Area History: Chapter 41 - Part I: Appendix : Vol II - Watson's Annals of Philadelphia And Pennsylvania, 1857

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                                 ANNALS

                                   of

                     PHILADELPHIA  AND  PENNSYLVANIA,


                               VOL.  II
     
            ______________________________________________


Chapter 41.  Part-I             APPENDIX


  Having on hand sundry facts further illustrative of our early history, and
sundry articles of places, in which we, of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania,
are sufficiently interested as occasional visiters, or lookers on, tending
to describe things as they were, and from which they are now yearly
changing, we herein connect them as an appendix to this work, viz.:

                Landing day of William Penn, at New Castle.

  On the 27 day of October 1682, arrived before ye towne of New Castle, in
Delawar, from England, Wm. Penn, Esq., proprietary of Pennsylvania, who
produced twoo certain deeds of feofment from ye illustrious James, Duke of
Yorke and Albany, etc.; for this towne of New Castle, and twelve myles about
itt, and also for ye two lower counties, ye Whorekills and St. Jones' ; wch
sd deed bore date 24 August 1682, and pursuant to the true intent, purpose
and meaning of his Royll highnesse in ye same deed, hee, ye sd William Penn,
received possession of ye towne of New Castle, ye 28th of October, 1682.

          The testimony of Richard Townsend -- 
           a public Friend -- delivered the year 1727

  In the year 1682, several ships being provided for Pennsylvania, I found a
concern on my mind to embark with them with my wife and child.  I went
aboard the Welcome, in company with my worthy friend, William Penn, whose
good conversation was very advantageous to all the company.  His singular
care was manifested in contributing to the necessities of many who were sick
on board, of small pox, of whom as many as thirty died.  [What a loss !]
After a prosperous passage of two months, having had in that time many good
meetings on board, we arrived there.
  At our arrival, we found it a wilderness; the chief inhabitants were
Indians, and some Swedes, who received us in a friendly manner, and though
there was a great number of us, the good hand of Providence was seen in a
particular manner in that provisions were found for us by the Swedes and
Indians, at very reasonable rates, as well as brought from divers other
parts, that were inhabited before.
  Our first concern was to keep and maintain our religious worship, and in
order thereunto, we had several meetings in the houses of the inhabitants;
and one boarded meeting-house was set up, [the place of the bank meeting]
where the city was to be near Delaware, and where we had very comfortable
meetings; and after our meetings were over, we assisted each other in
building little houses for our shelter -- [meaning such as the caves and
cabins.]
  After some time, I set up a mill on Chester creek, which I brought ready
framed from London, which served for grinding corn and sawing of boards; and
was of great use to us.  Besides, I, with John Tittery, made a net, and
caught great quantities of fish, which supplied ourselves and many others;
so that although three thousand persons came in the first year, we had no
lack.  We could buy a deer for two shillings, and a large turkey for one
shilling, and Indian corn for 2s.6d. per bushel.  The Indians were to us
very civil and loving.
  As soon as Germantown was laid out, I settled my tract of land, which was
about a mile from thence, where I set up a barn and a corn mill, which was
very useful to the country round.  But there being few houses, people
generally brought their corn upon their backs many miles.  I remember, one
man had a bull so gentle, that he used to bring the corn on his back.
  In this location, separated from any provision market, we found flesh meat
very scarce, and on one occasion we were supplied by a very particular
providence, to wit :  As I was in my meadow, mowing grass, a young deer came
and looked on me while I continued mowing.  Finding him to continue looking
on, I laid down my scythe and went towards him, when he went off a little
way -- I returned again to the mowing, and the deer again to its
observation.  So that I several times left my work to go towards him, and he
as often gently retreated.  At last when going towards him, and he not
regarding his steps whilst keeping his eye on me, he struck forcibly against
the trunk of a tree, and stunned himself so much as to fall, when I sprang
upon him and fettered his legs.  From thence I carried him home to my house,
a quarter of a mile, where he was killed, to the great benefit of my family.
I could relate several other acts of providence, of this kind.
  Being now in the eighty-fourth year of my age, and the forty-sixth of my
residence in this country, I can do no less than return praises to the
Almighty for the great increase and abundance which I have witnessed.  My
spirit is engaged to supplicate the continuance thereof; and as the parents
have been blessed, may the same mercies continue on their offspring, to the
end of time.     
RICHARD TOWNSEND.

     The Declaration of the German Friends of Germantown,
                  against Slavery, in 1688

  While the Annals are in the progress of publication, there has been found,
for the first time, among the papers of the Philadelphia yearly meeting of
1688, the original MS. declaration; being the same addressed to the monthly
meeting of Friends, then held at the house of Richard Worrell in Dublin
township.  It is in itself a curiosity, and as such is here published.  So
intelligible a paper, written by Germans, then only four or five years in
our country, is something remarkable in itself, viz.:

  This is to the monthly meeting held at Richard Worrell's :
  These are the reasons why we are against the traffic of men's body, as
followeth :  Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner?
viz.: to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life?  How fearful
and faint-hearted are many at sea, when they see a strange vessel, being
afraid it should be a Turk, and they should be taken and sold for slaves in
Turkey.* Now what is this better done, than Turks do?  Yea, rather it is
worse for them which say they are Christians; for we hear that the most part
of such negers are brought hither against their will and consent, and that
many of them are stolen.  Now though they are black **  we cannot conceive
there is more liberty to have them slaves, as [than] it is to have white
ones.  There is a saying, that we shall do to all men like as we will be
done [to] ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent, or
colour they are.  And those who steal or rob men, and those who purchase
them, are they not all alike?  Here is liberty of conscience, which is right
and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of the body, except of
evil-doers, which is another case.  But to bring men hither, or to rob,
[steal] and sell them against their will, WE STAND AGAINST.  In Europe,
there are many oppressed for conscience sake; and here there are those
oppressed which are of a black colour.  And we who know that men must not
commit adultery -- some do commit adultery in others, separating wives from
their husbands and giving them to others: and some sell the children of
these poor creatures to other men.  Ah !  do consider well this thing, you
who do it, if you would be done in this manner -- and if it is done
according to Christianity !  You surpass Holland and Germany in this thing.
This makes an ill report in all those countries of Europe, where they hear
of [it] that the Quakers do here handel men as they handel there the cattle.
And for that reason some have no mind or inclination to come hither.  And
who shall maintain this your cause, or plead for it ?  Truly, we cannot do
so, except you shall inform us better hereof, viz.:  that Christians have
liberty to practise these things.  Pray, what thing in the world can be done
worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for
slaves to strange countries; separating husbands from their wives and
children.  Being now this is not done in the manner we would be done at [by]
; therefore, we contradict [oppose], and are against this traffic of men's
body.  And we who profess that it is not lawful to steal, must, likewise,
avoid to purchase such things as are stolen, but rather help to stop this
robbing and stealing, if possible.  And such men ought to be delivered out
of the hands of the robbers, and set free as in Europe.  Then is
Pennsylvania to have a good report, instead it hath now a bad one, for this
sake, in other countries.  Especially whereas the Europeans are desirous to
know in what manner the Quakers do rule in their province; and most of them
do look upon us with an envious eye.  But if this is done well, what shall
we say is done evil?
  If once these slaves (which they say are so wicked and stubborn men)
should join themselves -- fight for their freedom, and handel their masters
and mistresses, as they did handel them before; will these masters and
mistresses take the sword at hand and war against these poor slaves, like,
as we are able to believe, some will not refuse to do?  Or, have these poor
negers not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep
them slaves?
  Now consider well this thing, if it is good or bad.  And in case you find
it to be good to handel these blacks in that manner, we desire and require
you hereby lovingly, that you may inform us herein, which at this time never
was done, viz.: that Christians have such a liberty to do so.  To this end
we shall be satisfied on this point, and satisfy likewise our good friends
and acquaintances in our native country, to whom it is a terror, or fearful
thing, that men should be handeled so in Pennsylvania.
  This is from our meeting at Germantown, held ye 18th of the 2d month 1688,
to be delivered to the monthly meeting at Richard Worrell's.

GARRET  HENDERICH
DERICK  OP DE GRAEFF
FRANCIS DANIEL  PASTORIUS
ABRAM  OP DE GRAEFF.

  At our monthly meeting, at Dublin, ye 30th 2d mo. 1688, we having
inspected ye matter, above mentioned, and considered of it, we find it so
weighty that we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here, but do
rather commit it to ye consideration of ye quarterly meeting; ye tenor of it
being related to ye truth.  

JO. HART

  This, above mentioned, was read in our quarterly meeting, at Philadelphia,
the 4th of ye 4th mo. `88, and was from thence recommended to the yearly
meeting, and the above said Derick, and the other two mentioned therein, to
present the same to ye above said meeting, it being a thing of too great
weight for this meeting to determine.
  Signed by order of ye meeting.

ANTHONY MORRIS.

  * The very apprehension before expressed by F.D. Pastorius, of himself,
while at sea, in his communication to Governor Lloyd's daughters --- Vide
the article "Pastorius", in vol. i. page 518 { "Persons and Characters "
Chapter}.

