America Volume I Part 9

The Wallenpaupack Creek, coming out of the Pocono plateau and the Moosic Mountain, makes the boundary between Pike and Wayne Counties, and flows into the Lackawaxen at Hawley. For most of the distance its course is deep and sluggish, but approaching the edge of the terrace, within a couple of miles of the Lackawaxen, it tumbles over cataracts and down rapids through a magnificent gorge, so that, from its alternating characteristics, the Indians rightly called it the Walink-papeek, or "the slow and swift water." It descends a cascade of seventy feet, and then goes down the Sliding Fall, a series of rapids interspersed with several small cataracts. Farther down are two cascades of thirty feet each, and then the main plunge, the Paupack falls of sixty-one feet, almost at its mouth, the whole descent being about two hundred and fifty feet. Hawley has thriving mills, whose wheels are turned by this admirable water-power, and it is also a railway centre for coal shipping. Its people are noted makers of silks, and of cut and decorated gla.s.sware. Judge James Wilson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was an early settler on the Wallenpaupack.

Above Hawley, in a broadened intervale of the Lackawaxen, was the famous "Indian Orchard," where the first settlement, made in 1760, grew afterwards into Honesdale, now the county-seat of Wayne. This was a tract of land in the valley upon which the lofty Irving Cliff looks down; and it was named from a row of one hundred apple trees which the Indians had planted at regular intervals along the river bank. The tradition was that ninety-nine trees bore sweet fruit, while one every alternate year had a crop of sour apples. Upon a large clearing at the water's edge, paved with flat stones, the Indians held their feasts and performed their religious rites. The orchard and stones have disappeared, but the plow still turns up Indian relics. This place was selected by the Delaware and Hudson Company for the head of their now abandoned ca.n.a.l, at the base of the Moosic Mountain, and it was named Honesdale, in honor of the first president of the ca.n.a.l company, Philip Hone, described as "the courtliest Mayor New York ever saw."

Within the town the two pretty streams unite which form the Lackawaxen, making lakelets on the plain, and from the sh.o.r.e of one of these the rocks rise almost perpendicularly nearly four hundred feet.

In 1841 Washington Irving came here with some friends, making the journey on the ca.n.a.l, and climbed these rocks to overlook the lovely intervale, and thus the Irving Cliff was named. Writing of his visit, he spoke in wonder of the beautiful scenery and romantic route of the Delaware and Hudson Ca.n.a.l, saying: "For many miles it is built up along the face of perpendicular precipices, rising into stupendous cliffs, with overhanging forests, or jutting out into vast promontories, while upon the other side you look down upon the Delaware, foaming and roaring below you, at the foot of an immense wall or embankment which supports the ca.n.a.l. Altogether, it is one of the most daring undertakings I have ever witnessed, to carry an artificial river over rocky mountains, and up the most savage and almost impracticable defiles. For upward of ninety miles I went through a constant succession of scenery that would have been famous had it existed in any part of Europe."

From Honesdale a gravity railroad crosses the Moosic Mountain into the Lackawanna Valley at Carbondale. This was originally used to bring the coal out for the ca.n.a.l, but has been abandoned for this purpose, being now confined to pa.s.senger service. It has twenty-eight inclined planes, and crosses the summit at Far View, at an elevation of nearly two thousand feet. The first locomotive brought to America, built at Stourbridge, England, in 1828, the "Stourbridge Lion," was used on the levels of this railroad, the face of a lion adorning the front of the boiler giving it the name. When brought out in 1829 the triumphant claim was made that it "would run four miles an hour." The road pa.s.ses over extended mountain tops, giving far-seeing views; and among these sombre rounded ridges in the wilderness of Wayne are the sources of the Lackawaxen. Carbondale, built on the coal measures of the upper Lackawanna Valley, has about eighteen thousand population; but all its coal now goes to market by other railway routes, the gravity road and the ca.n.a.l being found too expensive carriers in the fierce compet.i.tion of the anthracite industry.

THE HEADWATERS OF THE DELAWARE.

The Delaware, above the Lackawaxen, flows between ma.s.sive cliffs in a deeply-cut gorge through the flagstones. At Mast Hope, years ago, was got the biggest pine tree ever cut on the Delaware for a vessel's mast. The "Forest Lake a.s.sociation," another hunting- and fishing-club near here, has an extensive estate covering the high ridge between the Delaware and the Lackawaxen. At Big Eddy the river makes a sort of lake two miles long, of pure spring water, the widest and deepest part of the Delaware beyond tidewater. Stupendous cliffs contract the river above at the Narrows, where the village of Narrowsburg is built, and this region and the neighboring lake-strewn highlands of Sullivan County, New York, were the chief scenes of Cooper's novel, _The Last of the Mohicans_. As we advance through its upper canyon, the Delaware grows gradually smaller, but the enclosing ridges recede and leave a broad and fertile valley. Here are the villages of Damascus and Cochecton, connected by a bridge, and having together probably a thousand inhabitants. The original Indian village was Cushatunk, meaning the "lowlands," and from this Cochecton is derived. It was the sad scene of various Indian forays and ma.s.sacres before and during the Revolution. For many years lumbering and tanning were great industries in this region, but they have almost entirely pa.s.sed away.

We are coming to the headwaters of the Delaware. At Hanc.o.c.k, elevated about nine hundred feet above tide, the Delaware divides. The Popacton, or east branch, comes in, the Mohock, or western branch, however, being the larger stream, and making the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York above their junction. These two branches, after flowing nearly parallel for a long distance across Delaware County, New York, separated by a broad mountain ridge about eleven miles wide, unite around the base of a great dome-like hill at Hanc.o.c.k, the spot having been appropriately named by the Indians Sho-ka-kin, or "where the waters meet." Thirteen miles above is Deposit, at the New York boundary, where Oquaga Creek comes down from the mountains to the westward. This was formerly an important "place of deposit" for lumber, awaiting the spring freshets to be sent down the Delaware, and hence its name. High hills surround Deposit, the river makes a grand sweeping bend, and nearby is the beautiful mountain lake of Oquaga, of which Taylor writes: "If there is a more restful place than this, outside 'G.o.d's acres,' I have failed to find it;" adding, "The mountain road to the lake is picturesque enough to lead to Paradise." The headwaters of the Delaware rise upon the western slopes of the Catskill Mountains in Delaware and Schoharie Counties, New York. The source is about two hundred and seventy miles almost directly north of Philadelphia. In a depression on the western slope of the Catskill range, at an elevation of eighteen hundred and eighty-eight feet above tidewater, is the head of the Delaware, Lake Utsyanthia, a secluded little sheet of the purest and most transparent spring water. It is also called Ote-se-on-teo, meaning the "beautiful spring, cold and pure." It is a mirror of beauty in a wooded wilderness, its surroundings being most wild and picturesque. From this little lakelet flows out the Mohock, winding down its romantic valley, and receiving many brooks and rills, pa.s.sing a village or two, and bubbling along for forty miles to Deposit, and thence onward as the great river Delaware to the ocean. Thus Tennyson sings of the Brook:

"I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For man may come, and man may go, But I go on forever."