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a point of attraction for the lovers of nature in her wildness and grandeur, by far transcends the highlands of Hudson's river, or even the yet more admired region of the Horicon.*

Unless the tourist descends by the course of the river, twenty miles, to Easton, the route from the Water-Gap to Wyoming is by Stroudsburg, flanking the Kittaninny,† or Blue Mountains; thence southwest, travelling along their western side to intersect the Easton and Wilkesbarré turnpike, at a notch through that range of mountains, called the Wind-Gap. The course is north, two and a half miles along the Delaware, to the estuary of a considerable and rapid stream, called Brodhead's Creek, by the moderns, from the name of one of the first white settlers of the country. The Indian name, far more euphonious, is Analomink. Thence west to Stroudsburg. This is a pleasantly situated village, the planting of which was commenced by a gentleman named Stroud, before the war of the American revolution. It stands upon a sweet plain, having a mountain for an everlasting prospect on the south, between which and the village flows the Pokono Creek, descending from the mountain range of that name, and uniting with the Analomink in its neighbourhood. Stroudsburg is the shire town of Munroe

*The Indian name of Lake George.

† Kittaninny is the modern orthography. The ancient was "the Kakatchlanamin Hills." But the name is spelt in almost as many different ways as there are books and manuscripts in which the range is mentioned.

County. The settlements at this place, during the French war of 1755-1763, formed the northern frontier of Pennsylvania, and were within the territory of the Minisink Indians, or Monseys, as they were sometimes called. The chain of military posts erected by the colony of Pennsylvania, extending from the Delaware to the Potomac, was commenced at this point; and the celebrated chief of the Lenelenoppes, or Delaware Indians, Teedyuscung, was occasionally a resident here. This chieftain was an able man, who played a distinguished but subtle part during the border troubles of the French war, particularly toward the close of his life. He was charged with treachery toward the English, and perhaps justly; and yet candour demands the acknowledgment, that he did not take up the hatchet against them without something more than a plausible reason; while by so doing, he was the means of restoring to his people something of the dignity characteristic of his race, but which had almost disappeared under the oppression of the Six Nations. He was professedly a convert to the Moravian Missionaries; but those who have written of him have held that he reflected little credit upon the faith of his new spiritual advisers. But whether injustice may not have been done him in this respect also, is a question upon which much light will be thrown in a subsequent chapter. He came to a melancholy end: but it is not necessary to anticipate the pro

gress of events, soon to be unfolded for consideration in their regular order.

The country immediately west of the Blue Mountains, at least as far in either direction as it could be viewed from the ancient tavern in the vicinity of the Gap of Eolus, is exceedingly wild and forbidding. A deep and gloomy ravine,

"Tangled with fern and intricate with thorn,"

interposes between the base of the mountain and the partially cultivated land beyond, and the Kittaninny itself is darkly wooded, on that side, to its crest. During the first ten miles of the distance toward Wyoming, the country is exceedingly hilly, and for the most part but indifferently cultivated-albeit an occasional farm presents an exception. Several of the hills are steep, and high, and broad. In the direction of Pokono Mountain the country becomes more wild and rugged — affording, of course, at every turn, and from the top of every hill, extensive prospects, and ever-changing landscapes, diversified with woodlands, cornfields, farm-houses, rocks and glens.

When the summit of Pokono is attained, the traveller is upon the top of that wild and desolate table of Pennsylvania, extending for upward of a hundred miles, between and parallel with the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers, and from twenty to thirty-five miles in breadth. Behind him is a noble landscape of wooded hills and cultivated valleys, bounded eastward and south, by the Blue

Mountains, which form a branching range of the Alleghanies. The Wind-Gap is distinctly and beautifully in sight. But facing westwardly, and glancing toward the north, and the south, the prospect is as dreary as naked rocks, and shrub oaks, and stunted pines, and a death-like solitude can make it. The general surface is rough and broken, hills rising, and valleys sinking, by fifties, if not by hundreds, over the whole broad mountain surface. In many places, for miles, there is no human habitation in view, and no one bright or cheerful spot upon which the eye can repose. The gloom, if not the grandeur, of a large portion of this inhospitable region, is increased by the circumstance that it is almost a continuous morass, across which the turnpike is formed by a causeway of logs, insufficiently covered with earth, and bearing the appropriate name of a corduroy road.*

The next stopping place is in the valley of the Tobyhanna, a black looking tributary of the Lehigh-eight miles. Now and then, sometimes at the distance of one mile, and again at the distance of three or four, is passed a miserable human dwelling but the country presents the same sullen, rude, uncultivable character. From the Tobyhanna to Stoddardsville, on the dreary banks of the Lehigh itself, is another eight miles of most enormous length. There are ravines, and more

his

*This route was first cut through by General Sullivan, for the passage of army in the celebrated campaign against the country of the Six Nations, in 1779.

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gentle valleys, but they are not fertile.. There are hills, but they are sterile and forbidding-shagged with brambles, or destitute of all comely vegetation. The waters of the Lehigh, oozing from fens and marshes, are dark and angry as the Styx. The axes of the lumbermen, and the fires repeatedly kindled to sweep over the mountains by the ruthless hunters, have long since destroyed the native forest-pines; and in their stead the whole country has been covered with dwarfs oak and pine among which, standing here and there in blackened solitude, may be seen the scathed trunk of a yet unfallen primitive. In the contemplation of such an impracticable mass of matter as this extended mountain range presents, one cannot but apply the language of Dr. Johnson relative to some portions of the highlands of Scotland, who characterizes it as matter which has apparently been the fortuitous production of the fighting elements; matter, incapable of power and usefulness, dismissed by nature from her care, or quickened only by one sullen power of useless vegetation.

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