  ** A colour not familiar to them, at home, as Germans.


                    MASON  and  DIXON'S  LINE

  This is a locality, marking a boundary line between Pennsylvania, Maryland
and Virginia, much referred to in modern times by political disputants, and
but little understood by the mass of the people.
  It refers to a line of division between those states, run and settled as
such, by Mason and Dixon, two English surveyors who run and determined it in
the year 1761.  Previous to that time, it was a subject of frequent
controversy and hard feelings for many years, between William Penn and Lord
Baltimore and their several successors, from the time of the grant of
Pennsylvania to William Penn in 1680.
  The king of England made his grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn in
1680, beginning at the 40th degree of north latitude up to the 42d degree --
bounded by the Delaware on the east, and to extend westward five degrees of
longitude.  On the south a previous grant had been made to Lord Baltimore in
1632, including ALL of the 40th degree as far west as the meridian of the
"first fountain" of the River Potomac, which made the five degrees of west
longitude to extend beyond the meridian of the Potomac.  William Penn
conceded the width of a degree to Lord Baltimore as the older grantee, but
claimed that portion west of his meridian, down to the completion of the
39th degree of latitude, five degrees long, and from thence in a line
parallel with the River Delaware in all its meanders, to the 42d parallel of
latitude.
  Virginia, meanwhile, claimed that the western boundary of Pennsylvania
should be a parallel of five degrees west of the River Delaware, where the
42d parallel cut that stream.  This involved, as the great subject of
controversy, the right to Fort Pitt, which had been garrisoned by Virginia
as its own domain, in 1752.  Their ensign and his command of forty men were
there captured by the French, and then they in turn were made prisoners by
General Forbes acting for the British government, in 1758.  It was
afterwards evacuated and stood defenceless until the year 1773; when John
Conally, acting under Lord Dunmore, as the governor of Virginia, took
possession.  Conally was arrested as a trespasser by Arthur St. Clair,
(afterwards a general) then a justice of the peace for Westmoreland county.
Lord Dunmore, the governor, then contended that Pittsburg was fifty miles
within the colony of Virginia, to which the Ohio country was supposed to
belong.  On the other hand, the governor of Pennsylvania proved, by surveys,
that it was six miles within the five degrees of longitude from the River
Delaware, due east from the fort.  Conally, who had given his bond to the
court, being released on bail, returned to the court at its sitting on 5th
April 1774; but to their surprise, brought with him 150 armed men, and
actually broke up the court !  Troops were thereupon raised, and mutual
arrests, and releases by force, ensued for a time.  But after much mutual
recrimination, a line was agreed upon by commissioners fixing it as it now
stands.
  The Maryland line was produced to five degrees of longitude, measured upon
that parallel, being 30† 43' 42' north, and for the west line of
Pennsylvania, a meridian of longitude was drawn to Lake Erie.  If  William
Penn's construction of the grant to him had been adopted, the state of Ohio
would have approached within six miles of Pittsburg.
  To those who are minutely curious on the subject, there is a lengthened
memoir by James Dunlop, Esq., published in the papers of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, which they may consult with profit.  See, also, the
case as stated by W. Murray, of 1737, reprinted in Hazard's Register,
vol. ii., page 200, in 4 pages royal 8vo.
  Lord Baltimore alleged that the 40th degree of north latitude had been
ascertained, and part of the line run in 1681, in pursuance of a letter of
the king; but Penn denied that any such line had been ascertained.  The
claims of Maryland were asserted with continued acrimony, violence and
occasional bloodshed, until they were finally abandoned in 1760, by the
mutual agreement of the parties.
  The original parties had two personal interviews in America but with no
satisfaction to either of them.  At length, in 1685, one important step was
taken by a decision of King James' council, which ordered "that for avoiding
further differences, the land lying between the bay of Delaware, and the
eastern sea on the other side, and the Chesapeake bay on the other, be
divided into equal parts, by a line from Cape Henlopen to the 40th degree of
north latitude".
  Mutual agreements were made between the successors or heirs of the
parties, on the 10th May 1732.  By this celebrated agreement it was
determined, that a semicircle should be drawn at twelve miles around New
Castle; -- that an east and west line should be drawn beginning at Cape
Henlopen, (Cape Cornelius) and to run westward to the exact middle of the
peninsula; and thence northward, so as to form a tangent with the periphery
of the semicircle at New Castle, drawn with the radius of twelve English
miles; and that from such semicircle, it should be run further northward,
until it reached the same latitude as fifteen English miles due south of the
city of Philadelphia; -- and from the northern point of such line, a due
west line should be run across the Susquehanna river and twenty-five miles
beyond it, and to the western limits of Pennsylvania, when occasion, and the
improvements of the country, should require it.  This agreement, however,
became the subject of much after litigation and cavil, as may be frequently
noticed on the records of the Minutes of Council, if consulted.
  The Penns were evidently gainers by the agreement, inasmuch as they made
no concession of territory; and but for it the Maryland claim would have
reached so far as to cover several parts of the present counties of
Philadelphia, Chester, Lancaster, York, Adams, Franklin, Bedford, Somerset,
Fayette and Greene.  Finally, the matter in dispute, went into Chancery and
was not decided until 1750, when the lord chancellor decreed a performance
of the articles of agreement as being their best guide and foundation as a
measure before fixed by themselves.  Some subsequent cavil however ensued --
when finally, Frederick, Lord Baltimore, tired of the litigation, entered
into articles of agreement with Thomas and Richard Penn in 1760, which at
length effectually closed all further altercation and dispute.
  In consequence of such agreement, Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason were
appointed to run the unfinished line in 1761; and they extended the western
line between the two provinces 230 miles, marking 130 miles of the same by
stone pillars.  It was called in subsequent history "Mason and Dixon's line"
to distinguish it from the "Temporary line", so called, -- run in 1739.
  In the controversy, it is seen, that William Penn and his successors
manifested the most tact and patience -- by which they eventually made the
best of the bargain.  Some of the original papers in these matters are not
now to be found, but the facts in the case are admitted in our courts, as
evidence without proof.
  To our forefathers, the controversy, while it lasted, was as stirring and
exciting as a state of actual war on a small scale.


  Doctor Thomas C. James' account of the discovery and use of Anthracite Coal.

  It was some time in the autumn of 1804, that the writer and a friend
started on an excursion to visit some small tracts of land that were joint
property on the river Lehigh, in Northampton county.  We went by the way of
Allentown, and after having crossed the Blue mountain, found ourselves in
the evening unexpectedly bewildered in a secluded part of the Mahoning
valley, at a distance, as we feared, from any habitation as the road became
more narrow and showed fewer marks of having been used, winding among
scrubby timber and underwood.  Being pretty well convinced that we had
missed our way, and as is usual with those who are wrong, unwilling to
retrace our steps, we nevertheless checked our horses about sunsetting to
consider what might be the most eligible course.  At this precise period, we
happily saw emerging from the wood, no airy sprite, but what was much more
to our purpose, a good substantial German-looking woman, leading a cow laden
with a bag of meal by a rope halter.  Considering this as a probable
indication of our being in the neighbourhood of a mill, we ventured to
address our inquiries to the dame, who, in a language curiously compounded
of what might be called High and Low Dutch with a spice of English, made us
ultimately comprehend that we were not much above a mile distant from Philip
Ginter's mill, and as there was but one road before us, we could not readily
miss our way.  We accordingly proceeded, and soon reached the desired spot,
where we met with a hospitable reception, but received the uncomfortable
intelligence that we were considerably out of our intended course, and
should be obliged to traverse a mountainous district, seldom trodden by the
traveller's foot, to reach our destined port on the Lehigh, then known by
the name of the "Landing", but since dignified with the more classical
appellation of Lausanne.  We were kindly furnished by our host with lodgings
in the mill, which was kept going all night; and as the structure was not of
the most firm and compact character, we might almost literally be said to
have been rocked to sleep.  However, after having been refreshed with a
night's rest, such as it was, and taking breakfast with our hospitable
landlord, we started on the journey of the day, preceded by Philip, with his
axe on his shoulder, an implement necessary to remove the obstructing
saplings that might impede the passage of our horses, if not of ourselves;
and these we were under the necessity of dismounting and leading through the
bushes and briers of the grown-up pathway, if pathway had ever really existed.
  In the course of our pilgrimage we reached the summit of the Mauch Chunk
mountain, the present site of the mine or rather quarry of anthracite coal;
at that time there were only to be seen three or four small pits, which had
much the appearance of the commencement of rude wells, into one of which our
guide descended with great ease, and threw up some pieces of coal for our
examination; after which, whilst we lingered on the spot contemplating the
wildness of the scene, honest Philip amused us with the following narrative
of the original discovery of this most valuable of minerals, now promising,
from its general diffusion, so much of wealth and comfort to a great portion
of Pennsylvania.
  He said, when he first took up his residence in that district of country,
he built for himself a rough cabin in the forest, and supported his family
by the proceeds of his rifle, being literally a hunter of the back-woods.
The game he shot, including bear and deer, he carried to the nearest store
and exchanged for the other necessaries of life.  But, at the particular
time to which he then alluded, he was without a supply of food for his
family, and after being out all day with his gun in quest of it, he was
returning towards evening over the Mauch Chunk mountain, entirely
unsuccessful and dispirited, having shot nothing.  A drizzling rain
beginning to fall, and the dusky night approaching, he bent his course
homeward, considering himself as one of the most forsaken of human beings.
As he trod slowly over the ground, his foot stumbled against something
which, by the stroke, was driven before him.  Observing it to be black, to
distinguish which there was just light enough remaining, he took it up and
as he had often listened to the traditions of the country of the existence
of coal in the vicinity, it occurred to him that this, perhaps, might be a
portion of that "stone coal" of which he had heard.  He accordingly
carefully took it with him to his cabin, and the next day carried it to
Colonel Jacob Weiss, residing at what was then known by the name of Fort
Allen.  The colonel, who was alive to the subject, brought the specimen
immediately with him to Philadelphia, and submitted it to the inspection of
John Nicholson and Michael Hillegas, Esqs., and Charles Cist, an intelligent
printer, who ascertained its nature and qualities, and authorized the
colonel to satisfy Ginter for his discovery upon his pointing out the
precise spot where he found the coal.  This was done by acceding to Ginter's
proposal of getting through the forms of the patent office the title for a
small tract of land which he supposed had never been taken up, comprising a
mill-seat, on which he afterwards built the mill which afforded us the
lodging of the preceding night, and which he afterwards was unhappily
deprived of by the claim of a prior survey.
  Hillegas, Cist, Weiss, and some others, immediately after (about the
beginning of the year 1792) formed themselves into what was called the
"Lehigh Coal Mine Company" but without a charter of incorporation, and took
up about 8 or 10,000 acres of, till then, unlocated land, including the
Mauch Chunk mountain, but probably never worked the mine.
  It remained in this neglected state, being only used by the blacksmiths
and people in the immediate vicinity, until somewhere about the year 1806,
when William Turnbull, Esq., had an ark constructed at Lausanne, which
brought down two or three hundred bushels.  This was sold to the manager of
the waterworks for the use of the Centre Square steam engine.  It was there
tried as an experiment, but ultimately rejected as unmanageable, and its
character for the time being blasted, the further attempts at introducing it
to public notice, in this way, seemed suspended.
  During the last war, J. Cist, (the son of the printer) Charles Miner, and
J.A. Chapman, tempted by the high price of bituminous coal, made an attempt
to work the mine, and probably would have succeeded, had not the peace
reduced the price of the article too low for competition.
  The operations and success of the present Lehigh Coal and Navigation
Company must be well known to the country; the writer will therefore close
this communication by stating, that he commenced burning the anthracite coal
in the winter of 1804, and has continued its use ever since, believing, from
his own experience of its utility, that it would ultimately become the
general fuel of this, as well as other cities.

       Doctor John Watson's account of the First Settlers of Bucks County.

