body of troops was stationed in the valley for that purpose. The savages were estimated at about 400 men. They scattered themselves abroad over the settlement, murdering, burning, taking prisoners, robbing houses, and driving away cattle. After doing much injury, they concentrated their forces, and made an attack on the fort in Wilkesbarre; but the discharge of a field-piece deterred them, and they raised the siege. The house of Thaddeus Williams was also attacked by a party. The old man was sick in bed; and Sergeant Williams, his son, with a boy of thirteen, withstood the siege, killed a part of the assailants, and entirely drove off the others.-Hazleton Travellers.*

Soon after the battle, Capt. Spalding, with a company from Stroudsburg, took possession of the desolate valley, and rebuilt the fort at Wilkesbarre. Col. Hartley, from Muncy fort, on the West Branch, also went up the North Branch with a party, burned the enemy's villages at Wyalusing, Sheshequin, and Tioga, and cut off a party of the enemy who were taking a boat-load of plunder from Wyoming.

Most of the settlers had fled after the battle and massacre, but here and there a family had remained, or had returned soon after the flight. Skulking parties of Indians continued to prowl about the valley, killing, plundering, and scalping, as opportunity offered. It was at this time that Frances Slocum was captured. The story of her life fully illustrates the

*The "Hazleton Travellers" is not a volume, but a series of historical and biographical sketches, in the form of dialogues between two travellers from Hazleton, written by the Hon. Charles Miner, and published in the Wyoming Republican in 1837-38. These sketches contain many vivid pictures of the adventures, sufferings, and characters of the old settlers of the valley-pictures that we would gladly transfer to our pages-but where to begin? and, having begun, where should we stop short of another volume? Our restricted limits force us, though with extreme reluctance, to omit many interesting details, not the least important of which are the biographical sketches in those numbers. Mr. Miner has promised to add to the number of these sketches, and to give them to the public at some future day. But lest he should there omit a sketch of one of the prominent citizens in the valley, we extract the following from Col. Stone's History of Wyoming :

"My friend Charles Miner is an able man, a native of Norwich, Con., and emigrated to the valley of Wyoming in the year 1799-being then nineteen years of age. He first engaged in school teaching. Having a brother, a year or two older than himself, who was a practical printer, he invited him to join him in his sylvan retreat, and establish a newspaper. The brother did so; and the twain conjointly established the "Luzerne Federalist." This paper was subsequently su perseded by "The Gleaner," but under the same editorial conduct-that of Charles Miner. It was through the columns of the Gleaner that Mr. Miner, for a long series of months, instructed and amused the American people by those celebrated essays of morals and wit, of fact and fancy, and delicate humor, purporting to come "From the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe," and which were very generally republished in the newspapers. The Gleaner and its editor became so popular, that the latter was invited to Philadelphia, as associate editor of the "Political and Commercial Register," so long and favorably known under the conduct of the late Major Jackson.

"Not liking the metropolis as well as he did the country, Mr. Miner soon retired to the pleasant town of Westchester, eighteen miles from Philadelphia, where, in connection with his brother Asher, who had also removed from Wilkesbarre, he established the Village Record-a paper which became as popular for its good taste, and the delicacy of its humor, as the Gleaner had been aforetime. Poor Robert here wrote again under the signature of "John Harwood." While a resident of Westchester, Mr. Miner was twice successively elected to congress, in a double district, as a colleague of the present Senator Buchanan.

"While in congress Mr. Miner showed himself not only a useful, but an able member. In the subject of slavery he took a deep interest, laboring diligently in behalf of those rational measures for its melioration which were doing great good before a different feeling was infused into the minds of many benevolent men, and a different impulse imparted to their action on this subject. There is another act for which Mr. Miner deserves all praise. It was he who awakened the attention of the country to the silk-growing business. He drew and introduced the first resolution upon the subject, and wrote the able report which was introduced by the late General Stephen Van Rensselaer, as chairman of the committee on agriculture, to whom that resolution had been referred.

