AMERICA - Joel Cook

Скачать книгу

Rondout Creek into the Hudson. A long, narrow peninsula, just at the completion of the great bend, juts out between the Neversink and the Delaware, ending in a sharp, low, wedge-like rocky point, the extremity being the "Tri-States Corner," where the boundary line between New Jersey and New York reaches the Delaware, and ends in mid-river at the boundary of Pennsylvania. This spot was located after a long boundary war, and the fact is duly recorded on the "Tri-States Rock," down at the end of the point. The Delaware and Hudson Canal, constructed in 1828, and coming over from Rondout Creek through the Neversink Valley, made Port Jervis, which was named after one of its engineers. The canal goes up the Delaware to the Lackawaxen, and then follows that stream to Honesdale. The Erie Railway also comes through a gap in the Kittatinny (here called the Shawangunk Mountain, meaning the "white rocks"), descends to Port Jervis, and then follows up the Delaware. These two great public works have made the prosperity of the town, which has a population of over ten thousand. The long and towering ridge of Point Peter, forming the northwestern boundary of the Neversink Valley, and thrust out to the Delaware, bounding the gorge through which the river comes, overlooks the town. On the other side is the highest elevation of the Kittatinny and the most elevated land in New Jersey, High Point, rising nineteen hundred and sixty feet.

      THE CATSKILL FLAGS.

      The broadened valley of the Delaware extends a short distance above Port Jervis, the canal and railway rounding the ponderous battlements of Point Peter and then proceeding up the river, one on either bank. About three miles above the "Port," as it is familiarly called, the valley contracts to a rock-enclosed gorge, for here the Delaware emerges from its great canyon in the Catskill series of rocks, in the bottom of which it flows from Deposit, at the northern boundary of Pennsylvania, eighty-seven miles above. The remarkable change seen in the surrounding topography indicates the presence of a different rock formation from that passed below, and the river runs out of the Catskill rocks over the "Saw-mill rift." For thirty miles above, to the northern line of Pike County, at Narrowsburg, the river banks mostly are only mere shelves a few rods wide, and frequently present nothing but the faces of rocky walls, rising perpendicularly from the water to a height of six hundred feet or more. From the expanding limestones below, the valley here suddenly contracts in the flags and ledges of the Catskill series. All the small streams coming from the bluffs back of the cliffs descend with rapid fall, and frequently over high cascades. These Catskill flags, built up in vast construction, rear their gaunt and weather-beaten jagged walls and wood-crowned turrets on high. Perched far up on the New York side, at the narrowest part of this remarkable gorge, is an eyrie called the "Hawk's Nest," which gives a wonderful view, reached by a road carved out of the rocky side of the abyss. This road, hung on the perpendicular wall five hundred feet over the river, is the only available route to the part of New York north of Port Jervis. The canal and railway, far below, are each set on a shelf cut out of the rocky banks. The enclosing cliffs rise higher as the river is ascended, sometimes reaching an elevation of twelve hundred feet; and here for miles are seen the famous Delaware and Starucca flags, rising hundreds of feet in a continuous wall of bluish-gray and greenish-gray flaggy sandstones. They are extensively quarried and shipped to New York. Both railway and canal construction through this deep cleft were enormously costly.

      THE BATTLE OF LACKAWAXEN.