  This account having been written as a contribution to the Historical
Society, and having sundry notices of the state and progress of society in
Bucks county from its earliest settlement, may present a picture of the
past, which may prove interesting to many, viz.:
  The township of Buckingham, situated near the centre of the county of
Bucks, is the largest township in the county, containing 18,488 acres.  
  Solesbury lies between Buckingham and the river Delaware, and contains
14,073 acres.
  The whole of the two townships in early time was called Buckingham, being
a favourite name with our first worthy proprietor, William Penn.  The name
was first given to the township and borough now called Bristol, but
transferred here perhaps about the year ___, before Cutler's resurvey; by
which it appears, that the two townships were divided by a north-west line
from the lower corner of Thomas and John Bye's tract, extending to the upper
corner of Randal Blackshire's tract.
  It appears, by an enumeration of the inhabitants taken in 1787, that
Buckingham contained 173 dwelling houses, 188 out-houses, 1173 white
inhabitants, and 13 blacks.  Solebury, 166 dwelling houses, 150 out-houses,
928 white inhabitants and no blacks.
  The first settlers generally came from England, and were of the middle
rank, and chiefly Friends; many of them had first settled at the Falls, but
soon after removed back, as it was then called, into the woods.  As they
came away in the reigns of Charles, James, William and Anne, they brought
with them not only the industry, frugality, and strict domestic discipline
of their education, but also a portion of those high-toned political
impressions that then prevailed in England.
  Friends had suffered much under the Stuarts; and though promised much by
the Oliverians and a republican equality, they experienced but little relief
from either.  They therefore equally disliked the Presbyterians and the
Pretender; and were loyally attached to the protestant succession in the
house of Hanover.
  Many of the early settlers of Buckingham and Solebury had been educated in
what may, with some propriety, be termed good style; and though not great
scholars, yet were great men.  The exercise of their personal and mental
abilities was excited into a high flow of energy, by the bold enterprise of
settling a new country, under so many novel circumstances, of much
importance to themselves and their posterity.  The women were generally good
housekeepers; or at least, their industry and frugality made proper amends
for whatever might be deficient, in respect to such improvements and
refinements as were not so well suited to their circumstances of mediocrity
and equality.
  At that early period, when our forefathers were building log houses,
barns, and sheds for stables, and clearing new land, and fencing it chiefly
with poles or brush, it has been said that a hearty, sincere good will for
each other generally prevailed among them.  They all stood occasionally in
need of the help of their neighbours, who were often situated at some
distance through the woods.
  Chronic ailments were not so frequent as at present; which was, perhaps,
in part owing to the wholesome diet, brisk exercise, lively manners, and
cheerful and unrefined state of the mind.  But acute disorders, such as
fevers, in various degrees -- those called "long fevers, dumb agues,
fever-and-agues" sore throats, and pleurisies, were then much more common
than now.  The natural small-pox was peculiarly distressing -- was mostly
severe, and often mortal -- and nothing strange that it should be so.  The
nature of the disorder being but little known, it was very improperly
treated by the nurses, to whose care the management was chiefly committed.
A hot room - plenty of bed-clothes -- hot teas -- and milk punch, or hot
tiff, were pronounced most proper to bring the eruption out and to make it
fill well; and the chief danger was apprehended from the patient taking cold
by fresh air or cold drink.
  As money was scarce and labourers few, and business often to be done that
required many hands, friends and neighbours were commonly invited to
raisings of houses and barns, grubbing, chopping, and rolling logs, that
required to be done in haste to get in the crop in season.  Rum and a dinner
or supper were provided on those occasions; and much competition excited in
the exercise of bodily strength and dexterity, both at work and athletic
diversions.
  Reciprocal assistance, being much wanted, was freely afforded and
gratefully received -- and notwithstanding the rude and unpolished state of
mind and manners that may be expected to have prevailed in the first
settlers in a wilderness country, and in a much more marked degree in those
who succeeded after them, yet from their mutual wants and dependencies, the
social and active vivacity of simple nature, and perhaps more than all
these, from their hearty and honest zeal in a religious bias of the mind, a
kind and unaffected friendship formed a principal feature of their general
character.  Their equality of circumstances, similarity of views and
pursuits, and union in religious and civil principles, and the acquisition
of new acquaintances far from their former connexions, all tended to unite
them in habits of sociability, and to form impressions of sincere regard.
  When false impressions (or indeed ignorance) have once so far gained
ground as to influence general habits and customs on an erroneous principle,
it requires much labour, and a long time to wear them out.  This appears
evident in the use that is made of spiritous liquors and tobacco.  It is
probable the first settlers used these articles to ward off infection; and
spirits principally to prevent the bad effects of drinking water to which
they had not been accustomed in Europe.  They imagined the air and water of
this hot climate to be unwholesome.  The immediate bad effect of cold water,
when heated with exercise in summer, and the fevers and agues which seized
many in the autumn, confirmed them in this opinion; and not having
conveniences to make beer that would keep in hot weather, they at once
adopted the practice of the labouring people in the West Indies, and drank
rum.  This being countenanced by general opinion, and brought into general
practice as far as their limited ability would admit, bottles of rum were
handed about at vendues, and mixed and stewed spirits were repeatedly given
to those who attended funerals ---

       "So fast the growth of what is surely wrong."

  A concern arose among Friends on the subject, and a stop was put to this
evil practice in a short time.  I call it evil, because it produced effects
that were hurtful in a high degree to individuals, and also to society in
general.
  An act of assembly was passed, prohibiting the giving of spirits at
vendues; and though the law was not much regarded for many years, and the
practice continued, yet this mischievous and dishonest practice is almost
wholly dismissed.
  In early times, weddings were held as festivals; probably in imitation of
such a practice in England.  Relations, friends and neighbours were
generally invited, sometimes to the amount of one or two hundred; a good
dinner was provided, and a lively spirit of plain friendship, but rather
rude manners, prevailed in the company.
  They frequently met again the next day, and being mostly young people, and
out from under restraint, practised social plays and sports in which they
often went to an extreme folly; but in those times such opportunities of
promoting social acquaintance might be in some degree proper, though
otherwise wrong.
  At births, many good women were collected; wine or cordial waters were
esteemed suitable to the occasion for the guests; but besides these, rum,
either buttered or made into hot tiff, was believed to be essentially
necessary for the lying-in woman.  The tender infant must be straitly rolled
round the waist with a linen swathe, and loaded with clothes until he could
scarcely breathe; and when unwell or fretful, was dosed with spirit and
water stewed with spicery.
  When wheat and rye grew thick and tall on new land, and all was to be cut
with sickles, many men and some women became dexterous in the use of them,
and victory was contended for in many a violent trial; sometimes by two or
three only, and sometimes by the whole company for forty or fifty perches.
About the year 1741, twenty acres of wheat were cut and shocked in half a
day in Solebury.  Rum was drunk in proportion to the hurry of business, and
long intervals of rest employed in merry and sometimes angry conversation.
  The imposing authority of necessity, obliged the first settlers and their
successors to wear a strong and coarse kind of dress; enduring buckskin was
used for breeches and sometimes for jackets; oznabrigs, made of hemp tow,
1s.6d. per yard, was much used for boy's shirts; sometimes flax, and flax
and tow were used for that purpose; and coarse tow for trowsers; a wool hat,
strong shoes, and brass buckles, two linsey jackets and a leathern apron,
made out the winter apparel.  This kind of dress continued to be common for
the labouring people until 1750.
  Yet a few, even in early times, somewhat to imitate the trim of their
ancestors, laid out as much to buy one suit of fine clothes as would have
purchased two hundred acres of pretty good land.  The cut of a fine coat
(now antiquated) may be worthy of description.  Three or four large plaits
in the skirts -- wadding almost like a coverlet to keep them smooth -- cuffs
vastly large up to the elbows, open below, and of a round form.  The hat of
a beau was a good broad-brimmed beaver, with double loops, drawn nearly
close behind, and half raised on each side.  The women, in full mode, wore
stiff whalebone stays, worth eight or ten dollars.  The silk gown much
plaited in the back; the sleeves nearly twice as large as the arm, and
reaching rather more than half way from the shoulder to the elbow -- the
interval covered with a fine Holland sleeve, nicely plaited, locket buttons,
and long-armed gloves.  Invention had then reached no further than a bath
bonnet with a cape.
  Something like this was the fashion of gay people; of whom there were a
few, though not many, in early times in Buckingham and Solebury.  But the
whole, or something like it, was often put on for wedding suits, with the
addition of the bride being dressed in a long black hood without a bonnet.
There was one of these solemn symbols of matrimony made of near two yards of
rich black Paduasoy, that was lent to be worn on these occasions, and
continued sometimes in use down to my remembrance.  Several of these odd
fashions were retained, because 'old', and gradually gave way to those that
were new.  The straw plait, called the bee hive bonnet, and the blue or
green apron, were long worn by old women.
  The careful housewifery, and strict domestic discipline of many honourable
mothers, has had an influential effect down to the present time; so that
whatever there may have been, or that now remains as valuable traits of
character in the inhabitants of these parts of the country, is chiefly owing
to the virtues of the first settlers; especially in those families (which
are many) who remain to the present time.
  The first adventurers were chiefly members of the Falls meeting; and are
said to have frequently attended it, and often on foot.  In the year 1700,
leave was granted by the quarterly meeting to hold a meeting for worship at
Buckingham; which was first at the house of William Cooper (now John
Gillingham's).  They soon after removed to the house of James Steiper (now
Benjamin William's) and in that time and for some time after, some of those
who died in the new settlement were buried on his land, I believe near the
line in the old orchard; others were taken to the Falls, or Middletown.  In
a short time they removed again, and held a meeting at Nathaniel Bye's where
his grandson, Thomas Bye, now lives.
  In the space of time from the first improvement until 1730, perhaps a
period of more than forty years, many circumstances and occurrences may be
worthy of remark, and especially the difficulty of beginning in the woods.
Building a house or cabin, and clearing or fencing a field to raise some
grain were the first concerns; procuring fodder for their small stocks was
next to be attended to : for this purpose they cut grass in plains or
swamps, often at several miles from home, stacked it upon the spot, and
hauled it home in the winter.
  One of the first dwelling houses yet remains in Abraham Paxson's yard, on
the tract called William Croasdale's, now Henry Paxson's.  It is made of
stone, and is dug into the earth where there is a moderate descent, about
twenty feet by ten or twelve.  At the end fronting the south-east was a door
leading into the dwelling-room for the whole family, where there was a sort
of chimney; and a door at the other end, also level with the ground, led
into the loft which must have been the lodging room.
  Until a sufficient quantity of grain was raised for themselves and the
new-comers, all further supply had to be brought from the Falls or
Middletown; and until 1707, all the grain had to be taken there, or to
Morris Gwin's on Pennepac below the Billet, to be ground.  In that year
Robert Heath built a grist-mill on the great spring stream in Solebury.
This must have been a great hardship -- to go so far to mill for more than
seventeen years, and chiefly on horseback.  It was some time that they had
to go the same distance with their plough-irons and other smithwork.  Horses
were seldom shod; and blocks to pound hominy were a useful invention
borrowed from the natives.  After all their care and industry to provide for
the winter, they must have struggled with many difficulties, and suffered
much hardship in passing over that tedious and rigorous season, when the
snow was generally deep, and the winds piercing cold.
  In 1690 there were many settlements of Indians in these townships -- one
on the lowlands near the river, on George Pownall's tract, which remained
for some time after he settled there -- one on James Steiper's tract near
Conkey hole -- one on land since Samuel Harold's -- one on Joseph Fell's
tract -- and one at the Great spring &c.
  Tradition reports that they were kind neighbours, supplying the white
people with meat, and sometimes with beans and other vegetables; which they
did in perfect charity, bringing presents to their houses, and refusing pay.
Their children were sociable and fond of play.  A harmony arose out of their
mutual intercourse and dependence.  Native simplicity reigned in its
greatest extent.  The difference between the families of the white man and
the Indian, in many respects, was not great -- when to live was the utmost
hope, and to enjoy a bare sufficiency the greatest luxury.

