cliffs are projected
boldly into the lake along the water's edge. This northern coast is
also much indented by deep bays, bordered by precipitous cliffs, back
of which rise the dark and dreary Laurentian Mountains. There are also
rocky islands scattered near this portion of the coast, some
presenting vast castellated walls of basalt and others peaks of
granite, elevated a thousand to thirteen hundred feet above the lake.
Nowhere upon the inland waters of North America is there grander
scenery.
The most considerable affluent of Lake Superior upon its northern
coast is the Nepigon River, coming grandly down cascades and rapids,
bringing the waters of Lake Nepigon, an elliptical lake among the
mountains to the northward covering about four thousand square miles,
bounded by high cliffs, and elevated over eight hundred feet. It is
studded with islands, has very deep waters, and receives various
streams from the remote northern wilderness. Upon the northwestern
shore of Lake Superior are gigantic cliffs, surrounding Thunder Bay, a
deep indentation divided from Black Bay by the great projecting
promontory of Thunder Cape, rising nearly fourteen hundred feet in
grand columns of basalt, the summit containing the crater of an
extinct volcano. Across from it is McKay Mountain, another basaltic
Gibraltar, rising twelve hundred feet from the almost level plain
bordering the bay. Pic Island is between them, guarding the entrance.
The pretty Kaministiquia River flows through rich prairie lands down
to Thunder Bay, and here is the chief Canadian town on the lake, Port
Arthur. Thirty miles up this river is the famous Kakabika Falls, where
the rocks are cleft so that the stream tumbles into a chasm one
hundred and thirty feet deep, and then boils along with rapid current
for nearly a half-mile through the fissure, the sides towering
perpendicularly, and in some places even overhanging their bases. Upon
this river was for many years the well-known Hudson Bay Company's
fur-trading station of Fort William, which now has grain elevators,
and is a suburb of the spreading settlement of Port Arthur. This was
the beginning of the great portage from Lake Superior over to the
Hudson Bay waters at Fort Garry, on the Red River in Manitoba, now
Winnipeg, the portage being the present route of the Canadian Pacific
Railway.
SAULT SAINTE MARIE TO DULUTH.
The southern shore of Lake Superior is mostly composed of lowlands,
covered with sand, glacial deposits and clays, which came from the
lake during a former stage of much higher water, when it extended many
miles south of the present boundary. These lands, while not well
adapted to agriculture, contain rich deposits of copper, iron and
other metals and valuable red sandstones. Around the rapids and canals
at the outlet has gradually grown the town of Sault Sainte Marie,
familiarly known as the "Soo," having ten thousand people, and
developing important manufactures from the admirable water-power of
the rapids, which is also utilized for electrical purposes. An
international bridge brings a branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway
over from Canada, on its way to Minneapolis and St. Paul, with
connections southward to Chicago, and there is also the military post
of Fort Brady. Stately processions of vessels constantly move through
the canals, being locked up or down when the navigation season is
open, and making this a very animated place, over fifteen thousand
ships passing in the seven months when the canals are free from ice.
The tonnage is the greatest using any system of canals in the world,
far exceeding Suez, and the recent improvements enable vessels of
twenty-one feet draft to go through the new locks. Both Governments
have expended millions upon these important public works, which are
chiefly employed for the transport of grain, flour, coal, iron-ores
and copper. The favorite sports at the "Soo" are catching white fish
and "shooting the rapids" in canoes guided by the Indians, who are
very skillful.
About one hundred miles westward from the "Soo," on the southern lake
shore, there rise cliffs of the red and other sandstones formed by the
edges of nearly horizontal strata coming out at the border of the
lake. These are the noted Pictured Rocks, rising three hundred feet,
extending for a distance of about five miles, and worn by frost and
storm into fantastic and romantic forms, displaying vivid hues--red,
blue, yellow, green, brown and gray--as they have been stained by the
oozing waters carrying the pigments. At intervals, cascades fall over
the rocks. One cliff, called the Sail Rock, is like a sloop in full
sail, and there are various castles and chapels, and an elaborate
Grand Portal. In the country around is laid much of the scene of
_Hiawatha_, and at the little lake port of Munising, nearby, was the
site of the wigwam of the old woman, Nokomis,
"On the shores of Gitchee Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water."
To the westward is the region of iron-ores, and here is Marquette,
named for the great Jesuit missionary Father Marquette, who was the
first founder of mission settlements in this region, and died in 1675
near the mouth of Marquette River. This town of fifteen thousand
people is on Iron Bay, and is the chief port of the Marquette,
Menominee and Ishpeming mines. Farther to the westward the great
Keweenaw Peninsula projects, the name meaning in the Indian dialect
the "canoe portage." At its base, the Portage Lake almost separates it
from the mainland, and a short portage to the westward formerly
carried the canoes over the narrow isthmus. A canal now enables the
lake shipping to pass through without making the long detour around
the outer end of the peninsula. Upon this rocky peninsula are the
great copper-mines of Michigan, including the Quincy, Tamarack,
Osceola, Franklin, Atlantic, and the Calumet and Hecla. The latter is
the world's leading Copper Company, making over $4,000,000 estimated
annual profit, employing five thousand men, and having the deepest
shaft in existence, the Red Jacket, which has been sunk forty-nine
hundred feet. Houghton, on the southern shore of Portage Lake, is the
leading town of the copper district. To the southwestward and in the
western part of the Upper Michigan Peninsula is Lake Gogebic, elevated
thirteen hundred feet, in another prolific iron-ore district, the
Gogebic range, which produces Bessemer ores, and has its shipping port
across the Wisconsin boundary at Ashland, another busy town of fifteen
thousand people at the head of Chequamegon Bay. Out in front are the
Apostle Islands, a picturesque group, and to the westward the head of
Lake Superior gradually narrows in the Fond du Lac, or end of the
lake, where are situated its leading ports, Superior City in Wisconsin
and Duluth in Minnesota.
Here in the seventeenth century came the early French, and in 1680 a
trading-post was established by Daniel du Lhut, afterwards becoming a
Hudson Bay Company Station. The mouth of St. Louis River and its bay
were naturally recognized as important points for trade, and when the
Northern Pacific Railway was projected Superior City got its start.
The first railroad scheme failed, the panic of 1857 came, and the
railway project was abandoned until after the Civil War; and then,
when it was renewed, the terminus was located over on the other side
of the river, the place being named Duluth, after the French trader.
While there has been great rivalry between them, and Duluth has
outstripped Superior, yet the latter has an extensive trade and thirty
thousand people. Duluth, the "Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas," as it
has been ambitiously called, was originally projected on Minnesota
Point, a scythe-shaped natural breakwater running out seven miles into
the lake, which protects the harbor, but the town was subsequently
built farther in. There were about seventy white people in the
neighborhood in 1860, and in 1869 its present site was a forest, while
the railroad, which had many set-backs, had only brought about three
thousand people there in 1885. The completion of other railway
connections in various directions, the discovery of iron deposits, and
the recognition of its advantageous position for traffic, subsequently
gave Duluth rapid growth, so that it now has eighty thousand people,
and is the greatest port on the lake. It is finely situated, the
harbor being spacious and lined with docks and warehouses, and it has
many substantial buildings. Back of the city a terrace rises some four
hundred feet, an old shore line of Lake Superior when the water was at
much higher level, and here is the Boulevard Drive, giving splendid
views over the town and lake. The vast extent of wheat lands to the
westward and the prolific iron-ore district to the northward give
Duluth an enormous trade. Its railways lead up to the Messabi and
Vermillion ranges, now the greatest producers of Lake Superior
iron-ores, the red hematite, most of the output being controlled by
John D. Rockefeller and his associates. These mines yield the richest
ores in the world, and have made some of the greatest fortunes in
Duluth. Yet they were not discovered until 1891, and then the lands
where they are generally went begging, because nobody would give the
government price for them, $1.25 per acre. One forty-acre tract, then
abandoned by the man who took it up because he did not think the pine
wood on it was enough to warrant paying $50 for it, is now the
Mountain Iron Mine, netting Mr. Rockefeller $375,000 annual profit,
and his railroad bringing the ores out gets more than that sum for
freights.
THE CITY OF MILWAUKEE.