"It is now [in 1840] about eight years since Mr. Miner relinquished business in Westchester, and, with his brother, returned to Wyoming, where both have every promise of spending the evening of their days most happily."

remark previously made, that the history of this valley contains much of "truth more strange than fiction." The following extracts are from a letter published in the Philadelphia North American, in 1839 :

At a little distance from the present courthouse at Wilkesbarre, lived a family by the name of Slocum, [Mr. Jonathan Slocum.] The men were one day away in the fields, and in an instant the house was surrounded by Indians. There were in it, a mother, a daughter about nine years of age, a son aged thirteen, another daughter aged five, and a little boy aged two and a half. A young man, and a boy by the name of Kingsley, were present grinding a knife. The first thing the Indians did was to shoot down the young man and scalp him with the knife which he had in his hand. The nine year old sister took the little boy two years and a half old, and ran out of the back door to get to the fort. The Indians chased her just enough to see her fright, and to have a hearty laugh, as she ran and clung to and lifted her chubby little brother. They then took the Kingsley boy and young Slocum, aged thirteen, and little Frances, aged five, and prepared to depart. But finding young Slocum lame, at the earnest entreaties of the mother, they set him down and left him. Their captives were then young Kingsley and the little girl. The mother's heart swelled unutterably, and for years she could not describe the scene without tears. She saw an Indian throw her child over his shoulder, and as her hair fell over her face, with one hand she brushed it aside, while the tears fell from her distended eyes, and stretching out her other hand towards her mother, she called for her aid. The Indian turned into the bushes, and this was the last seen of little Frances. This image, probably, was carried by the mother to her grave. About a month after this they came again, and with the most awful cruelties murdered the aged grandfather, and shot a ball in the leg of the lame boy. This he carried with him in his leg, nearly six years, to the grave. The last child was born a few months after these tragedies! What were the conversations, the conjectures, the hopes, and the fears respecting the fate of little Frances, I will not attempt to describe.

As the boys grew up and became men, they were very anxious to know the fate of their little fair-haired sister. They wrote letters, they sent inquiries, they made journeys through all the West and into the Canadas. Four of these journeys were made in vain. A silence, deep as that of the forest through which they wandered, hung over her fate during sixty years.

My reader will now pass over fifty-eight years, and suppose himself far in the wilderness of Indiana, on the bank of the Mississinewa, about fifty miles southwest of Fort Wayne. A very respectable agent of the United States [Hon. George W. Ewing, of Peru, Ia.] is travelling there, and weary and belated, with a tired horse, he stops in an Indian wigwam for the night. He can speak the Indian language. The family are rich for Indians, and have horses and skins in abun dance. In the course of the evening, he notices that the hair of the woman is light, and her skin under her dress is also white. This led to a conversation. She told him she was a white child, but had been carried away when a very small girl. She could only remember that her name was Slocum, that she lived in a little house on the banks of the Susquehanna, and how many there were in her father's family, and the order of their ages! But the name of the town she could not remember. On reaching his home, the agent mentioned this story to his mother. She urged and pressed him to write and print the account. Accordingly he wrote it, and sent it to Lancas ter in this state, requesting that it might be published. By some, to me, unaccountable blunder, it lay in the office two years before it was published. In a few days it fell into the hands of Mr. Slocum, of Wilkesbarre, who was the little two year and a half old boy, when Frances was taken. In a few days he was off to seek his sister, taking with him his oldest sister, (the one who aided him to escape,) and writing to a brother who now lives in Ohio, and who I believe was born after the captivity, to meet him and go with him.

The two brothers and sister are now (1838) on their way to seek little Frances, just sixty years after her captivity. They reach the Indian country, the home of the Miami Indians. Nine miles from the nearest white they find the little wigwam. "I shall know my sister," said the civilized sister, "because she lost the nail of her first finger. You, brother, hammered it off in the blacksmith-shop, when she was four years old." They go into the cabin, and find an Indian woman having the appearance of seventy-five. She is painted and jewelled off, and dressed like the Indians in all respects. Nothing but her hair and covered skin would indicate her origin. They get an interpreter, and begin to converse. She tells them where she was born, her name, &c., with the order of her father's family. "How came your nail gone?" said the oldest sister. 66 My older brother pounded it off when I was a little child in the shop!" In a word, they were satisfied that this was Frances, their long-lost sister! They asked her what her Christian name was. She could not remember. Was it Frances? She smiled, and said "yes." It was the first time she had heard it pronounced for sixty years! Here, then, they were met-two brothers and two sisters! They were all satisfied they were brothers and sisters But what a contrast! The brothers were walking the cabin, unable to speak; the oldest sister was weeping, but the poor Indian sister sat motionless and passionless, as indifferent as a spec. tator. There was no throbbing, no fine chords in her bosom to be touched.

When Mr. Slocum was giving me this history, I said to him, "But could she not speak Eng.

lish?" "Not a word." "Did she know her age?" "No-had no idea of it." "But was she entirely ignorant?" "Sir, she didn't know when Sunday comes!" This was indeed the consummation of ignorance in a descendant of the Puritans!