  About 1704, several new settlers arrived; among whom was my
great-grandfather, Thomas Watson.  His certificate is from Pardsey Cragg, in
Cumberland, G.B., dated 23d, 7mo. 1701.  His wife was Eleanor Pearson, of
Probank in Yorkshire, and their two sons, Thomas and John.  He first settled
at a place then called Moncy hill, near Bristol; and settled finally about
1703 or 1704 on Rosill's four hundred acres in Buckingham.
  John Watson became the deputy surveyor in this county; and by the force of
a suitable docility of mind and quickness of perception, rather than from
constant application, he acquired among learned men the character of a great
scholar.  At the time of his decease, which was in 1761, he was employed in
company with Purdie and Dixon in running the line between Pennsylvania and
Maryland.  Being seized with the influenza, and having taken cold while in a
fever, in extremely hot weather, he rode upwards of sixty miles in a day to
William Blackfan's, where he died.
  It appears in an old account book of my grandfather, Richard Mitchel, who
had a grist-mill and store in Wright's town, 1724 to 1735, that his charges
are as follows : -- wheat from 3s. to 4s.; rye one shilling less; Indian
corn and buckwheat 2s.; middling, fine, 7s. and 8s.; coarse, 4s. 6d.; bran
1s.; salt 4s.; beef 2d.; bacon 4d.; pork was about 2d.
  Improved land was sold generally by the acre at the price of 20 bushels of
wheat.  Thus, wheat 2s. 6d.- land £2 10s.; wheat 3s.- land £3; wheat 3s.
6d.- land £3 10s.; wheat 5s.- land £5; wheat 7s. 6d - £7 10s.; wheat 10s.-
land £10.  When provender could be procured to keep stock through the
winter, milk, butter, and cheese became plenty for domestic use.  Swine were
easily raised and fattened.  Deer, turkeys, and other small game made a
plentiful supply of excellent provision in their season.  Roast venison and
stew-pies were luxurious dishes, which the hunter and his family enjoyed in
their log cabins with a high degree of pleasure.
  Having generally passed over the era of necessity that attended the first
settlement, about 1730, and for some time before, they mostly enjoyed a
pretty good living, were well fed, clothed, and lodged; and though all was
in the coarse way, yet their fare was wholesome and nourishing, their
clothes fine enough for labouring people, and no doubt they slept as sound
on chaff beds on the floor in the loft as they could have done with all the
finery that the inventions of later days have introduced.  The domestic
management that fell to the share of the women was generally well ordered.
As soon as wool and flax were raised, they manufactured good linen of
different kinds and degrees of fineness, drugget, linsey, worsted, &c.,
sufficient to clothe themselves and families; were very industrious and
frugal, contented to live on what their present means afforded, and were
generally well qualified to make the most proper use of what they had.
  Notwithstanding the engagements at home and the difficulty of travelling
in those early times, yet visits of friendship were frequent, not only to
relations, but others.  On these occasions, cider, metheglin or small beer,
toast of light biscuit of fine wheat flour, and milk, butter, cheese,
custards, pies, made an afternoon's repast.  Chocolate was sometimes used;
and in lack of other materials, the toast was sometimes made with rum and
water.  For common living, milk and bread, and pie, made the breakfast; the
milk being boiled and sometimes thickened in winter; good pork or bacon with
plenty of sauce, a wheat flour pudding or dumplings with butter and molasses
for dinner; and mush or hominy with milk and butter and honey, for supper.
Pies of green or dried apples were the universal standard of good eating,
especially with children.  When milk was scarce, small-beer thickened with
wheat flour and an egg, or cider in that way, made an agreeable breakfast.
  Wheat was the principal article for making money.  Butter, cheese,
poultry, and such articles were taken to market on horseback.  There were
but few stores in the neighbourhood, and those kept but few articles.
  Most of the original tracts were settled and improved before 1720, and in
1730 the lands up the Neshamony and in Plumstead were settled; and in New
Britain by Welsh generally.  Large fields were cleared and pretty well
fenced; low and swampy land was cleared out for meadow; and but little seed
of any kind of foreign grass was sown as the plough was seldom used to
prepare for meadow; and red and white clover were only propagated by manure,
after they were first somehow scattered about on the new settlement.
  From 1730 to 1750 as the people were industrious, the land fresh and
fertile and seasons favourable, their labours were blessed with a plentiful
increase; so that many plain dwelling houses and good barns were built,
convenient articles of household furniture were added by degrees and by the
means of productive labour, moderate riches increased insensibly.  The
winter of 1740-41 was very severe.  The snow was deep, and lay from the
latter end of December to the fourth of March; and in the period above
mentioned, there was generally more snow, and that lay longer on the ground
through the winters than of latter years.  Easterly storms of pretty heavy
rain, lasting mostly two or three days, were also much more frequent.
  Northern lights, I believe, are not so common of late years as formerly;
but of this I am not certain.
  Indian corn, not being an article of trade, was not attempted to be raised
in large quantities before 1750, nor until some years after.  It was dressed
by ploughing and harrowing between the rows, the hills all moulded nicely
with the hoe when the corn was small, and after ploughing, hilled up again
with the hoe.  For wheat, open fallows were preferred, which were generally
ploughed three times during the summer; but in this way, unless corn and
buckwheat had preceded, the blue grass, not being killed, became injurious
to the crop.  Hence what was called double cropping became common; which is
sowing oats on the corn-stalk and buckwheat ground, and then sowing wheat in
the fall.  This practice effectually killed the grass, and impoverished the
land; large fields being sown, and but small portions manured.  Liming
answered a good purpose, which kept the soil in better heart; but on the
whole, wheat crops were on the decline, growing poorly in the fall, being
eaten by lice or small flies; and in wet land, being frozen out by the
winter.  Mildew and rust sometimes destroyed it near harvest.  On all these
accounts, spring grain was more cultivated; and as horses, cattle, and pork
bore a better price, served in part to make up the deficiency.  But the land
generally suffered by a bad method of farming.
  Before this time, no cross occurrence happened materially to disturb the
general tranquillity; everything both public and private, went on in an even
and regular routine; moderate wishes were fully supplied; necessaries and
conveniences were gradually increased; but luxuries of any kind, except
spiritous liquors, were rarely thought of or introduced; either of apparel,
household furniture, or living.  Farm carts were had by the best farmers.
Thomas Canby, Richard Norton, Joseph Large, Thomas Gilbert, and perhaps a
few more, had wagons before 1745; and a few two-horse wagons from then to
1750 were introduced; some who went to market had light tongue-carts for the
purpose.  These were a poor make-shift, easily over-set, the wild team
sometimes ran away; and the gears often broke.  John Wells, Esq., was the
only person who ever had a riding chair.  He and Matthew Hughes were the
only justices of the peace, except Thomas Canby, who held a commission for
a short time; and there were no taverns in the two townships, except on the
Delaware, at Howell's and Coryell's ferries, (which was owing probably to
the disposition and manners of the inhabitants) and but one distillery a
short time.
  The preceding account will apply with general propriety to the state of
things until 1754, when a war began between England and France concerning
lands on the west and north-west of Pennsylvania.  Col. Washington was
defeated and taken prisoner on Wills' creek; and in the ensuing summer
General Braddock was defeated and killed in that country.  When the Indians
attacked the frontiers of this province, four or five hundred thousand
pounds were granted in a few years for the king's use; money was also sent
in from England to purchase provisions and in general the war introduced a
more plentiful supply of cash.  Trade and improvements were proportionably
advanced; the price of all kinds of produce was increased, wheat was from
six shillings to a dollar a bushel, and a land tax was raised to sink the
debt; yet the burden was not sensibly felt, as there was such an increasing
ability to bear it.
  As the quantity of cash increased during the war, so also there was a much
larger importation of foreign goods.  Bohea tea and coffee became more used,
which were not often to be found in any farmer's house before 1750.  Tea, in
particular, spread and prevailed almost universally.  Half silks and calico
were common for women's wearing; various modes of silk bonnets, silk and
fine linen neck-handkerchiefs; in short, almost every article of women's
clothing was of foreign manufacture.  The men wore jackets and breeches of
Bengal, nankin, fustian, black everlasting, cotton velvet, as the fashion of
the season determined the point, which changed almost every year.  Household
furniture was added to, both in quantity and kind; and hence began the
marked distinction between rich and poor, or rather between new-fashioned
and old-fashisoned, which has continued increasing ever since.  The first
beginning was by imperceptible degrees; I believe tea and calico were the
chief initiating articles.  Tea was a convenient treat on an afternoon's
visit, easily gotten ready at any time; and calico a light agreeable dress
that would bear washing.  On the whole, present calculation decided against
homespun of almost every kind, and in favour of foreign manufactures, which
were to be had in the city, or in country stores, so cheap, and often on
credit.
  The subject of old and new fashion bore a considerable dispute, at least,
how far the new should be introduced.  Some showed by their practice that
they were for going as far as they could; some stopped half way; and a few,
trying to hold out as long as they could, were not to be won upon by any
means more likely to prevail than by the women, who had a strong aversion to
appearing singular; so that at the present time, and for these twenty years
past, there are but few men, and fewer women, left as perfect patterns of
the genuine old-fashioned sort of people.

    State of the Country at Swatara, Pottsville and Mauch Chunk
           of 1829, as seen, and journalized by an observer.

  The MS. from which this is taken, being a picture of things as they were,
and from which they are continually changing by population and improvement,
may serve to preserve some tokens of their former wilderness state, to wit :
  On Monday, 3d August 1829, I started in the mail stage, at three o'clock
A.M., for Reading.  Found a full company of agreeable travellers -- went
twenty-six miles to Troy's to breakfast.  Giving time for a devouring
appetite.
  We approached Reading by 11 o'clock.  High hills and mountains seem to
encircle it.  We look down upon it as in a vale below us.  It covers a wide
extent of ground, and presents a mixture of log houses and finely built
three story brick buildings.  The place has an air of business.
  The first hotel there was the house of Conrad Weisser, seen in 1829, as
the little white store of General Keim, on the corner of Callowhill and Penn
streets, and since replaced by a great new house of fashion.  It was at that
place that C. Weisser, as Indian agent, used to deliver the Indian presents
-- here the war song of the savage was sung, the war dance wound down, and
the calumet of peace was smoked.  The house was built earlier than the town.
  Here I took my seat for Lebanon -- to go along the line of the Union canal
through the Tulpehocken country.  The Tulpehocken country ranging along the
line of the creek, to Lebanon, is a rich valley country, with high mountain
in the distant view.  The cultivation and scenery always fine.  This was the
favourite home of the Indians, and of their supplanters, the Germans.  To
this land went Conrad Weisser, the Indian interpreter [see Proud's History.
Post and Tedyuscunk, and Indians stopped there, in 1758 -- next at Fort
Hunter, on the Susquehanna.] He settled his farm at the present Womelsdorf,
where we arrived at half-past two o'clock -- a town chiefly of log houses on
a rising ground.  There I inquired for Weisser -- he has been buried there
many years -- his grandson is still there -- Old Willich Seltzer, now alive
there, remembers to have seen and talked with Conrad.  He was a good man,
the favourite of the Indians, who invited him to go and settle at their
home.  C. Weisser, as magistrate, married the first German minister there.
The present aged Reverend William Hendel is said to have many facts of the
primitive settlers.  The whole face of the country looks German -- all speak
that language, and but very few can speak English.  Almost all their houses
are of squared logs neatly framed -- of two stories high.  They look to the
eye like "Wilmington stripes" for the taste is to white-wash the smooth
mortar between the logs, but not the logs themselves, thus making the house
in stripes of alternate white and dusky wood colour.  Much I wanted to make
every house entirely white, with the white-wash of their abounding lime.
The barns were large and well filled, generally constructed of squared logs
or stone, but all the roofs were of thatched straw -- a novelty to my eye --
said to last fifteen years.  Their houses were shingled with lapped
shingles.  Saw no stately or proud mansions, but all looked like able
owners.  This character of houses and barns, I found the same throughout my
whole range of tour.
  As I rode through the Tulpehocken, much I thought of the former Indian
owners ---

                       "Whose hundred bands
           Ranged freely o'er those shaded lands,
           Where now there's scarcely left a trace,
           To mind one of that tawny race."