The early French traders and explorers who came to the upper lakes
naturally ascended their affluents, and in this way La Salle, Joliet,
Hennepin and others crossed the portages beyond Lake Michigan to the
tributaries of the Mississippi. They came to Green Bay on the west
side of Lake Michigan, ascended the Fox River and crossed over to the
Wisconsin River. Southward from the Upper Michigan Peninsula and
westward of the lower peninsula of that State spreads the broad
expanse of Lake Michigan, stretching from Mackinac and Green Bay down
to Chicago. Its western shore is the State of Wisconsin, extending
northward to Lake Superior. When the French explorers came along and
floated down its chief river, an affluent of the Mississippi, the
latter making the western boundary of the State, they found the Indian
name of the stream to be a word which, according to the pronunciation,
they spelled in their early narratives "Ouisconsing" and "Misconsin,"
and it finally came out in the present form of Wisconsin, thus naming
the State. The original meaning was the "wild, rushing red water,"
from the hue given by the pine and tamarack forests. La Salle coasted
in his canoe all along the western shore of Lake Michigan, from Green
Bay down to Chicago, and crossed over to the Mississippi. The traders
established various settlements on that shore which have grown into
active cities, and the principal one, eighty-five miles north of
Chicago, is Milwaukee, its name derived from the Indian Mannawahkie,
meaning the "good land." A broad harbor, indented several miles from
the lake, was the nucleus of the city, at the mouth of Milwaukee
River, which receives two tributaries within the town, and thus adds
to the facilities for dockage, while extensive breakwaters protect the
harbor entrance from lake storms.
Milwaukee has three hundred and fifty thousand people, and is the
growth mainly of the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is
finely located, with undulating surface, the streets lined with trees,
and the splendid development of the residential section making it
almost like an extensive park, the foliage and garden spaces are so
extensive and attractive. Its population is largely German, and its
breweries are famous, exporting their product all over the country. It
has a grand Federal building, costing nearly $2,000,000, a Romanesque
structure in granite, an elaborate Court-house of brown sandstone, a
spacious City Hall, a magnificent Public Library and Museum, and many
attractive churches and other edifices. Juneau Park, on a bluff
overlooking the lake, commemorates the first settler, Solomon Juneau,
and contains his statue. Here, in compliment to the large Scandinavian
population of Wisconsin, is also a statue of Leif Ericsen, who is said
to have been in command of the first detachment of Norsemen who landed
in New England in the eleventh century. The Forest Home Cemetery at
the southwestern verge of the city is one of the most beautiful in the
country. Milwaukee is familiarly called the "Cream City" from the
light-colored brick made in the neighborhood, which so largely enter
into the construction of its buildings. It has extensive grain
elevators and flour mills and large manufacturing industries. To the
westward, in a park of four hundred acres, is the National Soldiers'
Home, with accommodation for twenty-four hundred. Its Sheridan Drive
along the lake shore southward is gradually extending, the intention
being to connect with the Sheridan Boulevard constructed northward
from Chicago. The lion of the city, however, is the great Pabst
Brewery, covering thirty-four acres and producing eight hundred
thousand barrels of beer a year. Twenty miles inland to the westward
is a favorite resort of the Milwaukeans, the noted Bethesda Spring of
Waukesha, whose waters they find it beneficial to take copiously,
large quantities being also exported throughout America and Europe for
their efficacy in diabetes and Bright's disease.
The capital of Wisconsin is the city of Madison, seventy-five miles
west of Milwaukee, built on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and
Monona, thus giving it an admirable position. It has about twenty
thousand people, and the lake attractions make it a popular summer
resort. The State Capitol is a handsome building in a spacious park,
one of the wings being occupied by the Wisconsin Historical Society,
with a library of two hundred thousand volumes, an art gallery and
museum. The great structure of Madison is the University of Wisconsin,
the buildings in a commanding position on University Hill overlooking
the charming Lake Mendota. There are seventeen hundred students, and
its Washburn Observatory, one of the best in America, has wide fame.
ASCENDING THE MISSISSIPPI.
Westward from Lake Michigan all the railroads are laid across the
prairie land _en route_ to various cities on the Mississippi River,
several of them having St. Paul and Minneapolis for their objective
points, although some go by quite roundabout ways. The great "Father
of Waters" comes from Northern Minnesota, flows over the Falls of St.
Anthony at Minneapolis, and is a river of much scenic attractiveness
down to Dubuque and Rock Island, its width being usually about three
thousand feet, excepting at the bends, which are wider, the
picturesque bluffs enclosing the valley sometimes rising six hundred
feet high. The railways leading to it traverse the monotonous level of
prairie in Illinois and Wisconsin, excepting where a stream may make a
gorge, and the face of the country is everywhere almost the same. The
Moline Rapids in the Mississippi above Rock Island afford good
water-power, and here the Government, owning the island, has
established a large arsenal, which is the base for all the western
army supplies. The admirable location has made cities on either bank,
Rock Island in Illinois and Davenport in Iowa, both being commercial
and manufacturing centres, and the latter city having the larger
population. The Mississippi flows through a rather wide valley, with
pleasant shores, having villas dotted on their slopes. The Moline
Rapids, which are said to have a water-power rivalling the aggregate
of all the cataracts in New England, descend twenty-two feet in a
distance of fourteen miles. Above them, the river flows between
Illinois and Iowa, and various flourishing towns are passed, the
largest being Dubuque, with fifty thousand people, the chief
industrial city of Iowa, and a centre of the lead and zinc manufacture
of the Galena district. This was the first settlement made by white
men in Iowa, the city being named for Julien Dubuque, a French trader,
who came in 1788 with a small party to work the lead-mines. Iowa is
known as the "Hawkeye State," and its name is of Dakotan Indian
derivation, meaning "drowsy," which, however, is hardly the proper
basis for naming such a wide-awake Commonwealth. Opposite Dubuque is
the northern boundary of Illinois, and above, the Mississippi
separates Iowa from Wisconsin.
The Mississippi bordering bluffs now rise much higher and become more
picturesque, Eagle Point, near Dubuque, being elevated three hundred
feet. Prairie du Chien, just above the mouth of Wisconsin River, was
one of the earliest French military posts. This region was the scene
of the "Black Hawk War," that chief of the Sacs battling to get back
certain lands which in 1832 had been ceded by the Sac and Fox Indians
to the United States. He was finally defeated back of the western
river shore, the boundary between Iowa and Minnesota being nearby.
Minnesota is the "North Star State," and its Indian name, taken from
the river, flowing into the Mississippi above St. Paul, means the
"cloudy water." The river scenery becomes more and more picturesque as
the Mississippi is ascended, the bluffs rising to higher elevations.
La Crosse is a great lumber manufacturing town, drawing its timber
from both Minnesota and Wisconsin. Above, where islands dot the
channel, is perhaps the most beautiful section of the river.
Trempealeau Island, five hundred feet high, commands a magnificent
view, and the Black River flows in through a splendid gorge. Winona is
a prominent grain-shipping town, and at Wabasha the river expands into
the beautiful Lake Pepin, thirty miles long and from three to five
miles wide, with attractive shores and many popular resorts. Over the
lake rise the bold round headland of Point No Point on one side and
the Maiden Rock on the other. St. Croix River flows in above on the
eastern bank, making an enlargement known as St. Croix Lake, and the
upper Mississippi is now wholly within Minnesota, having here at the
head of navigation the famous "Twin Cities" of St. Paul and
Minneapolis.
THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY
Father Hennepin was the first white man who penetrated the wilds of
Minnesota, and in 1680 he discovered the great falls of the
Mississippi River, to which he gave the name of his patron saint,
Anthony of Padua. The river just below the falls naturally attracted
the attention of the French adventurers who came to trade with the
Sioux, Chippewas and Dakotas, and the first white man who tarried and
built a house here was a Canadian voyageur, who came in 1838. In 1841
a French priest established the Roman Catholic mission of St. Paul on
the bank of the river, and thus the settlement was named. The
admirable water-power of the falls, which, with their two miles of
rapids, descend seventy-eight feet, afterwards attracted the attention
of millers, lumbermen and other manufacturers, and this made the
settlement of Minneapolis, ten miles westward and farther up the
river, which began in 1849, the name meaning the "city of the waters."