But what a picture for a painter would the inside of that cabin have afforded? Here were the children of civilization, respectable, temperate, intelligent, and wealthy, able to overcome mountains to recover their sister. There was the child of the forest, not able to tell the day of the week, whose views and feelings were all confined to that cabin. Her whole history might be told in a word. She lived with the Delawares who carried her off till grown up, and then married a Delaware. He either died or ran away, and she then married a Miami Indian, a chief, as I be lieve. She has two daughters, both of whom are married, and who live in all the glory of an Indian cabin, deerskin clothes, and cowskin head-dresses. No one of the family can speak a word of English. They have horses in abundance, and when the Indian sister wanted to ac. company her new relatives, she whipped out, bridled her horse, and then, a la Turk, mounted astride, and was off. At night she could throw a blanket around her, down upon the floor, and at once be asleep.

The brothers and sister tried to persuade their lost sister to return with them, and, if she desired it, bring her children. They would transplant her again to the banks of the Susquehanna, and of their wealth make her home happy. But no. She had always lived with the Indians; they had always been kind to her, and she had promised her late husband on his death-bed, that she would never leave the Indians. And there they left her and hers, wild and darkened heathen, though sprung from a pious race. You can hardly imagine how much this brother is interested for her. He intends this autumn to go again that long journey to see his tawny sister-to carry her presents, and perhaps will petition congress that, if these Miamis are driven off, there may be a tract of land reserved for his sister and her descendants. His heart yearns with an indescriba. ble tenderness for the poor helpless one, who, sixty-one years ago, was torn from the arms of her mother. Mysterious Providence! How wonderful the tie which can thus bind a family together with a chain so strong!

I will only add that nothing has ever been heard of the boy Kingsley. The probability certainly is, that he is not living. This account I had from the lips of Mr. Slocum, the brother, and the same who was two and a half years old when little Frances was carried away.

[Frances' second husband was known among his tribe as "the deaf-man," and the village where she lives is called Deaf-man's village. The United States, by treaty, has granted her a rich reserve of land. Her son-in-law, Capt. Brouillette, is a half-breed, of French extraction, and one of the noblest-looking men of his tribe. The whole family are highly respectable among their nation, and live well, having a great abundance of the comforts of Indian life. The Miami nation has recently agreed to move beyond the Mississippi.]

In the summer of 1779, Gen. Sullivan passed through Wyoming, with his army from Easton, on his memorable expedition against the country of the Six Nations. As they passed the fort amid the firing of salutes, with their arms gleaming in the sun, and their hundred and twenty boats arranged in regular order on the river, and their two thousand packhorses in single file, they formed a military display surpassing any yet seen on the Susquehanna, and well calculated to make a deep impression on the minds of the savages. Having ravaged the country on the Genesee, and laid waste the Indian towns, Gen. Sullivan returned to Wyoming in October, and thence to Easton. But the expedition had neither intimidated the savages nor prevented their incursions. During the remainder of the war they seemed to make it their special delight to scourge the valley; they stole into it in small parties-blood and desolation marking their track.

In the spring (March) of 1784, the settlers of Wyoming were compelled again to witness the desolation of their homes by a new cause. The winter had been unusually severe, and on the breaking up of the ice in the spring, the Susquehanna rose with great rapidity; the immense masses of loose ice from above continued to lodge on that which was still firm at the lower end of the valley; a gorge was formed, and one general inundation overspread the plains of Wyoming. The inhabitants took refuge on the surrounding heights, many being rescued from the roofs of their floating houses. At length a gorge at the upper end of the valley

gave way, and huge masses of ice were scattered in every direction, which remained a great portion of the ensuing summer. The deluge broke the gorge below with a noise like that of contending thunderstorms, and houses, barns, stacks of hay and grain, cattle, sheep, and swine, were swept off in the rushing torrent. A great scarcity of provisions followed the flood, and the sufferings of the inhabitants were aggravated by the plunder and persecution of the Pennamite soldiers quartered among them. Gov. Dickinson represented their sufferings to the legislature with a recommendation for relief, but in vain. This was known as the ice flood; another, less disastrous, which occurred in 1787, was called the pumpkin flood, from the fact that it strewed the lower valley of the Susquehanna with the pumpkins of the unfortunate Yankees.