  Some few of them still clung about their former home till the period of
the Revolution, and then suddenly withdrew.  How it surprises the mind to
consider the present rich harvest fields, decked all over with houses --
canals and turnpikes running through former wilds.  This in a place which in
1755, after Braddock's defeat, was so new, so frontier, so possessed by the
Indians, that the massacres and ravages there were dreadful -- one little
girl was found alive, of six years of age, who had been scalped.  The city
gazettes of the day teemed with accounts of Indian devastations, at
Tulpehocken -- in Berks -- in Northampton -- scaring the inhabitants into
such towns as Lancaster, Easton &c.  The story ran that 1500 French and
Indians were encamped on the Susquehanna, only thirty miles above the
present Harrisburg !
  I found all the aged, with whom I talked in my travels, had Indian stories
to relate when questioned.  Near Pine grove is an aged woman now, who was
nine years a prisoner with the Indians from that neighbourhood.
  All the population we see are Germans of coarse manners and education.
Uninformed as they are, they are powerful enough in the interior to sway the
election, and to give us German rulers.  This seems strange to contemplate,
as we were originally English colonists.
  We arrived at Lebanon at half-past four o'clock, P.M., a large looking
modern town -- having a large court-house, prison, and three churches with
steeples -- the whole of a city aspect.  Even here the talk of the street
was still German, and occasional English.
  The place is famous now as the Summit level of the Union canal.  I found
the whole region a very level plain.  Six miles of the canal here was cut
through hard limestone rock found a little below the surface; it leaked
greatly -- they resorted to clay and puddling; finally planked the whole six
miles as tight as a tub !  A very expensive concern !
  All along my rides, I noticed every where fields strewed with flax laid to
dry -- for every where German women still use the spinning wheel !
Cheapness of manufactured goods will not allure them from their olden habits
of making home-made stuffs.
  I start along the Union canal, on foot -- go by the celebrated tunnel cut
out of solid rock, through a hill.  There I bathe in the canal; finally see
sixteen descending locks in seven miles -- reach Mrs. Jeffries' good brick
house called "Mount Union hotel", near the romantic banks of the Swatara.
There see a long and deep reservoir, used as a "feeder" by water works
there, which by steam power pump up and send back the water before used at
the Summit level.  It is sent back by a framed trough six miles long !  A
good supper and bed here were charged only 2s.6d. !  From the mount near
here, I looked northward over a very richly cultivated plain, formed along
the stream of the Swatara.  It had mountains near it.  It lay in squares of
various coloured fields, like the sections of a chequer board.  From the
canal here issued forth a beautiful cataract of forty feet, tumbling into
the Swatara, nearly drained out below.

  Having heard much of the great feeder, formed in the gaps of the Blue
mountains a few miles off, I started before sunrise to go along the line of
the canal leading to it, by Jones' town, four miles off.  This I also
undertook on foot.  It gave me much better chances of observation and the
means of keeping close to the canal.  It led through a romantic looking
country of alternate woods and farms along the margin of the Swatara.  I
every where found more cultivation than I had expected.  At length I was
much charmed, when I expected no such art of man, to see at a distance,
gleaming through the trees, a kind of magnificent bridge across the Swatara,
which on nearer approach proved to be a fine aqueduct to the canal, over
which I went to the opposite side.  Afterwards I passed a well finished
bridge at Jones' town; I saw at a distance the place where the dam of the
feeder was forming between the base of the two mountains -- closing in the
Swatara fifty feet deep, three-fourths of a mile wide, and seven miles long
!  A big affair indeed !  An expense hereafter to be avoided, by inclined
planes, as at Morris canal.
  About forty houses in Jones' town, and a steepled church on a level
ground.  Some locust trees before old-houses.
  Here I sought a horse and dearborne to convey me to the Blue mountain
pass.  Went through Stump town, a small log house town -- rich and
cultivated, in the county of Lebanon.  All Germans, none along the road
could answer me in English.  They are a heavy, toilsome race -- saw women at
thrashing -- heard no where the songs of the nursery -- no mothers joyful
with their children, all was dull and money-making.
  I went across the Blue mountain on foot -- I was desirous to feel, as well
as see its slow ascent and descent.  It took about four to five miles to get
across it, although itself at the lowest point leading to "Pine grove".  The
whole of it was covered with broken fragments of big stones and forest trees
growing between -- seemed a good den for rattlesmakes, but I saw none, nor
any kind of trace of wild animals !  At meridian I reached the summit of the
road, and sat me down on a stone in the shade, and there wrote this page of
my book on the Blue mountains !
  The tops of the hills below me, covered with woods, look like a level vale
covered with green velvet, and fields between of various cultivated hues.  I
hear distant dogs bark, cows low, and sheep bleat and tinkle.  See readily
at forty miles distance, where all the horizon seems bordered and shut in by
green mountains towering as my own, and through these are occasional
`passes'  where I see still further twenty miles or more, to other mountains
blue with distance.  From this resting stone where I sit, once looked out
the Indian wanderer, looking abroad as from the home of his Great Spirit.
 From hence they saw their smoking wigwams -- knew their corn fields, and
felt the love of their homes.  In such still regions as this, they sought
the bear and deer.  All this walk over the mountain was through constant
shade of lofty trees.  The country towards Pine grove, after my descent, was
in good tillage.
  As I cross another branch of the Swatara, observed another instance of the
usual bungling signs of the country, all done by country artists "unknown to
fame".  Here I read on a finger post, "PEINT gRoF", which being
interpreted, stood for "Pine grove" !  I before observed a sign lettered
thus, to wit : "Sheuin work & al wagons" -- which stood for all kinds of
wagon work and horse shoeing !  All the usual signs of inns, with heads of
generals, or horses, bulls, or bears, were clumsy daubs often marking the
genius of the host himself.
  Wednesday, 5th August -- began this day before sunrise, by walking four
miles to Schuylkill Haven, all along a good road and among farms -- feel
rejoiced to see myself so near to the head of the Schuylkill navigation.
Here thought of Penn, when he first rejoiced to see the Schuylkill, near to
Philadelphia -- looked forward to its future usefulness in uniting our
commerce to the Susquehanna.  Yet little he or they then knew of the region
where I now stand and ponder.  How often, and how many Indians, but half a
century ago, were familiar with this water as their favourite haunt -- near
here I see the canal, a work every where reducing savage wildness to level
or modelled paths &c.  Along this I make my walk, all is still in early
morn, the songsters of the grove are vocal, the sun just begins to gild the
scene and to give brilliance to the dew drops -- canal boats are moving to
and fro, the rush and fall of waters are heard in the locks, the boatmen's
horns resound -- half-tunes are blown abroad, and all the scene opens on the
senses from my former silent walk, like the spells of enchantment.  As I
proceed along a well-beaten canal path, passing lock after lock, and boats
after boats -- I see much romantic beauty and scenery, down the acclivity
beneath my walks, in the closely adjacent and continuous Schuylkill, which
here for a long distance adheres closely to the canal.  As I approached to
Mount Carbon, the high hills came in view -- in time they surrounded me; and
when I reached the proper landing place, or the head of the navigation, I
see myself in a busy town, at the water side, and at the narrow base of
mountains of 1000 feet in height, covered all over with woods.  Wagons
appear all along the road, drawing coal to the landing -- there are great
wharves for its deposit, and boats about them to convey it to Philadelphia.
Several warehouses, numerous boats building on the stocks -- all noise,
bustle and enterprise. Onward half a mile in ascending line, come to the
general town called Pottsville, named after the original proprietor, whose
blazing furnace still is there for melting ore and casting iron.
  Took my breakfast at eight o'clock, at Troutman's hotel, where I found my
valise of clothes, before sent on from Reading.
  Pottsville is another Rochester in rapidity of rise; seems to be now a
town of 100 houses, and constantly adding, buildings are every where going
up.  It is a high ground, but in front and rear close shut up with coal
mountains of 1000 feet high.  The Sharp mountain and its range is ever in
the eye -- much city people here, all the storekeepers are from cities; no
German characters here, save among the wagoners of the coal, and the country
visiters.  The Schuylkill is in sight, then hides itself between the
mountains.  Then I visited several coal mines; the North American was worked
into 1700 feet, others usually 600 or 700 feet.  I saw the process of the
railway cars.  The houses are generally plastered in imitation of stone, or
white, and several are of brick; lots and houses bring great prices -- much
speculation abroad in lots and in coal acres.  Only one old log house in the
place, some are of white frame.  Saw two rattlesnakes which had been killed
in the neighbourhood.  The hotels here are large. The coal wagons are
constantly going along the street, making it black thereby.  A rail road is
forming along the river, on the other side, which will take off the
annoyance.  All the conversation here at present is about coal -- one Gothic
church, Presbyterian, and one Roman chapel.
  Lively and business like as is the present Pottsville, the man is now
living here, John Boyer by name, an old revolutionary soldier now in his
eightieth year, born and reared at the present Schuylkill Haven, in which
neighbourhood he had often been engaged in resisting the predatory invasions
of the Indians.  The country around him was long a wilderness, and was often
the scene of bloody massacre, much of which he had seen with his own eyes.
  An old Indian war-path, leading from the tribes north of the Susquehanna,
crossed the mountain at Pottsville, and the few settlers who had braved all
danger and had pitched their cabins in the midst of such perils, were forced
to struggle desperately at times to save the scalps of their families from
the knife.  Fort Henry once stood at the head of the Swatara, at the foot of
Kittaning.
  On Thursday, 6th August, early in the morning, I started from Pottsville
in a dearborne, having Mr. L. as a companion, to go across to the "Mung
Chung" coal mine, said to be twenty miles off by the shortest route, over an
unfrequented road, much in primitive wildness.  We have no guide, but are
told to go between the Sharp and Broad mountain range, till we reach our
end.  We pass Port Carbon, Middle Port and Upper Port, on Schuylkill; towns
now on paper, but intended to rival Pottsville by their coal regions; they
have only a house here and there.  I am told Maiden creek was "Ontalaunee".
This ride was through wild regions, over hills and down into ravines, and
here and there a farm, or saw-mill.  The last third of our route was rougher
and ruder, much woods -- cypress swamps, high hills, Tuscarora mountains,
Wild-cat mountain, Panther creek -- wild names !  The road almost
obliterated with bushes -- had often to get out and walk beside our
dearborne.  We breakfasted at Middle Port, a half-way house.  Along here is
forming a rail road, down to Pottsville.  The Schuylkill here is dammed
across for Casner's saw-mill, a good head -- Schuylkill has two heads, being
springs, each eight miles off.  We again passed another branch of the
Schuylkill near another Casner's saw-mill, and there we undressed and bathed
in the stream; after this our progress was very wild.  Broad mountains and
Sharp mountains 1000 feet high on either side, and our way along a
wilderness suited for deer and "leather stocking" hunters.  It was all a
place to interest the feelings of any unaccustomed eye; yet in this lonely
region, we once in a while broke upon some German cottage.  In one of these
we made a dinner of bread and milk, and fed our horse.  We did not hurry, we
rather walked our way; early in the afternoon we reached the Mung Chung coal
mountain.  It was on the summit of a flat mountain, 1000 feet high, and nine
miles from the village of Mung Chung.  Here the mine was all quarried open,
forming a great open area of five acres, quite different from those at
Pottsville, which go into the side of the mountain, working the way by a
subterraneous path, &c.  Here the region is denuded of trees.  Houses for
the miners make a small town.  After seeing all the strange operations, and
much ingenuity in machinery &c., we join the cars to make our descent on the
rail.  We began our descending career in several divisions, fourteen cars to
each coal division; I chose my lot with the mule division -- twelve of these
were in cars, three mules abreast munching their hay, while we went off ten
miles an hour, and sometimes, for change sake, at twenty miles -- could go
at sixty miles and more.  This is a very grateful ride, so rapid, feel so
much air, and yet see trees so still -- go along the side of a declining
mountain, and see down amidst trees far below us; or over to other high
mountains beyond us.  As we proceeded we saw gathering vapour rolling along
the ridge of mountains, and curling and circling to the vale below; then a
general mist succeeded, and quickly rain in pelting patter came over us,
wetting us beyond our wishes.  On the whole we got on well enough, and
descending by the hill from the stopping place, we came to Kimball's
capacious and elegant hotel in time to sit down to a welcome supper, with a
company of about thirty ladies and gentlemen. The house is three stories --
has two ranges of galleries.  It is set into the base of an impending
mountain 900 feet above it.
  On the opposite side of the Lehigh is a mount, 900 feet in height, and the
canal along its base; near the bridge is a dam across the river.  Looking up
or down the river is very picturesque; all the scenery is very romantic.  A
grist-mill of great power is in the town, and two or three saw-mills.   The
boat-building is a curiosity -- here four men make a coal ark for
twenty-five tons of coal in thirty minutes !  They plane the joints of the
pine boards with a plane of nine irons, turned to give it power by a crank;
twenty spikes of six inches length are driven home at a stroke, one at a
time; every thing in this region shows invention, so much so, that it looks
like enchantment, and Josiah White himself is the great wizard !  At his
house, on the side of the hill, he has a deer park.  The rush and roar of
the water here are sensible to the ear day and night.  The river goes up
seventeen miles higher to Pine swamps, whence they send down rafts, on which
ladies and gentlemen make pleasant parties.  Every thing here delights
ladies, there is so much adventure -- looking hazardous, but with out harm;
for them to descend on cars -- or on rafts over rapids, is very exciting.
While I write now under a forest shade at my hotel, I see up the river,
ladies rowed about in a small boat, shouting with joy as they go.  We have
trout at table caught up the river.
  Friday, 7th August, I prepare at midday to make a start for Easton, at the
mouth of the Lehigh, and to ride in the stage along the romantic banks of
the river, in sight of the excellent canal.  There we see many miles, as we
ride amidst towering trees, running up the rocky mountains high above our
road.  Often we see the Lehigh dammed across, and the schutes, as they were
formerly made by the inventive Josiah White, for the deepening and use of
the river.  Came to Lehighton, where we took a dinner-snack -- a small place
-- saw there the place of Fort Allen, now having only its well remaining
there.  At that fort in 1758, C.F. Port, the interpreter, records his
stopping with his Indians.  It seems not long ago, and yet now all has been
civilized and settled.  At Lehighton we went over a bridge, close by the
former fort, to the northern side of the river.  There we ride close
alongside of the canal.  These canals so closely adhering to the sites of
the streams which they rob of water and bear off their fame, strikes me as
something parasitical.
  We finally leave the canal as we come through the lofty water gaps.  There
is there a great reservoir of water retained by a dam.  We now proceed
through the country farms leading towards Easton; the country looks but
tame, hills diminish, finally we reach Easton by moonlight.  This day we
have a passenger who carried with us a rattle snake in a box with a glass
plate; it took the jolts and company very quietly, but rarely shaking his
rattles, or seeming to care for us !