St. Paul grew with rapidity, being encouraged both by steamboat and
afterwards by railway traffic; but Minneapolis, though started later,
subsequently outstripped it. The two places, rivals yet friends, have
extended towards each other, so as to almost form one large city, and
they now have over four hundred thousand inhabitants. These "Twin
Cities" are running a rapid race in prosperity, each independently of
the other. St. Paul is rather more of a trading city, while
Minneapolis is an emporium of sawmills and the greatest flour-mills in
the world. Both are admirably located upon the bluffs rising above the
Mississippi. St. Paul is situated upon a series of ornamental
semicircular terraces that are very attractive, though in some
portions rather circumscribed. Minneapolis is built on a more
extensive plan upon an esplanade overlooking the falls, and extending
to an island in midstream, and also over upon the opposite northern
side of the river. The Falls of St. Anthony is the most powerful
waterfall in the United States wholly applied to manufacturing
purposes. The entire current of the Mississippi comes down the rapids
and over the falls, the latter having a descent of about fifty feet.
It is protected by a wall built by the Government across the river, to
prevent the wearing away of the sandstone formation, there having been
serious inroads made, while the surface is covered with an apron of
planks over which the water runs, with sluiceways alongside to shoot
logs down. However much Father Hennepin may have admired the beauties
of this great cataract, there is no longer anything picturesque about
the Falls of St. Anthony. Logs jam the upper river, where the booms
catch them for the sawmills, and subterranean channels conduct the
water in various directions to the mills, and discharge their foaming
streams below. There is no romance in the rumble of flour-rollers and
the buzz of saws, but they mean a great deal of profitable business.
The force exerted by the falls at low water is estimated at one
hundred and thirty-five thousand horse-power.
St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota, and the State is building a
magnificent new Capitol, constructed of granite and marble, with a
lofty central dome, at a cost exceeding $2,000,000. There is a fine
City Hall and many imposing and substantial business edifices. Its
especial residence street, Summit Avenue, is upon a high ridge,
parallel with and some distance back from the Mississippi, the chief
dwelling, a large brownstone mansion, being the home of the leading
railroad prince of the Northwest, President James J. Hill of the Great
Northern Railroad. Here is also the new and spacious Roman Catholic
Seminary of St. Thomas Aquinas. The old military post of Fort Snelling
is on the river above St. Paul, near the mouth of Minnesota River. In
Minneapolis, the great building is the City Hall, completed in 1896,
and having a tower rising three hundred and fifty feet, giving a
superb view. The Guaranty Loan Company's Building is one of the finest
office structures in America, with its roof arranged for a garden,
where concerts are given. Minneapolis has a widely extended
residential section, with hundreds of attractive mansions in
ornamental grounds. Near the river bank is the University of
Minnesota, having well-equipped buildings and attended by twenty-eight
hundred students.
Minneapolis is the greatest flour manufacturing city in the world. Its
mills, of which there are some twenty-five, are located along the
river near the falls, and have a daily capacity of over sixty
thousand barrels, turning out about eighteen millions of barrels
annually, which are sent all over the globe. The whole country west
and northwest of Minneapolis, including the Red River Valley, the
Dakotas and Manitoba, is practically a fertile wheat field, growing
the finest grain that is produced in America, and this makes the
prosperity of the city. The Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company are
the leading millers. The great Pillsbury A mill, which turns out ten
thousand seven hundred barrels a day, is the world's champion
flour-mill. It is a marvel of the economical manufacture, the railway
cars coming in laden with wheat, being quickly emptied, and then
filled with loaded flour-barrels and sacks for shipment. Machinery
does practically everything from the shovelling of wheat out of the
car to the packing of the barrel or sack with the product. This huge
mill stands in relation to the flour trade as Niagara does to
waterfalls. The other great Minneapolis industry is the lumber trade.
Minnesota is well timbered, a belt of fine forests, chiefly pine,
stretching across it, known as the _Coteau des Bois_, or "Big Woods,"
an elevated plateau with a rolling surface, having thousands of lakes
scattered through it, fed by springs, while their outlets go into
streams feeding the Mississippi, down which the logs are floated to
the booms above the falls. The extensive sawmills will cut over four
hundred and fifty millions of feet of lumber in a year. Thus the flour
and lumber have become the chief articles of export from Minneapolis.
There are several pleasant lakes in the neighborhood, which are
popular resorts of the people of the "Twin Cities," the largest and
most famous being Minnetonka, the Indian name meaning the "Big Water."
It is a pretty lake, at nearly a thousand feet elevation, with low,
winding and tree-clad shores, having little islets dotted over its
surface, and myriads of indented bays and jutting peninsulas which
extend its shore line to over a hundred miles, though the extreme
length of the lake is barely seventeen miles. There are many
attractive places on the shores and islands, and large steamers ply on
its bosom. From this lake the discharge is through the Minnehaha
River, and its Minnehaha Falls, the "Laughing Water," poetically
praised by Longfellow in Hiawatha. The beautiful glen in which this
graceful cataract is found has been made a park. The falls are about
fifty feet high, and a critical observer has recorded that there is
"only wanting a little more water to be one of the most picturesque
cascades in the country." Below the Minnehaha Falls is another on a
smaller scale, which the people thereabout have nicknamed the
"Minnegiggle." Thus sings Longfellow of Minnehaha:
"Homeward now went Hiawatha;
Only once his pace he slackened,
Only once he paused or halted,
Paused to purchase heads of arrows
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs,
Where the Falls of Minnehaha
Flash and gleam among the oak-trees,
Laugh and leap into the valley.
"There the ancient Arrow-maker
Made his arrow-heads of sandstone,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
Smoothed and sharpened at the edges,
Hard and polished, keen and costly.
"With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,
Wayward as the Minnehaha,
With her moods of shade and sunshine,
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,
Feet as rapid as the river,
Tresses flowing like the water,
And as musical a laughter;
And he named her from the river,
From the water-fall he named her,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water.
"Was it then for heads of arrows,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
That my Hiawatha halted
In the land of the Dacotahs?
"Was it not to see the maiden,
See the face of Laughing Water,
Peeping from behind the curtain,
Hear the rustling of her garments,
From behind the waving curtain,
As one sees the Minnehaha
Gleaming, glancing through the branches,
As one hears the Laughing Water,
From behind its screen of branches?
"Who shall say what thoughts and visions
Fill the fiery brains of young men?
Who shall say what dreams of beauty
Filled the heart of Hiawatha?
All he told to old Nokomis,
When he reached the lodge at sunset,
Was the meeting with his father,
Was his fight with Mudjekeewis;
Not a word he said of arrows,
Not a word of Laughing Water."
THE SOURCE OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
It was in Minnesota, in 1862, that the terrible Indian uprising
occurred in which the Sioux, exasperated by the encroachments of the
whites, attacked the western frontier settlements in August, and in
less than two days massacred eight hundred people. The troops were
sent as soon as possible, attacked and defeated them in two battles,
and thirty-eight of the Indians were executed on one scaffold at
Mankato, on the Minnesota River southwest of Minneapolis, in December.
The State of Minnesota is said to contain fully ten thousand lakes of
all sizes, the largest being Red Lake in the northern wilderness,
having an area of three hundred and forty square miles. The surface of
the State rises into what is known as the Itascan plateau in the
northern central part at generally about seventeen hundred and fifty
feet elevation. From this plateau four rivers flow out in various
directions--the one on the Western Minnesota boundary, the Red River
of the North, draining the western slope towards Lake Winnipeg and
finally to Hudson Bay; the Rainy River, draining the northern slope
also through Lake Winnipeg to Hudson Bay; the St. Louis River, flowing
eastward to form the head of Lake Superior, and going thence to the
Atlantic; and the Mississippi River, flowing southward to seek the
Gulf of Mexico. Schoolcraft, the Indian ethnologist and explorer,
named this Itascan plateau, and the little lake in its heart, where
the Mississippi takes its rise, about two hundred miles
north-northwest of Minneapolis, though the roundabout course of the
river from its source to that city is a much longer distance, flowing
nearly a thousand miles. There was a good deal of discussion as to
whether this lake was really the head of the great river, as the lake
received several small streams, but Schoolcraft settled the dispute,
and named the lake Itasca, from a contraction of the Latin words
_veritas caput_, the "true head." Its elevation is about sixteen
hundred feet, being surrounded by pine-clad hills rising a hundred
feet higher. Out of Itasca Lake the "Father of Waters" flows with a
breadth of about twelve feet, and a depth ordinarily of less than two
feet. It goes at first northerly, and then makes a grand curve through
a long chain of lakes, describing a large semicircle to the eastward,
and finally southwest, before it becomes settled as to direction, and
takes its southeast course towards the Falls of St. Anthony, and
onward in its grand progress to the Gulf.