After the peace with Great Britain, the old controversy on the subject of land titles was renewed, and soon grew into a civil war. This war, like the old one, was marked by sieges of forts; capitulations made only to be broken; seizures by sheriffs; lynching-in which Col. Timothy Pickering suffered some; petitions, remonstrances, and memorials. Capt. Armstrong, afterwards general, and secretary of war, figured as commander of one of the forts or expeditions on the Pennsylvania side. The opposite parties in that war were known by the nicknames of Pennamites on one side, and Connecticut boys or Yankees on the other. (For an account of the close of the controversy the reader is referred to page 44 of this volume.)

WILKESBARRE, the seat of justice of Luzerne co., derived its peculiar name from Messrs. Wilkes and Barré, two distinguished members of the British parliament, who stoutly advocated the cause of the American revolution; but Mr. Barré is often defrauded of his share of the honor by the erroneous pronunciation, Wilkes-borough. It was laid out by Col. Durkee in 1773. It is now a large and rapidly growing borough, occupying one of the most splendid sites in the state. A public square, or diamond, occupies the centre of the town. Annexed is a view of the diamond, taken from the south side. The courthouse is seen on the right,

with the public offices beyond it. On the left is the old Presbyterian church, now the Methodist; and beyond it the new academy.

A splendid bridge spans the Susquehanna at this place. The churches are the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal. There are also here the Wyoming Bank; a Young Ladies' Seminary; and a private classical school for young gentlemen, by Mr. Dana. The Pennsylvania North Branch canal passes to the east of the town, and extends at present 10 miles above as far as Pittston. Much of the work is completed still further up, and there is a prospect that in a few years the line will be opened through to the state of New York. A railroad runs from Wilkesbarre, over the mountains, 20 miles to the Lehigh, at White Haven. Two and a half miles N. E. of the borough is the rich coal mine of the Baltimore Co. Edward R. Biddle, Esq., has recently constructed at this town one of the most extensive rolling-mills in the country. The iron is brought by canal from Danville. The citizens of the place are a highly intelligent and moral people, and are generally the descendants of those whose blood has purchased this now happy and wealthy valley. Population, by the census of 1840, of the borough, 1,718; of the township, 1,513; total, 3,231.

Opposite Wilkesbarre, along the high bench of the river, beyond the flats, are the very pleasant villages of PLYMOUTH OF SHAWNEETOWN, KINGSTON, FORTY FORT, and TROY. And on the eastern side, 10 miles above Wilkesbarre, is PITTSTON, at the month of Lackawannock cr. There are extensive coal mines near Pittston.

Not far from Wilkesbarre, within a compass of ten miles, there are still living several aged survivors of the scenes of 1778. Among them are Mr. Blackman, Mr. Samuel Carey, Mr. Anderson Dana, who lives in sight of the town, Mr. Bennet, and several others. Mr. Dana, then a lad of 13, was the leader of the band of forlorn fugitives through the wilderness of the Pokono.

Mr. Carey was a soldier in the battle. In the flight he swam to Monokonock island, but the Indians had got there before him and took him prisoner. He was stripped naked, and one of his captors, with a malicious smile, drew a knife up and down his breast and abdomen, saying the while Te-te Te-te. He was taken to Fort Wintermoot. The next morning Col. Butler struck him on the mouth with his open hand. "You are the fellow," said he, "that threatened yesterday morning you would comb my hair, are you?" His captor was Capt. Roland Montour—who gave him to another Indian, by whom he was adopted in place of a son, under the name of Coconeunquo. But he was averse to savage life, made a poor substitute for the lost Indian boy, whose death his new parents continued to lament. On the return of peace he was restored to his home. Though not rich, he is yet, by the industry and frugality of a long life, comfortable in his declining days, and has a respectable circle of sons and daughters settled around him. His lady, also living, is of the Gore family, of whom so many fell in the battle. He had a brother Nathan, who, at the time of the battle, was sick with the small-pox; but he rushed desperately into the fight, and escaped both from that and the small-pox, and—singularly enough—died afterwards of old age.

Among the younger generation of men dwelling near Wilkesbarre, and the villages opposite, one may recognise the honored names of the ancient heroes-the Butlers, Dennisons, Dorrances, Danas, Bidlacks, Bennets, Williamses, Shoemakers, Jenkinses, Myerses, Johnsons, Rosses, and many others equally honorable.

CARBONDALE, now a populous borough, has sprung up within a few years by the magic power of anthracite coal. It was started by the Hudson and Delaware Canal Company, who own the mines at this place, about the year 1826. The coal mine is one of the most extensive and best of the Lackawannock basin. Its products are transported at the rate of 800 to 900 tons daily, by inclined planes and railroad over the Moosic