               Former state of Beasts of Prey, Deer, &c.

  Our inland country was originally well stocked with bear, wolves, deer and
turkeys.  The flesh of the two last was not only a luxury, but a necessary
article of food.  Deer skin breeches, and deer skin facings to woolen
pantaloons (after one season's service) were the height of country fashion.
The wolf made great havoc with the few sheep introduced; committing
depredations at the same time upon the wild deer.  He has been known to
attack cows.  The bear confined himself to hogs; and many instances are
given of his boldness in capturing and carrying away provisions of this
kind.  He springs suddenly upon his victim, grasps him in his arms or fore
legs with a force which is irresistible, erects himself upon his hind legs
like a man, and makes off in an instant with his load.  The piercing squeal
of the hog is the first warning of his presence to the owner.  A large bear,
which meets with no obstruction, will make his way through a thick wood in
this manner with a hog of good size, faster than a man on foot can follow.
The groans and struggles of the animal in his embrace become weaker and
weaker, and soon cease entirely.  One of these creatures took a shoat from a
drove belonging to J. H. in his presence.  He followed him closely, but the
bear evidently gained in the race till he came to a brush fence, and not
being able to climb it with sufficient expedition, dropped the dying pig in
order to secure himself.  Mr. E.S. was chopping on his land, when one of his
hogs was taken near by.  After a severe contest with clubs, Mr. S. recovered
the body of his hog, and using it as a bait, afterwards caught the offender
in a trap.  Another seized a full grown hog belonging to A. W. near by, and
not withstanding men were near and made close pursuit, he carried it off
without difficulty.
  When Mr. E. C. lived in his log house, his hogs were fed across the road
at a trough in the field.  One morning, as he returned from feeding them, a
large bear fell upon the hogs before he had reached the house.  By the time
he had seized his rifle and recrossed the road, the bear had secured one,
and as he rose, preparatory to a retreat, received a bullet in the chest.
He then let the hog fall and made fiercely at Mr. C., but in making an
effort to scale the bars, fell backward and died.
  
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        WATSON'S  ANNALS  of  PHILADELPHIA  and  PENNSYLVANIA

                       Appendix cont...

  Mr. J. C. and his dogs fell in with one of a moderate size, while
traversing the woods in search of horses.  An engagement followed in which
the bear had apparently the advantage.  To an early settler, the loss of a
dog, his companion and faithful sentinel, was a misfortune that affected,
not only his interest, but the best feelings of his heart.  Mr. C. had
nothing in hand but a bridle, and could therefore bring no weapons to the
assistance of his friends but such dry clubs as lay about him.  The animal
paid very little attention to these, but at length finding a young sapling,
he broke it into a good stick, and managed to give several hard knocks
repeatedly on the same spot, just behind the ear.  By this means he was
killed, and the dog released.
  By the assistance of a large and valuable wolf dog, Mr. D. P. and Mr. D.
F. killed one with clubs and stones.
  If the body of a hog was recovered partly eaten, the same bear could
generally be taken for the remainder, and showed little or no sagacity in
avoiding his fate.  For this purpose a heavy steel trap was used, with
smooth jaws and a long drag chain with iron claws at the extremity.  It was
not fastened to the spot, because the great strength of the animal would
enable him to free himself, but as he ran after being snared, the claws
would catch upon the brush, retarding his flight and leaving a distinct
trail.  He was generally overtaken within two miles, exhausted of strength.
Here the dogs were first allowed an opportunity to exhibit their courage and
natural animosity before the rifle put an end to his degradation and
sufferings.  In these conflicts, if the shackles were upon his hind legs
leaving the fore paws free, there were but few dogs desirous of a close
combat the second time.
  In the winter, the inhabitants of this and the adjoining townships
determined to make an effort to clear the country of the bear and of the
wolf at the same time.  These were four drives, or large hunts, organized
during the winter.  They were frequently got up in the new country by those
who were not professed hunters, for the purpose of taking a few deer and
turkeys, then so common.  A large tract of wild land, the half or fourth of
a township, was surrounded by lines of men, with such intervals that each
person could see or hear those next him, right and left.  The whole acted
under the command of a captain, and at least four subordinates, who were
generally mounted.  At a signal of tin horns or trumpets, every man advanced
in line towards the centre, preserving an equal distance from those on
either hand, and making as much noise as practicable.  From the middle of
each side of the exterior line, a blazed line of trees was previously marked
to the centre as a guide, and one of the subofficers proceeded along each as
the march progressed.  About a half or three-fourths of a mile from the
central point, a ring of blazed tree was made, and a similar one at the
ground of meeting, with a diameter at least equal to the greatest rifle
range.  On arriving at the first ring, the advancing lines halted till the
commandant made a circuit and saw the men equally distributed and all the
gaps closed.  By this time a herd of deer might be occasionally seen driving
in affright from one line to another.  At the signal, the ranks move forward
to the second ring, which is drawn around the foot of an eminence, or the
margin of an open swamp or lake.  Here, if the drive has been a successful
one, great numbers of turkeys may be seen flying among the trees away from
the spot.  Deer, in flocks, sweeping around the ring under an incessant
fire, panting and exhausted.  When thus pressed, it is difficult to detain
them long within the ring.  They become desperate, and make for the line at
full speed.  If the men are too numerous and resolute to give way, they leap
over their heads and all the sticks, pitchforks and guns raised to oppose
them.  By a concert of the regular hunters, gaps are sometimes made to allow
them to escape.  The wolf is now seen skulking through the bushes, hoping to
escape observation by concealment.  If bears are driven in, they dash
through the brush in a rage from one part of the field to another,
regardless of the shower of bullets playing upon them.  After the game
appears to be mostly killed, a few good marksmen and dogs scour the ground
within the circle to stir up what may be concealed or wounded.  This over,
they advance again to the centre with a shout, dragging along the carcasses
which have fallen, for the purpose of making a count.  [The foregoing facts
were communicated by a friend.]
  Wolves were taken with difficulty in steel traps, but more readily in log
pens, prepared like the roof of a house, shelving inwards on all sides, and
containing the half devoured carcass of a sheep, upon which they had made a
previous meal.  The wolf easily clambered up the exterior side of the cabin,
and entered at the top, which was left open; but once fairly within it, he
could neither escape of throw it down.
  Turkeys were taken in square pens, made of lighter timber, and covered at
the top.  They entered at an open door in the inside, which was suspended by
a string that led to a catch within.  This string and catch were covered
with chaff, which induced them to enter, and while engaged in scratching
about the chaff to get at the grain mingled with it, some unlucky companion
would strike the catch and let the door down behind them all.

     Sea-shore watering places -- Cape May -- Long Beach, &c., 1822-3.