      Here is Shohola Township, on the Pennsylvania shore, a wild and rocky region fronting on the river for about ten miles, and Shohola Creek rushes down a rocky bed through a deep gorge to seek the Delaware. It was at this place the surveyors' line was drawn from the Lehigh over to the Delaware, after Marshall's fateful walk. The "Shohola Glen," a favorite excursion ground, has the channel of the creek, only forty feet wide, cut down for two hundred feet deep into the flagstones, and it plunges over four attractive cascades at the Shohola Falls above. A short distance northward the Lackawaxen flows in through a fine gorge, broadening out as the Delaware is approached; and the canal, after crossing the latter on an aqueduct, goes up the Lackawaxen bank. A grand amphitheatre of towering hills surrounds the broad flats where the Lackawaxen brings its ample flow of dark amber-colored waters out of the hemlock forests and swamps of Wayne County to this picturesque spot. Here was fought, on July 22, 1779, the battle of Lackawaxen or the Minisink, the chief Revolutionary conflict on the upper Delaware. The battlefield was a rocky ledge on the New York side, elevated about five hundred feet above the river, amid the lofty hills of Highland Township, in Sullivan County. The noted Mohawk chief, Joseph Brandt, with a force of fifteen hundred Indians and Tories, came down from Northern New York to plunder the frontier settlements. Most of the inhabitants fled down to the forts on the Lehigh or across the Blue Ridge, upon his approach; but a small militia force was hastily gathered under Colonels Hathorn and Tusten to meet the enemy, whom they found crossing the Delaware at a ford near the Lackawaxen. Hathorn, who commanded, moved to attack, but Brandt rushed his Indians up a ravine, intercepting Hathorn just as he got out on the rocky ledge, and cutting off about fifty of his rear guard. Hathorn had ninety men with him, who quickly threw up a rude breastwork, protecting about a half-acre of the ledge. Their ammunition was scant, it was a terribly hot day, they had no water, and were soon surrounded; but for six hours they bravely defended themselves, when, the ammunition being all gone, the Indians broke through their line. Tusten was attending the wounded, and with seventeen wounded men, whom he was alleviating, was tomahawked, all being massacred. The others fled, many being slain in the pursuit. Forty-four of the little band were killed, and the fifty in the rear guard who had been cut off were never afterwards heard of. Years afterwards, the bones of the slain in this terrible defeat were gathered on the field and taken across the Blue Ridge to Goshen for interment, and in 1822 a monument was erected at Goshen in their memory, Colonel Hathorn, who was then living, making an address. On the centenary anniversary in 1879 a monument was dedicated on the field, where faint relics of the old breastwork were still traceable on the rocky ledge perched high above the river, almost opposite the mouth of the Lackawaxen.

      THE SYLVANIA SOCIETY.

      The county of Wayne is separated from the county of Lackawanna by the great Moosic Mountain range, the divide between two noted rivers, the Lackawaxen and the Lackawanna. The former, draining its southeastern slopes to the Delaware, was the "Lechau-weksink" of the Indians, meaning "where the roads part," evidently referring to the parting of the Indian trails at its confluence with the Delaware; the latter, flowing out to the Susquehanna on its northwestern side, was the "Lechau-hanne," or "where the streams part," signifying the forks of two rivers. We ascend the Lackawaxen, finding the route up the gorge along the canal towpath, once the great water way of the Delaware and Hudson Company for bringing out coal, but now abandoned, as the railway route is cheaper. This canal, opened in 1828, was one hundred and seventeen miles long, and ascended from tidewater on the Hudson at Rondout to four hundred and fifty feet elevation at Port Jervis, and nine hundred and sixty-five feet at Honesdale. Its route throughout is through grand river gorges and the most magnificent scenery.

      It was in this beautiful region, just south of the river, that Horace Greeley, in 1842, started what he called the "Sylvania Society," founded to demonstrate the wisdom of "the common ownership of property and the equal division of labor," which Greeley was then advocating by lectures and in his newspaper. Many eminent persons took stock in the society at $25 per share, and the experiment of co-operative farming was begun in a region of rough and rocky Pike County soil, where the amateur farmers also found amusement, for it is recorded that "the stream was alive with trout, and the surrounding hills were equally well provided with the largest and liveliest of rattlesnakes." They had weekly lectures and dancing parties, the colony at one time numbering three hundred persons, Mr. Greeley, who took the deepest interest, frequently visiting them. The society was a success socially and intellectually, but the labor problem soon caused trouble. A Board of Directors governed the farm and assigned the laborers their work, the principle of equality being observed by changing them from one branch of labor to another day by day. But trouble soon came, for there were too many wayward sons sent out from New York to the colony who never had worked and never intended to, but preferred going fishing. Various of the females also decidedly objected to taking their turns at the washtub. The abundance of rattlesnakes had influence, and one day a venturesome colonist brought in seventeen large rattlers, causing dire consternation. They tanned the skin of one big fellow, and made it into

Скачать книгу