THE ANCIENT LAKE AGASSIZ.
The Minnesota River, rising on the western boundary of the State,
flows nearly five hundred miles in a deeply carved valley through the
"Big Woods" to the Mississippi. Its source is in the Big Stone Lake,
which, with Lake Traverse to the northward, forms part of the Dakota
boundary. The Red River of the North, rising in Lake Traverse and
gathering together the streams on the western slope of the Itascan
plateau, flows northward between Minnesota and North Dakota, and into
Manitoba, two hundred and fifty miles to Lake Winnipeg. This river has
cut its channel in a nearly level plain, and it is curious that in
times of freshet its waters connect, through Lakes Traverse and the
Big Stone, with the Minnesota, so that steamboats of light draught can
then occasionally pass from the Mississippi waters north to Lake
Winnipeg. It was this rich and level plain of the valley of the Red
River that in the glacial epoch formed the bed of a vast lake which
scientists have named Lake Agassiz. Its area, as indicated by
well-marked shore-lines and deltas, was a hundred miles wide and over
four hundred miles long, stretching far into Manitoba, and the waters
were two to four hundred feet deep. It was held up on the north by the
retreating ice-sheet of the great glacier, the outlet being southward,
where a channel fifty feet deep, fifty miles long and over a mile
wide can now be distinctly traced leading its outflow into the
Minnesota River, whose valley its floods then greatly enlarged on the
way to the Mississippi. The plain of this lake bed is almost level,
descending towards the northward about a foot to the mile, and here
the ancient lake deposited the thick, rich, black soils which have
made the greatest wheat-growing region of North America.
The first settlement of Dakota was on the Big Sioux River at Sioux
Falls, where flour-mills and other manufacturing establishments have
gathered around a fine water-power, and there are nearly fifty
thousand people in the two towns of Sioux Falls in South Dakota and
Sioux City in Iowa. The whole region to the northward and far over the
Canadian boundary is a land of wheat-fields, with grain elevators
dotting the flat prairie at the railway stations, for all the roads
have lines to tap the lucrative trade of this prolific region. The
Northern Pacific Railway crosses Red River at Fargo, which, with the
town of Moorhead, both being wheat and flour centres, has a population
of fifteen thousand. To the westward are the vast "Bonanza" wheat
farms of Dakota, of which the best known is the Dalrymple farm,
covering forty-five thousand acres. Steam-ploughs make continuous
furrows for many miles in the cultivation, and in the spring the
seeding is done. The whole country is covered with a vast expanse of
waving, yellow grain in the summer, and the harvest comes in August.
To the westward flows James River through a similar district, and the
country beyond rises into the higher plateau stretching to the
Missouri. This fertile wheat-growing region extends far northward over
the Canadian border forming the Province of Manitoba, the name coming
from Lake Manitoba, which in the Cree Indian dialect means the "home
of Manitou, the Great Spirit." Its enormous wheat product makes the
business of the flouring-mills of Minneapolis, Duluth and many other
cities, and furnishes a vast stream of grain to go through the Soo
Canal down the lakes and St. Lawrence, much being exported to Europe.
The Canadian Pacific Railway, which provides the traffic outlet for
Manitoba, comes from the northern shore of Lake Superior at Port
Arthur northwestward up the valley of the Kaministiquia River, and its
tributary the Wabigoon, the Indian "Stream of the Lilies." This was
the ancient portage, and by this trail and Winnipeg River, the canoe
route of the Hudson Bay Company voyageurs, Lord Wolseley led the
British army in 1870 to Fort Garry (Winnipeg) that suppressed Louis
Riel's French-Indian half-breed rebellion, which had possession of the
post. The railway route is through an extensive forest, and leads near
the northern shore of the Lake of the Woods, crossing its outlet
stream at Rat Portage, so named from the numerous colonies of
muskrats, a town of sawmills standing at the rocky rim of the lake,
where its waters break through and down rapids of twenty feet fall to
seek Winnipeg River, the Ounipigon or "muddy water" of the Crees.
Here, and at Keewatin beyond, are grand water-powers, the latter
having mammoth mills that grind the Manitoba wheat and send the flour
to England. Then, emerging from the forests, the railway crosses the
rich black soils of the Red River Valley, and beyond that river enters
Winnipeg, the "Prairie City" and commercial metropolis of the Canadian
Northwest. For nearly eight hundred miles this alluvial region spreads
west and northwest of Winnipeg, with varying degrees of fertility, to
the Rocky Mountains. Here, at the junction of the Assiniboine River,
coming from the remote northwest, with Red River, has grown a Canadian
Chicago of fifty thousand people, developed almost as if by magic,
from the little settlement of two hundred and forty souls, whom
Wolseley found in 1870, around what was then regarded as the distant
Hudson Bay Company frontier post of Fort Garry. Its original name when
first established was Fort Gibraltar. The two rivers wander crookedly
over the flat land, and between them the city covers an extensive
surface. A half-dozen railways radiate in various directions, and
there are spacious car-yards and stations. Winnipeg has an energetic
population, largely Scotch and Americans, but with picturesque touches
given by the copper-colored Indians and French half-breeds, who wander
about in their native costumes, though most of these have gone away
from Red River Valley to the far Northwest. The city has good streets,
many fine buildings and attractive stores. The Manitoba Government
Buildings adjoin the Assiniboine River, and the military barracks of
Fort Osborne are alongside. Near the junction of the rivers is the
little stone gateway left standing, which is almost all that remains
of the original trading-post buildings of Fort Garry, representing the
venerable Hudson Bay Company, chartered by King Charles II. in 1670,
that controlled the whole vast empire of the Canadian Northwest. This
Company was a grant by the king originally to Prince Rupert and a few
associates of a monopoly of the fur trade over a vast territory in
North America, extending from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay and the
Pacific Ocean. In this way that portion of British America came to be
popularly known in England as "Prince Rupert's Land." The great
Company existed for nearly two hundred years, had one hundred and
fifty-two trading-posts, and employed three thousand traders, agents
and voyageurs, and many thousands of Indians. In the bartering with
the red men, the unit of account was the beaver skin, which was the
equivalent of two martens or twenty muskrats, while the pelt of a
silver fox was five times as valuable as a beaver. In 1869, when the
Dominion of Canada was formed, England bought the sovereignty of the
Company for $1,500,000 and transferred its territory to Canada. The
Company still retains its posts and stores, however, and conducts
throughout the Northwest a mercantile business. Far to the westward of
Winnipeg spread the fertile prairies of Manitoba and Assiniboia
Provinces, until they gradually blend into the rounded and
grass-covered foothills making the grazing ranges of Alberta that
finally rise into the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies.
DAKOTA AND MONTANA.
Three railways are constructed westward from Red River to the Rockies
and Pacific Ocean,--the Northern Pacific and Great Northern in the
United States and the Canadian Pacific beyond the international
boundary. The former cross the plateau to the Upper Missouri River,
and there the Northern Pacific route reaches Bismarck, the capital of
North Dakota, having a fine Capitol set on a hill, the corner-stone of
which was laid in 1883, with the noted Sioux chief Sitting Bull
assisting. This region not so long ago knew only soldiers and Indians;
but there has since been a great influx of white settlers, enforcing
the idea of which Whittier has significantly written:
"Behind the squaw's birch-bark canoe,
The steamer smokes and raves;
And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves."
The frontier army post of Fort Lincoln on the bluff alongside the
river testifies to the time not yet remote when the Sioux and Crow
Indians of the Dakotas needed a good deal of military control. The
deer, buffalo and antelope then roamed these boundless prairies, but
they have all disappeared. Beyond the Missouri River is the region of
the Dakota "Bad Lands." The surface rises into sharp conical
elevations known as "buttes," and soon this curious district of
pyramidal hills known as Pyramid Park is entered, fire and water
having had a remarkable effect upon them. Their red sides are furrowed
by the rains, and smoke issues from some of the crevices. The lignite
and coal deposits underlying this country have produced subterranean
fires that burnt the clays above until they became brittle and red.