  We are enabled by access to some MS. journals, to portray in some degree,
a former state of the sea-shore watering places, which may serve to mark
things as they were, to those who shall come after us, and may behold things
in another aspect of improvement and luxury, to wit :
  These pages shall be appropriated to catch some of the fleeting images and
things, which may flit across the mind or press upon the sight, in an
intended excursion to the sea-shore, at Cape Island.
  Behold us safely pushed off from the wharf, and going at a rate of ten
miles an hour !  What variety of images crowd upon the mind !  We turn to
friends at home, and instinctively sigh farewell -- we think how far we
shall be off at the close of the day, and the new society we must encounter.
We look among the numerous passengers (forty of different sexes) and feel
that we form opinions of our companions from our transient glances at their
exterior.  Some we recognize as plain sober persons; others, as young and
sprightly dashers -- all anticipating the fulfillment of their several
hopes.  Here and there a pale languid frame indicates its forlorn hope from
a sea bath -- doing what they can to arrest the tide of their ebbing life;
others, all nerve and sinew, seem going to make life more sportful.  What
sights of ships, boats, and busy life upon the waters !  How independent we
feel whilst thus conscious that the mighty frame of such a pondrous vessel
is set in motion, with all the men thereunto connected, to minister to our
pleasures and to our comforts.  What elegance in such a vessel of
accommodation and comforts !   How rapidly the passed objects fade from the
view -- and with what interest we look ahead to discern the new things
breaking upon our vision !  With what remarkable ease and quiet the captain
gives and executes his orders and purposes.  A ship of equal magnitude could
only be urged on with a load of curses.  No swearing in this vessel !  There
is something sublime in contemplating this wonder of the genius of Fitch and
Fulton, making such a mighty fabric fly like a dart through the pressing
waves.  Man "shall have dominion" over all things which God has made.  How
destructive an element is fire, and yet to what purposes of steam, of
health, warmth and comfort, does it not minister !
  As we pass in rapid succession the fleeting objects, I remember my
impressions, respecting the same things, when a lad; I perceive that all the
places on the Delaware then appeared of more importance than they do now --
and even greater -- hills looked bigger then.
  We come off the high lands of Christiana, seen at a long distance -- its
extreme verdure and proper mixture of woods and fields is very beautiful to
the eye.  Its gradual elevation from the river presents a very interesting
scene, and makes us surprised that in such beautiful scenery, there should
be no appearance of elegance, as of country seats, in the mansions, &c.
  Come to at New Castle -- a number of sea vessels at anchor here.  The
spire to one of the churches, although plain, is very conspicuous at a great
distance on the water.  Went ashore, into the main front street, to see the
house built in 1687, after the manner of the houses in Holland, of brick
said to have been then imported from thence.  The bricks are very small,
yellowish, and now rough-cast with plaster.  It presents its gable-end to
the front street -- the roof is remarkably steep, making two stories in
itself.  The end walls are higher than the roof, and have regular steps on
their upper surface above the roof.  The year, 1687, is in iron letters, as
clamps, on the front wall.  One feels a sentiment of veneration at seeing
such a vestige of antiquity.  The generation to which it belonged, and those
who successively inhabited it, have all gone to join "the nations beyond the
flood".
  After this place, till we reach the cape at six o'clock the same evening,
the river or bay becomes wider and wider, till it at length forms "the bay"
and sometimes leaves us out of sight of land on one side or other,
alternately.  We pass many ships and brigs to and fro.  Some after long
voyages, earnestly anticipating the pleasures of an arrival to greet long
absent friends; and others bound abroad to distant climes, filled with hopes
and fears for their eventual success therein.
  As we near the beach, we see many carriages in waiting to beat us to the
boarding houses, three miles off, on the opposite sea beach.  Before
sundown, we arrive at our boarding house (Aaron Bennett's) at Cape Island.
We take the house nearest to the surf, because we wish, while we stay, to be
salted and pickled with sea air.  We find the three houses very full of
guests, containing together perhaps near two hundred persons.  [The time
will come when, from the natural advantages of this place, there will be
much more resort here, and much improvement in the accommodations and
entertainments.]
  Our first night we were crowded, so that I had to take up my rest on a
pallet of wood; an old settee and a pillow made me to rest myself in very
sound sleep through the night.  The last comers had to accept the roughest
fare.  I have a heart for these things; and when the mind is in favour of
conforming ourselves to our condition, we readily make rough things smooth.
I intend to be pleased with all I cannot mend; and I have no doubt I shall
much increase my comforts thereby.
  The sea here often encroaches on the houses -- several acres of the lawn
in front of the house (Bennett's) have been gradually, or by storms, washed
off into the sea.  The distance now from the house is one hundred and
sixty-five feet.  In 1804, as then measured by Captain Decatur, it was three
hundred and thirty-four feet off.  It was formerly three hundred feet still
further off -- say sixty or seventy years ago -- [so old men, present, told me.]
  The ladies, at appointed hours in the forenoon and afternoon, go into the
surf, at which time gentlemen do not walk on the banks.  The ladies wear
flannel and other woollen dresses -- none go out above half their depth.
  The sea diet is not so good as we expected -- the variety of fish is not
great nor frequent.  We ask often for crabs -- and the oysters are small.
  It is sometimes curious to observe the variety of men and manners, and the
very different interest we feel in faces and persons.  Some possess that
frank and open unreserve that seems to invite and ensure sociability; whilst
others seem to forbid such freedom of approach -- therefore, with some we
seem to be at home and free; whilst others we seem to be likely to know no
better after seeing them here, than if we had never broken bread in their
society.
  Some parties have been made up to go off Indian river, fifty miles off, to
fish.  Sometimes they catch several hundred fish -- at other times ladies
and all go to the shore and see the fishing with a seine.
  Cape Island is a village of about twenty houses, and the streets are very
clean and grassy; but our walks are generally up and down the beach.  I
generally walk a mile at a time, and several times in a day.
  What a sublime and awful contemplation is the great deep !  How wonderful
the power of Him who made it such.  What vast and unexplored treasures lie
concealed beneath its ample bosom !  How it teems with animal life -- and
withal how useful to man !  To see the constant succession of outward and
inward bound vessels is very interesting.  What various thoughts and
enterprises must engage the numerous breasts, which compose the inmates of
those floating habitations !  Some feel buoyant with the hopes of seeing
wives, sisters, husbands, or brothers, they may never see.  Some are
emigrants, forsaking all their former connexions, coming to new lands to
seek happiness and wealth, and perchance to die.  Some, having amassed
fortunes abroad, are returning to spend the fruits of their foreign
enterprise 'otium cum dignitate' among their friends -- and perchance some
of ruined reputation and ill-gained riches are coming to seek a quiet and a
refuge denied to them where known.  How easy to extend the thoughts of all
those who are thus busily thinking for themselves !  How astonished and
confounded we should all gaze upon one another, if all our thoughts were
necessarily as open and unconcealed as our visages; or our hearts were as
exposed to each other as before God.
  Thursday, the 8th August -- Have now been here since Monday night -- it
really seems long, although there is no disrelish to anything here; but time
seems long when one is broken off from the usual habits.  Last night one of
the gentlemen played dancing tunes on his flute, and several made themselves
merry with dancing in the dining hall.  They were so well pleased, that
to-night a more regular ball is to be given, and the ladies and gentlemen
from the other boarding houses (McKinsey's and Hughes') are invited.
Several riding parties go off today along the beach and other places.  I can
perceive that even pleasure sates; for several that have now stayed out
their time express much desire to see the steamboat again to take them home.
The arrival of new company, and the departure of some of the old twice a
week, produces a wonderful bustle for the first night, while both parties
remain in the house, and leave several of the gentlemen to take their rest
on tables, chairs and settees.
  Several of us have a desire to engage a pilot boat to take us on to
Tuckerton beach -- we expect in such a trip of sixty miles a more direct
experience of the sea and the tossing waves. Several may get sick, and if
the wind is fair, we shall be transported to an entire new company in six or
seven hours.
  Among our few amusements -- we swing -- gather curious shells and pebbles
upon the strand -- walk the piazza, and converse.  A curious and laughable
exercise is to try to walk blindfolded to any given object in a direct line.
It is impossible to conceive how very much we are prone to deviate to the
right or left.  Some would almost describe a semicircle, whilst they thought
they were walking straight to the mark. Ladies and gentlemen exercise at
this.  Some pitch quoits -- some play domino.
  Among the subjects of novelty and interest got up here, we were indebted
to the enterprise of a Mr. Woolston, from near Wilmington, for a draw of a
seine for catching sharks and porpoises.  This cost us by subscription
thirty dollars -- say twenty dollars for twenty men, &c.  The seine used is
of great weight and strength, and made of best rope.  The original materials
cost $1500; and the whole belongs to a company, who, in the proper season,
make it a business here to catch schools of porpoises and render their
livers and fat for lamp-oil, at one dollar per gallon.  Early in the
morning, the seine was drawn off about one-sixth of a mile from shore; and a
boat at each end was anchored there to wait till porpoises should attempt to
pass between them and the shore.  Several schools came near but none went
inside.  They remained off all day.  In drawing it to land in the evening,
it brought ashore six sharks and two large fishes of the skate kind, very
like bats in their form and appearance.  One or two of the sharks were eight
feet long.  They had great muscular vigour after their heads were off; and
their heads for several hours after they were off -- if stood up upon their
base, and a stick thrust into their throat, would snap violently and with
much strength, their teeth into the wood.  It is strange that these sharks
occupy the same waters in which we bathe, and yet never molest us.  Even
when some go out swimming and floating beyond their depth.
  Last night the gentlemen at Hughes' gave a ball in return for the one at
our house the night before.  (Ours cost the contributors $1.62 1/2 for each
gentleman.)  We were all indiscriminately invited -- but few, however, went.
The ladies made up a great many gardens.  Some were wild and some were
sunflowers.  The chandelier was made of oak hoops from casks, and covered
with evergreens plucked from some neighbouring bushes.
  It is worthy of remark how very much of the timbers and wrecks of vessels
we see employed in all the fences and sheds in the village.  They may be
known by their marks of rust from spikes &c., in the wood.  When one
considers the heartaches and terrors of those who must have been their
companions (if they lived) who came floating with them on the tempest
surges, we must feel a measure of gloom and sympathy to look upon them, and
to think that this or that plank was a poor sufferer's last refuge.
  I have been much interested in hearing the relation of the incidents of
the late war at this place.  The British, by commanding the ocean, were
frequently off these capes.  The main fleet would lay off Cape Henlopen; but
their tenders, launches and smaller vessels, made such frequent threats of
landing, and ravaging the country for supplies of cattle &c., as to make a
connected guard along the whole coast necessary.  They would frequently
capture small vessels and immediately set them on fire.  They sometimes
landed with flags of truce to exchange or land prisoners.  Once they
attacked a large American privateer, and the fight was very interesting on
both sides, and close to the shore.  She got on the breakers and went to
pieces.  I felt, whilst I heard these recitals, as if I should have been
much interested to have been present.
  Whilst at church, I saw a gentleman with a shark-cane.  It was formed from
the spine bones of the shark.  I observed, that persons took out all the
spines of those we lately took.  The cane had a steel elastic wire run
through its whole length -- was varnished and had a neat silver head.  Its
general appearance was that of the Indian reed-cane.
  Monday night brought us the arrival of the steamboat with new company, and
much bustle.  We had just sat down to supper when we received ten new
guests, chiefly Quaker ladies.  To these were soon added a company of
fifteen men and five women, from Cape Henlopen, to sup and spend the night.
They had a fiddle, and some an excess of drink.  After supper, they set to
dancing, and to rude mirth, and kept it up till midnight.  I went to bed,
and slept through the midst of their shuffling and boozy mirth.
  The entire exemption which one feels at a watering place, from all the
usual family concerns of housekeeping or business, is a state which a
care-crazed man of business should feel to arrive at any just conception of
it.  It would make us bad and useless members of the community to live thus
freed (constantly) from the concerns and obligations of life; but a man, who
labours ordinarily much for himself and others, should occasionally step
into such a new state of existence.  The transition is so extreme, that it
is capable of producing mental and bodily emotions, calculated to loose him
from many morbid and nervous afflictions of body.  Let the closely confined
city drudge, by all means, visit such a 'sans souci' establishment, and
abandon his mind and body to absolute freedom of both.  It will make him a
more ethereal being. 
  The season of bathing at Cape May begins about the 8th of July, and
continues to the last week in August.
  Cape May must, at some future day, be the great resort of the southern
gentry.  All those who live in Maryland and Virginia, nearest to the city of
Baltimore, will ride there, quit their carriages or send them home, and take
the steamboat to Frenchtown and New Castle where they can, the same day,
join the steamboat from Philadelphia.  In this way Marylanders and
Virginians will get to Cape May on the same day from Baltimore.  All the
gentry of Delaware and Philadelphia will find it to their advantage to go to
Cape May of course.  The beach is so decidedly preferable to Long branch
that it must be preferred, whenever the boarding houses at Cape May shall
have made enough to enable them to make such improvements as are needful there.
  I predict, too, that the time will ere long come, when pilot boats will be
engaged for 15 to $20 to take parties of fifteen to twenty-people as often
as once a week to the houses of entertainment at Tucker's and Manahawkin
beach, sixty miles.  All those who want to see and feel the exercize of a
sea voyage and sea-sickness, and to get out of sight of land, will become
parties to such excursions.  I was the first who proposed this; and if a
pilot boat had come to land while I talked of it, I had a dozen persons
ready to embark and to come home to Philadelphia by the Tuckerton stage.