There are ashes and scoriæ in patches, and cinders looking much like
the outcast of an iron furnace. The buttes are at times isolated and
sometimes in rows, many being of large size. Their sides are often
terraced regularly, and frequently into fantastic shapes, occasionally
appearing as the sloping ramparts of a fort. There are frequent
pot-like holes among them, filled with reddish, brackish water, and
sometimes excavated in the ground with regularly square-cut edges.
When the railway route cuts into a butte, its interior is disclosed as
a pile of red-burnt clay fragments mixed with ashes and sand. Little
prairie dogs dodge in and out of their holes, but there is not much
else of life. The boundary is crossed into Montana, and the "Bad
Lands" gradually give place to a grazing section. Here stands up the
great Sentinel Butte, with its reddish-yellow sides, near the Montana
border, and the railway route then descends from the higher region to
the valley of the Yellowstone.
The Yellowstone River, one of the headwaters of the Missouri, rises in
the National Park, and its fertile valley is among the leading
pasturages of Montana. Cattle and sheep abound, and the cowboys are
universal, galloping about on energetic little bronchos, with lariats
hanging from the saddle. The Big Horn River flows in, and an extensive
region to the southward is the Crow Indian reservation, about three
thousand living there. It was here, near Fort Custer, at a point
forty-five miles south of the railroad, that the terrible massacre
took place in June, 1876, by which General Custer and his command of
over two hundred and fifty men were annihilated by the Sioux. There is
now a national cemetery at the place. We gradually enter the mountain
ranges which are the outposts of the Rockies, and passing between the
Yellowstone range and the Belt Mountains, reach Livingston, a town of
several thousand people, and a great centre for hunting and fishing,
at the entrance to the Yellowstone National Park. From here a branch
railway turns southward, ascending the valley of the Yellowstone,
going through its first canyon, known as the "Gate of the Mountain,"
an impressive rocky gorge, and ascending a steep grade, so that the
floor of the valley rises within the Park to an elevation of over six
thousand feet above the sea. A second canyon is passed, and on its
western side is a huge peak whose upheaved red rocks have named it the
Cinnabar Mountain. These red rocks are in strata streaked down its
sides with intervening granite and limestone. One of these, the
Devil's Slide, is conspicuous, its quartzite walls rising high above
the lower strata and making a veritable slide of great proportions
down the mountain. The railroad ends at Cinnabar, and stages cover the
remaining distance up the Yellowstone to its confluence with Gardiner
River at the Park entrance, and thence to the Mammoth Hot Springs
within the Park, the tourist headquarters.
THE AMERICAN WONDERLAND.
The Yellowstone National Park has been set apart by Congress as a
public reservation and pleasure-ground, and covers a surface of about
fifty-five hundred square miles within the Rocky Mountains. Most of
the Park is in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, but there are also
small portions in Montana to the north and Idaho to the west. It is a
tract more remarkable for natural curiosities than an equal area in
any other part of the world, and within it are the sources of some of
the greatest rivers of North America. The Yellowstone, Gardiner and
Madison Rivers, which are the headwaters of the Missouri, flow out of
the northern and western sides, while on the southern side originates
the Snake River, one of the sources of the Columbia River of Oregon,
and also the Green River, a branch of the Colorado, flowing into the
Gulf of California. The central portion of the Park is a broad
volcanic plateau, elevated, on an average, eight thousand feet above
the sea, and surrounded by mountain ridges and peaks, rising to nearly
twelve thousand feet, and covered with snow. The air is pure and
bracing, little rain falls, and the whole district gives evidence of
remarkable volcanic activity at a comparatively late geological epoch.
It contains the most elevated lake in the world, Yellowstone Lake. The
Yellowstone River flows into this lake, and then northward through a
magnificent canyon out of the Park. Its most remarkable tributary
within the Park is Tower Creek, flowing through a narrow and gloomy
pass for two miles, called the Devil's Den, and just before reaching
the Yellowstone having a fall of one hundred and fifty-six feet, which
is surrounded by columns of breccia resembling towers. There is frost
in the Park every month in the year, owing to the peculiar atmospheric
conditions. The traces of recent volcanic activity are seen in the
geysers, craters and terrace constructions, boiling springs, deep
canyons, petrified trees, obsidian cliffs, sulphur deposits and
similar formations. These geysers and springs surpass in number and
magnitude those of the rest of the world. There are some five
thousand hot springs, depositing mainly lime and silica, and over a
hundred large geysers, many of them throwing water columns to heights
of from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet. The most elaborate colors
and ornamentation are formed by the deposits of the springs and
geysers, these curiosities being mainly in and near the valleys of the
Madison and Gardiner Rivers. An attempt has been made under Government
auspices to have in the Park a huge game preserve, and within its
recesses large numbers of wild animals are sheltered, including deer,
elk, bears, big-horn sheep, and the last herd of buffalo in the
country. Troops of cavalry and other Government forces patrol and
govern the Park.
THE MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS.
This extraordinary region was first made known in a way in 1807. A
hunter named Coulter visited it, and getting safely back to
civilization, he told such wonderful stories of the hot springs and
geysers that the unbelieving borderers, in derision, called it
"Coulter's Hell." Others visited it subsequently, but their remarkable
tales were generally regarded as romances. The first thorough
exploration was made by Prof. Hayden's scientific party for the
Government in 1871, and his report led Congress to reserve it as a
public Park. The visitor generally first enters the Park at the
Mammoth Hot Springs, which are near the northern verge of the broad
central plateau. Here are the wonderful terraces built up by the
earlier calcareous deposits of these Springs, covering an area of
several square miles, and in the present active operations about two
hundred acres, with a dozen or more terraces, and some seventy flowing
springs, the temperature of the water rising to 165°. The lower
terrace extends to the edge of the gorge of Gardiner River, with high
mountain peaks beyond. The hotel is built on one of the terraces, with
yawning caves and the craters of extinct geysers at several places in
front. The higher terraces rise in white, streaked with brown and
other tints, as the overflowing, trickling waters may have colored
them. The best idea that can be got of this place is by conjuring up
the popular impression of the infernal regions with an ample stock of
heat and brimstone. For a long distance, rising from the top of the
gorge of Gardiner River westward in successive terraces to a height of
a thousand feet above the stream, the entire surface is underlaid with
sulphur, subterranean fires, boiling water and steam, which make their
way out in many places. The earth has been cracked by the heat into
fissures, within which the waters can be heard boiling and running
down below, and everything on the surface which can be, is burnt up.
Almost every crevice exudes steam and hot water; sulphur hangs in
stalactites from the caves; and in some places the odors are nearly
overpowering. It is no wonder the Indians avoided this forbidding
region, and that the tales told by the early explorers were
disbelieved. Yet it is as attractive as it is startling. The hot
springs form shallow pools, where the waters run daintily over their
rim-like edges, trickling down upon terrace after terrace, forming the
most beautiful shapes of columns, towers and coral decorations from
the lime deposits, and painting them with delicious coloring in red,
brown, green, yellow, blue and pink. So long as the waters run, this
decoration continues, but when the flow ceases, the atmosphere turns
everything white, and the more delicate formations crumble. The whole
of this massive structure has been built up by ages of the steady
though minute deposits of the waters, the rate being estimated at
about one-sixteenth of an inch in four days. The rocks upon which
these calcareous deposits are made belong to the middle and lower
Cretaceous and Jurassic formations, with probably carboniferous
limestones beneath that put the deposits in the waters. A dozen
different terraces can be traced successively upward from the river
bank to the highest part of the formation. Two cones of extinct
geysers rise from the deposits, near the hotel,--the Liberty Cap,
forty-five feet high, and the Giant's Thumb, somewhat smaller,--both
having been built up by the deposits from orifices still seen in their
tops, whence the waters have ceased flowing. All these springs, as
deposits are made, shift their locality, so that the scene gradually
changes as the ages pass.
In climbing about this remarkable formation, some of the most
beautiful bits of construction and coloring nature has ever produced
are disclosed. The Orange Geyser has its sides streaked with orange,
yellow and red from the little wavelets slowly trickling out of the
steaming spring at the top, which goes off at quick intervals like the
exhaust of a steam-engine. At the Stalactite Cave the flowing waters
add green to the other colors, and also scale the rocks in places like
the back of a fish, while below hang stalactites with water dropping
from them. The roof of the cave is full of beautiful formations. The
water is very hot when it starts from the top, but becomes quite cold
when it has finished its journey down. One of the finest formations is
Cleopatra's Bath, with Cupid's Cave beneath, the way to them being
through Antony's Gate, all built up of the deposits. Here rich
coloring is painted on the rocks, with hot water and steam amply
supplied to the bath, which has 154° temperature at the outer verge.
All the springs form flat basins with turned-up edges, over which the
waters flow, and trickling down the front of the terrace, paint it.
When the flow ceases, and the surface has been made snowy white by the
atmosphere, it becomes a spongy and beautiful coral, crumbling when
touched, and into which the foot sinks when walked upon. The
aggregation of the currents run in streams over terrace after
terrace, spread out to the width of hundreds of feet, painting them
all, and then seeking the Gardiner River, flowing through a deep gorge
in front of the formation. Everything subjected to the overflow of
these currents gets coated by the deposits, so that visitors have many
small articles coated to carry away as curiosities.
Among the many beautiful formations made by these Hot Springs, the
most elaborate and ornamental are the Pulpit Terraces. These are a
succession of magnificent terraces, fifty feet high, with beautifully
colored columnar supports. There is a large pulpit, and in front, on a
lower level, the font, with the water running over its edges. The
pulpit, having been formed by a spring that has ceased action, is
white, while the font is streaked in red and brown. Finely carved
vases filled with water stand below, and alongside the pulpit there is
an inclined surface, whitened and spread in wrinkles like the drifted
snow, which requires very little imagination to picture as a
magnificent curtain. Beyond is a blackened border like a second
curtain, the coloring being made by a spring impregnated with arsenic.
In front of this gorgeous display the surface is hot and cracked into
fissures, with bubbling streams of steaming water running through it,
and great pools fuming into new basins with turned-up edges, over
which the hot water runs. Upon one of these pools seems to be a
deposit of transparent gelatine, looking like the albumen of an egg,
streaked into fantastic shapes by elongated bubbles. Everywhere are
surfaces, over which the water runs, that are covered with regular
formations like fish scales. It is impossible to adequately describe
this extraordinary place, combining the supposed peculiarities and
terrors of the infernal regions with the most beautiful forms and
colors in decoration. The great hill made by these Hot Springs was,
from its prevailing color, named the White Mountain by Hayden. The
springs extend all the way down to the river bank, and there are some
even in the river bed. It is a common experiment of the angler to hook
a small fish in the cold water of the river, and then, without
changing position, to swing him on the hook over into the basin of one
of these hot springs to cook him. The formation of the terraces is
wedge-shaped, and runs up into a gulch between the higher mountains,
which have pines scattered over them, and also grow some grass in
sheltered nooks. It is said that the volume of the springs is
gradually diminishing.
THE NORRIS GEYSER BASIN.
The route southward into the Park crosses mountain ridges and over
stretches of lava and ashes and other volcanic formations, through
woods and past gorges, and reaches the Obsidian Creek, which flows
near the Obsidian Cliff. This remarkable structure is a mountain of
black glass of volcanic formation, rising six hundred feet, with the
road hewn along its edge. It looks as if a series of blasting
explosions had blown its face into pieces, smashing the glass into
great heaps of _débris_ that have fallen down in front. The formation
is columnar, rising from a morass adjoining Beaver Lake, which is a
mile long. The divide is thus crossed between the Gardiner and Gibbon
Rivers, the latter flowing into the Madison, and here, twenty-five
miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs, is the Norris Geyser Basin. In
approaching, seen over the low trees, the place looks much like the
manufacturing quarter of a city, steam jets rising out of many
orifices, and a hissing being heard as of sundry engine exhausts. The
basin covers about one hundred and fifty acres, and is depressed below
the general level. The whole surface is lime, silica, sulphur and
sand, fused together and baked hard by the great heat, cracked into
fissures, and, as it is walked over, giving out hollow sounds, showing
that beneath are subterranean caves and passages in which boil huge
cauldrons. There is a background formed by the bleak-looking mountains
of the Quadrate range, having snow upon their tops and sides. The
steam blows off with the noise of a hundred exhaust pipes, and little
geysers boil everywhere, occasionally spurting up like the bursting of
a boiler. In one place on the hillside the escaping steam from the
"Steamboat" keeps up a loud and steady roar; in another is the deeper
tone of the "Black Growler." As a general thing, the higher vents on
the hill give off steam only, while the lower ones are geysers. The
trees are coated with the deposits, the surface is hot, and all
underneath seems an immense mass of boiling water, impregnated with
sulphur, giving off powerful odors, while brimstone and lime-dust
encrust everything, and a large amount of valuable steam-power goes to
waste.
This is the smallest of the basins, having few large geysers. Most of
them are little ones, spurting every few minutes, and with some view
to economy, whereby the water, after being blown out of the crater to
a brief height, runs back into the orifice again, ready to be ejected
by the next explosion. A mud geyser here throws up large quantities of
dirty white paint in several spouting jets, the eruption continuing
ten minutes, when nearly all the water runs back again, leaving the
crater entirely bare, and its rounded, water-worn rocks exposed. The
"Emerald Pool" is the wide crater of an old geyser, filled with hot
water of a beautiful green color, constantly boiling, but never
getting as far as an eruption. Probably the best geyser on exhibition
in this basin is the "Minute Man," which, at intervals of about one
minute, spouts for ten or twelve seconds, the column rising thirty
feet, and the rest of the time it blows off steam. The "Vixen" is a
coquette which is delightfully irregular, never going off when
watched, but when the back is turned suddenly sending out a column
sixty feet high. The great geyser here is the "Monarch," standing in a
hill from which it has blown out the entire side, and once a day
discharging an enormous amount of water over one hundred feet high,
and continuing nearly a half-hour. Its column comes from two huge
orifices, the surplus water running down quite a large brook. When
quiet, this geyser industriously boils like a big tea-kettle. There
are plenty of "paint pots" and sulphur springs, and the visitors coax
up lazy geysers by throwing stones into them,--a method usually making
the small ones go to work, as if angry at the treatment.
THE LOWER AND MIDDLE BASINS.
Through the long deep canyon of the Gibbon River, and up over the
mountain top, giving a distant view of the Gibbon Falls, a cataract of
eighty feet far down in the valley, the road crosses another divide to
a stream in the worst portion of this Satanic domain, which has not
been inappropriately named the Firehole River. This unites with the
Gibbon to form the Madison River, one of the sources of the Missouri.
Miles ahead, the steam from the Firehole Geyser Basins can be seen
rising in clouds among the distant hills. Beyond, the view is closed
by the Teton Mountains, far to the southwest, rising fourteen thousand
feet, the Continental divide and backbone of North America, the
highest Rocky Mountain range, on the other side of which is the Snake
River, whose waters go off to the Pacific. The Firehole River is a
stream of ample current, with beautifully transparent blue water
bubbling over a bed of discolored stones and lava. Its waters are all
the outflow of geysers and hot springs, impregnated with everything
this forbidding region produces; pretty to look at, but bitter as the
waters of Marah. Along this river, geysers are liberally distributed
at intervals for ten miles, being, for convenience of description,
divided into the Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins. The Lower
Basin, the first reached, has myriads of steam jets rising from a
surface of some three square miles of desolate geyserite deposits.
There are about seven hundred springs and geysers here, most of them
small. The Fountain Geyser throws a broad low stream of many
interlacing jets every two to three hours, lasting about fifteen
minutes. The "Thud" Geyser has a crater one hundred and fifty feet in
diameter, having a smaller rim inside, within which the geyser
operates, throwing a column of sixty feet with a heavy and regular
"thud" underground, though it has no fixed period, and is irregular in
action. This basin has a generous supply of mud geysers, known as the
"paint pots," which eject brilliantly colored muds with the
consistency and look of paint, the prevailing hues being red, white,
yellow and pink.
About three miles to the southwest, farther up the Firehole River, is
the Middle Geyser Basin. It is a locality covering some fifty acres,
close to the river, and contains the greatest geyser in the world. The
name of Hell's Half Acre was given this place in the early
explorations, and still sticks. The surface is composed mainly of hot
ashes, with streams of boiling water running over it. The whole basin
is filled with hot springs, and surrounded by timbered hills, at the
foot of which is the Prismatic Lake, its beautiful green and blue
waters shading off into a deposit of bright red paint running down to
the river. The great Excelsior Geyser is a fountain of enormous power
but uncertain periods, which when at work throws out such immense
amounts of water as to double the flow of the river. Its crater is a
hundred yards wide, with water violently boiling in the centre all the
time and a steady outflow. The sides of the crater are beautifully
colored by the deposits, which are largely of sulphur. It is a geyser
of modern origin, having developed from a hot spring within the memory
of Park denizens. It throws a column over two hundred feet high, and
while quiet at times for years, occasionally bursts forth, though
having no fixed period. In close connection to the westward is the
seething cauldron which is the immediate Hell's Half Acre, that being
about its area--a beautiful but terrible lake, steam constantly rising
from the surface, which boils furiously and sends copious streams
over the edges. This is an uncanny spot, with treacherous footing
around, and about the hottest place in the Park.