          A Trip to Long beach Seashore, 1823

  The country from Evesham down to Tuckerton has all the appearance of its
original wildness -- few houses or settlements appear.  Pine and oak woods
on both sides of the road perpetually; and for at least 30 miles of the
road, the bushes on either side fill up the whole road, which is scarcely
the single path which one wagon fills.  We met almost nothing on the road to
turn us out.  I could thus have a very good conception of how the country
looked in the hands of the aborigines, some few of whom still linger about.
  Was much interested to see the formidable ruins of Atsion iron works (27
1/2 miles).  They looked as picturesque as the ruins of abbeys &c., in
pictures.  There were dams, forges, furnaces, storehouses, a dozen houses
and lots for the men, and the whole comprising a town; a place once
overwhelming the ear with the din of unceasing ponderous hammers, or
alarming the sight with fire and smoke, and smutty and sweating Vulcans.
Now, all is hushes; no wheels turn, no fires blaze, the houses are unroofed,
and the frames &c., have fallen down, and not a foot of the busy workmen is
seen.
  Little Egg Harbour (now a poor country and population) was once a place
(in my grandfather's time, when he went there to trade &c.) of great
commerce and prosperity.  The little river there used to be filled with
masted vessels.  It was a place rich in money.  As farming was little
attended to, taverns and boarding houses were filled with comers and goers.
Hundreds of men were engaged in the swamps cutting cedar, and saw-mills were
numerous and always in business, cutting cedar and pine boards.  The Forks
of Egg harbour was the place of chief prosperity; many shipyards were there;
vessels were built and loaded out to the West Indies; New York, and
Philadelphia. The southern and eastern cities received their chief supplies
of shingles, boards and iron from this place.  The trade too, in
iron-castings while the fuel there was abundant, was very great.  The
numerous workmen, all without dependence on cultivation of the soil,
required constant supplies of beef, pork, flour, groceries &c. from abroad.
Even the women wore more of imported apparel than in any other country
places.  Merchants from New York and Philadelphia went there occasionally in
such numbers that the inns and boarding houses could not contain them, and
they had to be distributed among private houses.  On such occasions they
would club and have a general dance, and other like entertainments.
  Sometimes rich cargoes came ashore on the beach, and were brought up the
river for public sale, and brought there many traders to buy.
  The vessels from New York and New England on trading voyages were numerous
before the Revolution.  The inlet was formerly the best on the coast; and
many vessels destined for Philadelphia in the winter, because of the ice in
the Delaware, made into Egg harbour river, and there sold out their cargoes
to traders from New York and Phiiladelphia.
  In these times Great Egg harbour had little or no distinction.  Its inlet
and advantages were not good.  It since enjoys more than Little Egg
harbour.  Now both those places do their chief business in taking cord wood,
especially pine, to the cities; but formerly they did none of that, when
fuel was cheaper and easier procured.
  In the time of the Revolutionary war, Little Egg harbour river was a good
refuge for our privateers or their prizes.  Many sales were made there of
prize goods.  The British, aware of it, endeavoured to avenge themselves.
They entered it in light vessels and destroyed Chestnut neck, a town of
about 20 houses, which have not been since rebuilt.
  Count Pulaski, with his legion was down there, and had an action with the
British in the Revolution.
  There used to be a considerable exportation of sassafras from Egg harbour.
Some vessels went direct to Holland with it "north about" to avoid, I
believe, some British orders of trade therein.  The Dutch made it into a
beverage which they sold under the name of "sloop".  This commerce existed
before the war of the Revolution.
  When I ride over these lands and see so much soil whitened and glistened
in the sun, especially in the woods where vegetation cannot conceal, I am
forcibly persuaded that all these Jersey lands were once traversed by the
finny monsters of the great Atlantic deep; and where the formal pine trees
tower, there the billows rolled !
  We arrived safely at Tuckerton at 7 o'clock in the evening.  It proved to
be a much neater and more civilized place than I expected.  Several houses
were painted, and were of boards, save Tucker's store, which was of brick.
I should suppose it contains fifty buildings; twenty houses are on the main
street.  It has a Methodists' and Friends' meeting house; a mill dam and
grist and saw-mill, and near it a wind-mill to make salt.  This last article
is made with much success and profit.  The work cost $4,000.  The people
here have several fields planted with the castor-oil plant, and have two or
three mills to grind it.  They find it very profitable.  Their chief export
has been pine wood.
  Friday morning at 7 o'clock, I left Tuckerton with Capt. Horner, to go to
Horner's house on the Long beach.  Had head wind, and arrived at about 10
o'clock; fare 25 cents !  The price of going in this vessel to sea or
elsewhere is 25 cents, when company is made.  As I came out of the creek my
eyes were arrested with a considerable mound, on which three or four large
cedars were growing.  It was a hill of oyster and clam shells, left there by
the aboriginal Indians long since.  They dried their clams.  What numbers
they must have consumed to have made such a hill !
  Horner's house, at which I have sat down for the present, is a new house,
built and set up by a company of gentlemen in Philadelphia for the purpose
of sea-bathing.  It is all made for good cheer and free and easy comforts,
without any attempt at elegance.  None of the floors are planed, and the
side walls are rough boards, and the ceilings are white-washed.  Its
appointment of liquors and table is very good.  It is set down on an
extremely desolate beach, full of broken and small sand-hills with out a
solitary tree.  Its very desolation increased my sense of comforts !  I the
more enjoyed the solid diet of the table; its zest was heightened by
contrast !  Its desolation too, was so isolated as to cut me off from all
the world, and seemed to make me begin there an entire new existence !  Thus
I found charms where others might have been disgusted.  But it is a manifest
disadvantage that the bathers have to walk half a mile to the shore across
the sand, and the ladies to ride in a cart.  This company intend to increase
its benefits and comforts.  As it has fine shooting and fishing, and a grand
surf -- it will always best suit gentlemen who love rough and vigorous fare.
The beach is twenty miles long, and to the northward has several houses, and
so much of cedar wood as to shelter red foxes.  The tables are a cover which
is set on trussels and moved out of the room.  The room is about twenty-six
by fifteen feet.  The proprietors intend to build a large house next summer.
[This is since done, and every thing is in more refinement.]  This
establishment is quite new.  They have dug and found a fine well of fresh
water at ten feet depth near the house.  It had never entered the mind of
former people that good water could be found.  In great sea storms, the sea
has covered this whole beach, and the water came quite up to the ground
floor of the house.  The inlets and the beach have much altered in fifty
years.  It was once covered with cedar trees.  Now all are gone.  The inlets
in the war of the Revolution admitted two frigates to come in, and now there
is only water for small vessels. 
  This is a great place for the killing of ducks and geese in the winter.
They have nothing else to do, and use decoys and ambush, and very often lay
out to shoot as the flocks fly over them.  The house at Tucker's beach is a
cluster of three houses built at different times.  The original house of the
celebrated Mother Tucker is a one-story house, with a hipped roof, and front
piazza.  When you enter this piazza you are struck with the display of names
cut in the boards of the house by the summer visiters; and probably one
hundred clams are nailed up, of large size, having names inscribed on them.
The house stands about the length of five hundred feet from the seashore.
The salt meadow comes close up to the house, and the house is elevated on a
heap of sand and shells.  The room in which I lay on my cot and write this
is open directly to the ocean.  I see the vessels buffeting the waves, and
the roar of the bellowing surf seems to lie just below me.
  These beaches are much more dreary in the aspect than Cape May.  Nothing
seems to grow upon them but wild and scattered tufts of grass.  But one
feels comfort in the increase of appetite, and the consciousness of high
cheer and good provisions.
  How often have the landmarks of this shore been sought out by the
approaching mariners of distant voyages, seeking, with anxious and
distrustful eye, the first glimpse of the doubtful coast.  Many this day, in
the distant verge of the sinking horizon, would give great gifts to be once
more on terra firma.  Women passengers, sick of their confinements, listen
with eager attention to the conjectures about land, which by their soundings
is known to be near at hand; and the terrors of possible stranding and
shipwreck are pictured to their labouring imaginations.  It might do one
good to see such objects land, and to regale them with the delicacies of the
season, untasted by them for months.
  Sundry of us made a sailboat excursion up the sound to the other boarding
house on the same beach, twelve miles off, to the large house, called the
"Mansion of Health".  We found it well kept and supported by a goodly number
of inmates.
  The house, a hundred and twenty feet long, stands about one tenth of a
mile from the surf.  The original house once there was at one half the
distance, and had numerous cedar and oak trees nigh it.  The great
"September gale" of 1821, swept over the whole island at this place, and
tore up or blew over those trees, so that none now remain nigh, although the
stumps of many are still seen.  The whole island is twenty miles long, being
from Tucker's to Barnegat inlets.  At its northern end are still many trees
and high hills, wherein foxes burrow.
  As a riding vehicle to the surf and along the beach the ladies use an
ox-wagon, wherein they amuse themselves greatly in a rustic novel way.
  I was surprised to learn here from old Stephen Inman, one of the twelve
family residents of the place, that he and his family have never ceased to
be whale catchers along this coast.  They devote themselves to it in
February and March.  They generally catch two or three of a season, so as to
average forty to fifty barrels of oil apiece.  I saw their look-out mast,
their chaldron and furnace for rendering the oil, their whale-boats &c.  He
has taken some whales of ninety barrels of oil.  The whale bones of large
size lay about bleaching in the sun.  About his place are many oak and holly
trees.  Gunners go there much, in the season, for wild geese and ducks.
Inman has killed twenty-four geese in a day.  Sheep, mules, and horses are
pastured and browsed on the northern end of the island, by himself and
others.  His house having formerly been the winter quarters of the gunners,
is fully cut with the names of his visiters, made on the outside boards,
under the piazza.
  The coasting trade along these shores must be great.  Sometimes we could
count twenty sail, all going onward, eastward and southward.  Their white
sails looked like villas set along a highway.
  Sometimes I think and wonder at what could have been all the features of
this place before civilization and European eyes scanned it.  I peopled it
in imagination with Indians, seeking here and finding a summer home for
their unrestrained supply of fish, shell-fish, birds' eggs &c.  In these
sounds they had often "wigwassed" for sheep heads, of whom we learnt the art
of bobbing, as even now practised successfully, with flaming torch at night.
  The beach at this place is certainly the best along our coast, and to be
so shut up on an island makes every thing of sea character still more like
sea-shore.  The very desolation of the sands around us makes the table
refreshments still more estimable by a feeling sense of contrast.
  As we sail back to our boarding house, we notice many fish in the waters
we traverse, such as we might have speared, if we had been so disposed, and
had the needful instruments.
  Monday, August 17 -- This begins a new epoch.  Awake at five o'clock, and
found the wind fair at S. W.  I determine therefore to try for Long branch
by sea.  I am taken off in the bay to Capt. Rogers' sloop Jane, loaded for
New York, and near to the New Inlet.  We arrived at New York the next day
with a delightful sail.


End Part - I       Next :  "Reminisciences of Philadelphia"