THE UPPER FIREHOLE BASIN.
For five miles along the desolate shores of Firehole River the course
is now taken in a region of mostly extinct geysers, yet with active
hot springs and steam jets, and having ashes and cinders covering wide
spaces. Ahead is the largest collection of geysers in the world, with
clouds of steam overhanging--the Upper Firehole Basin. Hot water runs
over the earth, and the "paint pots" color the surface in variegated
hues. Here are some forty of the greatest geysers in existence, in a
region covering two or three square miles, all of them located near
the river, and their outflow making its initial current. The basin is
at seventy-three hundred feet elevation above the sea. When the author
visited this extraordinary place the guide, halting at the verge,
said: "Now I have brought you to the front door of hell." He was asked
if there were any Indians about there, and solemnly replied: "No
Indian ever comes into this country unless he is blind; only the white
man is fool enough to come;" then after a moment's pause he continued,
"And I get paid for it, I do." The great stand-by of this Upper Basin,
and the geyser that is first visited, is "Old Faithful," near its
southern or upper end. This most reliable geyser, which always goes
off at the time appointed, is a flat-topped and gently rising cone
about two hundred feet in diameter, and elevated towards the centre
about twenty feet. The tube is an orifice of eight feet by two feet
wide in the centre of this cone, with water-worn and rounded rocks
enclosing it. Steam escapes all the time, and the hard, scaly and
laminated surface around it seems hollow as you walk across, while
beneath there are grumblings and dull explosions, giving warning of
the approaching outburst. Several mounds of extinct geysers are near,
with steam issuing from one of them, but all have long since gone out
of active business. Soon "Old Faithful" gives the premonitory symptoms
of an eruption. The steam jet increases, and also the internal
rumblings. Then a little spurt of hot water comes, hastily receding
with a growl, followed by more steam, and after an interval more
growling, finally developing into repeated little spurts of hot water,
occupying several minutes. Then the geyser suddenly explodes, throwing
quick jets higher and higher into the air, until the column rises in a
grand fountain to the height of about one hundred and fifty feet, the
stream inclined to the northward, and falling over in great splashes
upon that side of the cone, dense clouds of steam and spray being
carried by the wind, upon which the sun paints a rainbow. After some
four minutes the grand jet dies gradually down to a height of about
thirty feet, continuing at that elevation for a brief time, with
quickly repeated impulses. When six minutes have elapsed, with an
expiring leap the water mounts to a height of fifty feet, there is a
final outburst of steam, and all is over. A deluge of hot water rushes
down to the Firehole River; and thus "Old Faithful" keeps it up
regularly every hour. The eruption being ended, you can look down into
the abyss whence it came. Through the hot steam, rushing out with a
strong draught, there is a view far down into the rocky recesses of
the geyser. The water left by the eruption stands about in transparent
shallow pools, and is tinted a pale blue. "Old Faithful's" mound is
built up of layers of geyserite--hard, brittle, porous, full of
crevices, and having all about little basins with turned-up rims that
retain the water. This geyser is the favorite in the region, not only
because of its regular performance, but possibly because its odors are
somewhat less sulphurous than those emanating elsewhere.
The geysers of the Upper Basin contribute practically the whole
current of the Firehole River, their outflow sending into the stream
ten million gallons daily. Across the river to the northward, close to
the bank, is the Beehive, its tube looking like a huge bird's nest,
enclosed by a pile of geyserite resembling a beehive, three feet high
and about four feet in diameter. Nearby is a vent from which steam,
escaping a few minutes before the eruption, gives notice of its
coming. The water column shoots up two hundred feet, with clouds of
steam, but it is quite uncertain, spouting once or twice in
twenty-four hours, and usually at night. Behind the Beehive are the
Lion, the Lioness, and their two Cubs, and to the eastward of the
latter the Giantess. The Lion group has only uncertain and small
action, while the Giantess is on the summit of a mound fifty feet
high, with a depressed crater, measuring eighteen by twenty-four feet,
and usually filled with dark-blue water. This is the slowest of all
the geysers in getting to work, acting only at fortnightly intervals,
but each eruption continues the greater part of the day, with usually
long-previous notice by violent boiling and internal rumblings. When
it comes, the explosion is terrific, the column mounting two hundred
and fifty feet, a perfect water-spout the full size of the crater,
with a half-dozen distinct jets forced through it. To the northwest of
the Lion and across the river is the Castle, so named from the
castellated construction of its crater. It stands upon an elevation,
the side towards the Firehole falling off in a series of rude steps.
The tube is elevated about ten feet within the castle and is four feet
in diameter. It is of uncertain eruption, sometimes playing daily and
sometimes every other day, throwing a column of one hundred and fifty
feet, falling in a sparkling shower, continuing about forty minutes,
and then tapering off in a series of insignificant spurts. The
Saw-Mill is not far away, rather insignificant, its tube being only
six inches in diameter, set in a saucer-like crater about twenty feet
across; but its water column, thrown forty feet high, gives the
peculiar sounds of a saw, caused by the action of puffs of steam
coming out alternately with the water jets. It generally acts in
unison with the Grand Geyser, a quarter of a mile northward, which
goes off about once a day. The Grand Geyser in action is most
powerful, causing the earth to tremble, while there are fearful
thumping noises beneath. The water in the crater suddenly recedes, and
then quickly spurts upward in a solid column for two hundred feet,
with steam rising in puffs above. The column seems to be composed of
numerous separate jets, falling back with a thundering sound into the
funnel. The outburst continues a few minutes, stops as suddenly as it
starts, and is repeated six or eight times, each growing less
powerful. Along the river bank nearby are the Wash Tubs, small basins
ten feet in diameter, each with an orifice in the bottom. If the
clothes are put in, the washing progresses finely until suddenly out
goes the water, and with it all the garments, sucked down the hole.
After awhile the basin fills again, and back come the clothes, though
sometimes they are very dilatory in returning. The Devil's Well, about
fifty feet away, is usually accused of complicity in this movement. It
is a broad and placid basin of hot water, with a beautiful blue
tinge, in which tourists sometimes boil their eggs and potatoes. It is
sentinelled by the Comet Geyser, exploding several times daily, but
through an orifice so large that it does not throw a very high column.
The great geyser of this Upper Basin is the Giant. It has a broken
cone set upon an almost level surface, with the enclosing formation
fallen away on one side, the interior being lined with brilliant
colors like a tessellated pavement. It is somewhat uncertain in
movement, but usually goes off every fourth day. It gives ample
notice, certain "Little Devils" adjoining, and a vent in the side of
the crater, boiling some time before it sends up the enormous column
which plays ninety minutes. The outburst, when it starts, comes like a
tornado, and the stream from it runs into and more than doubles the
current of the river. The column is eight feet in diameter, rises two
hundred and fifty feet at first, and is afterwards maintained at two
hundred feet. There is a deafening noise, and the steam clouds seem to
cover half the valley. The column goes up perfectly straight, and
falls back around the cone with a deluge of hot water. The Catfish, a
small geyser, is nearby, and to the northward a short distance is the
Grotto. This is an odd formation, its crater perforated with orifices
around a low, elongated mound, which point in different directions;
and when it goes off at six-hour intervals, the eruption is by streams
at an angle, giving a curious sort of churning motion to the water
column, which rises forty feet, continuing twenty minutes. The
Riverside has a little crater on a terraced mound just at the river's
edge, and is a small, irregular but vigorous spouter, throwing a
stream sixty feet. The Fan has five spreading tubes, arranged so that
they make a huge fan-like eruption, one hundred feet high in the
centre, this display, given three or four times a day, continuing
about fifteen minutes. The Splendid plays a jet two hundred feet high
every three hours, continuing ten minutes, and may be spurred to
quicker action. The Pyramid and the Punch Bowl are geysers that have
ceased operations. The former is now only a steam-jet, and the latter,
on a flat mound, is an elegant blue pool, elevated several feet, and
having a serrated edge. The Morning Glory Spring, named from its
resemblance to the convolvulus, is a beautiful and most delicately
tinted pool. The investigators of these geysers have been able to get
the temperature at a depth of seventy feet within the tubes, and find
that under the pressure there exerted the boiling-point is 250°. Upon
this fact is based the theory of the operation of the geyser. The
boiling-point under pressure at the bottom of a long tube being much
higher than at the top, the expansive force of the steam there
suddenly generated drives out violently the water above it in the
tube, and hence the explosive spouting.
YELLOWSTONE FALLS AND CANYON.
The National Park, besides the extraordinary geyser and hot-spring
formations exhibits the grand scenery of the Yellowstone Falls and
Canyon. The Yellowstone River has its source in Bridger Lake, to the
southeast of the Park, and flows northward in a broad valley between
generally snow-capped mountain ridges of volcanic origin, with some of
the peaks rising over eleven thousand feet. It is a sluggish stream,
with heavily timbered banks, much of the initial valley being marshy,
and it flows into the Yellowstone Lake, the largest sheet of water at
a high elevation in North America. This lake has bays indented in its
western and southern shores, giving the irregular outline somewhat the
appearance of a human hand, and there are five of them, called the
"Thumb" and the "Fingers." The thumb of this distorted hand is thicker
than its length, the forefinger is detached and shrivelled, the middle
finger has also been badly treated, and the much swollen little finger
is the biggest of all, thus making a very demoralized hand. The trail
eastward over from the Upper Firehole Geyser Basin comes out on the
West Thumb of the lake, mounting the Continental Divide on the way,
and crossing it twice as it makes a curious loop to the northward, the
second crossing being at eighty-five hundred feet elevation, whence
the trail descends to the West Thumb. Yellowstone Lake is at
seventy-seven hundred and forty feet elevation, and covers about one
hundred and fifty square miles, having a hundred miles of coast-line.
The scenery is tame, the shores being usually gentle slopes, with much
marsh and pine woods. Islands dot the blue waters, and waterfowl
frequent the marshes. The most elevated portion of the immediate
environment is Flat Mountain, on the southwestern side, rising five
hundred feet, but beyond the eastern shore are some of the highest
peaks of the Park, exceeding eleven thousand feet. Hot springs adjoin
the West Thumb, and there is an actual geyser crater in the lake
itself. Towards the northern end the shores gradually contract into
the narrow and shallow Yellowstone River, which flows towards the
northwest after first leaving the lake, having occasional hot springs,
geysers, paint pots and steam jets at work, with large adjacent
surfaces of geyserite and sulphur. The chief curiosity in operation is
the Giant's Cauldron, boiling furiously, and with a roar that can be
heard far away. The pretty Alum Creek is crossed, its waters, thus
tainted, giving the name. South of this the Yellowstone is generally
placid, winding for a dozen miles sluggishly through prairie and
timbered hills, but now it contracts and rushes for a mile down rapids
and over pretty cascades to the Upper Fall.
Restricted to a width of but eighty feet, the river shoots far over
this fall, the current being thrown outward, indicating there must be
room to pass behind it. The fall is one hundred and twenty feet, and
suddenly turning a right angle at its foot, the stream of beautiful
green passes through a not very deep canyon. The appearance of the
surrounding cliffs is quite Alpine, though the rocks forming the
cascade constantly suffer from erosion. About a half-mile below is the
great Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. Before reaching it, a little
stream comes into the river over the Crystal Fall, about eighty feet
high, rushing down a gorge forming a perfect grotto in the side of the
canyon, extending some distance under the overhanging rocks. The
surface of the plateau gradually ascends as the Lower Falls are
approached, while the river bed descends, and this makes a deep
canyon, brilliantly colored, generally a light yellow (thus naming the
river), but in many portions white, like marble, with patches of
orange, the whole being streaked and spotted with the dark-gray rocks,
whose sombre color in this region is produced by atmospheric action.
The river rushes to the brink of the Lower Fall, and where it goes
over, the current is not over a hundred feet wide, the descent of the
cataract being about three hundred feet, and the column of falling
waters dividing into separate white streaks, which are lost in clouds
of spray before reaching the bottom. Only a small amount of water
usually goes over, about twelve hundred cubic feet in a second. Before
the plunge the water forms a basin of dark-green color, and both blue
and green tints mingle with the prevailing white of the cascade.
Towards sunset, when viewed from below, there are admirable rainbow
effects. The river is quite narrow as it flows away along the bottom
of the canyon, which now becomes deep and large. The grand view of
this beautiful picture is from Point Lookout, a half-mile below the
falls. Unlike any other of the world's great waterfalls, this cascade,
while a part, ceases to be the chief feature of the scene. It is the
vivid coloring and remarkable formation of the sides of the canyon
that make the chief impression. These change as the sun gives light
and shadow, the morning differing from noon and noon from night. It is
impossible to reproduce or properly describe the beautiful hues in
this wonderful picture. The prevailing tint is a light yellow, almost
sulphur color, with veins of white marble and bright red streaked
through it. The colors blend admirably, while the cascade in the
background seems enclosed in a setting of chocolate-brown rocks,
contrasting picturesquely with the brighter foreground. Throughout the
grand scene, great rocky columns and pinnacles arise, their brilliant
hues maintained to the tops, and the scattered pines clinging to these
huge columnar formations give a green tinge to parts of the picture.
The _débris_, forming an inclined base about half-way down, is colored
as brilliantly as the rocks above, from which it has fallen. In the
view over the canyon from Point Lookout, the contracted white streak
of the cascade above the spray cloud is but a small part of the
background, while the river below is only a narrow green ribbon, edged
by these brilliant hues. Some distance farther down the canyon,
another outlook at Inspiration Point gives a striking view from an
elevation fifteen hundred feet above the river of the gorgeous
coloring of the upper canyon.
This grand Canyon of the Yellowstone extends, as the river flows, a
distance of about twenty-four miles. It is a depression in a volcanic
plateau elevated about eight thousand feet above the sea, and
gradually declining towards the northern end of the canyon. Above the
Upper Fall the river level is almost at the top of the plateau, and
the falls and rapids depress the stream bed about thirteen hundred
feet. About midway along the canyon, on the western side, is Washburne
Mountain, the surface from it declining in both directions, so that
there the canyon is deepest, measuring twelve hundred feet. Across the
top, the width varies from four hundred to sixteen hundred yards, the
angle of slope down to the bottom being fully 45°, and often much
steeper, in some cases almost perpendicular where the top width is
narrowest. This Grand Canyon is the beautiful beginning, as it were,
of the largest river in the world,--the Missouri and the Mississippi.
Upon the trail in the southern part of the National Park which goes
over from the Firehole River to the West Thumb, and at quite an
elevation upon the Continental Divide, there is a quiet little sheet
of water, having two small streams flowing from its opposite sides. To
the eastward a babbling brook goes down into the West Thumb of the
Yellowstone Lake, while to the southwest another small creek flows
over the boulders towards Shoshone Lake. This scanty sheet of water,
properly named the Two-Ocean Pond, actually feeds both the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans. The one stream gets its outlet through the
Mississippi and the other through the Columbia River of Oregon.
WESTWARD THE COURSE OF EMPIRE.
Here, in the Yellowstone National Park, with the waters flowing
towards both the rising and the setting sun, is the backbone of the
American Continent. Beyond it the country stretches through the
spacious Rocky Mountain ranges to the Pacific. What is herein
described gives an idea of the vast empire ceded to the United States
by France in the early nineteenth century, and this Great Northwest is
gradually becoming the masterful ruling section of the country. When
Bishop Berkeley, in the early eighteenth century, sitting by the
Atlantic Ocean waves at Newport, composed his famous lyric on the
"course of empire," he little thought how typical it was to become
more than a century after his death. He was musing then "On the
Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America." The Arts and the
Learning have had vigorous American growth, but his Muse predicted a
greater empire than any one could have then imagined.
"The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame.
"In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of Art by Nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true;
"In happy climes, the seat of innocence,
Where Nature guides and Virtue rules,
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
The pedantry of courts and schools;
"There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.
"Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.
"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last."
END OF VOLUME I.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of America, Volume II (of 6), by Joel Cook
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