Ethel Morton at Chautauqua Part 1

Ethel Morton at Chautauqua.

by Mabell S. C. Smith.

CHAPTER I

ON THE ROAD

IT was a large and heavily laden family party that left the train at Westfield, New York. There was Grandfather Emerson carrying Grandmother Emerson's hat-box and valise; and there was their daughter, Lieutenant Roger Morton's wife, with a tall boy and girl, and a short girl and boy of her own, and a niece, Ethel, all burdened with the bags and bundles necessary for a night's comfort on the cars and a summer's stay at Chautauqua.

"The trunks are checked through, Roger," said Mrs. Morton to her older son, "so you won't have to bother about them here."

"Good enough," replied Roger, who was making his first trip, in entire charge of the party and who was eager that every arrangement should run smoothly. After a consultation with his grandmother who had been to Chautauqua before, he announced,

"The trolley is waiting behind the station. We can get on board at once."

Roger was a merry-faced boy of seventeen and his mother smiled at the look of responsibility that gave him an expression like his father. Mrs.

Morton sighed a little, too, for although she was accustomed to the long absences required of a naval officer yet she never went upon one of these summer migrations without missing the a.s.sistance of the father of the family.

Lieutenant Morton had been with the fleet at Vera Cruz for several months, but although there had been rumors that our ships would be withdrawn and sent north, which might mean a short leave for the Lieutenant, it had not come to pa.s.s, and it looked as if he would have to spend the summer under the Mexican sun. His wife drew a little comfort from the fact that his brother, Ethel's father, Captain Richard Morton, was with the land forces under General Funston, so that the two men could see each other occasionally.

"How far do we have to go on the trolley, Mother?" asked d.i.c.ky, the six-year-old, who had already announced his intention of being a motorman when he grew up, and who always chose a front seat where he could watch the operations that made the car go.

"I forget, dear. Ask Grandmother."

"Twelve miles, son, and over a road that is full of history for Helen.

Grandfather will tell her all about it. We are turning into it now. Do you see the name on the tree?"

"'Portage Street,'" read Helen.

The party made a brave showing in the car. Helen, who was almost as tall as Roger and who was in the high school, sat on the front seat with d.i.c.ky so that he could superintend the motorman's activities. Mrs.

Morton and Roger sat behind them, he with his hands full of the long tickets which were to take them all to Chautauqua and home again. Back of them were the two girl cousins of nearly the same age, about thirteen, both named Ethel Morton and strikingly alike in appearance.

Their schoolmates had nicknamed them from the color of their eyes, "Ethel Brown" and "Ethel Blue." "Ethel Brown" was Lieutenant Morton's daughter, and sister of Roger and Helen and d.i.c.ky. "Ethel Blue" was Captain Morton's daughter and she had lived almost all her life with her cousins, because her mother had died when she was a tiny baby.

Grandfather and Grandmother Emerson, Mrs. Morton's father and mother, were in the last seat of the four, Grandmother eagerly looking out of the window to recall the sights that she had seen on her previous trip to Chautauqua, ten years before.

"Why is it called 'Portage Street'?" asked Helen, when everybody was comfortably settled. Helen was fond of history and had just taken a prize offered to the first year cla.s.s of the high school for the best account of the Indians in the colonial days of that part of New Jersey where the Mortons lived.

"'Portage' comes from the French word 'carry,' as you high school people know," answered grandfather. "A portage is a place where you have to carry your boat around some obstruction. For instance, suppose you were an Indian traveling in a canoe from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, you would have to carry your canoe around the rapids of the Niagara River because your little craft could not live in that tremendous current, and around Niagara Falls because--"

"Because it couldn't climb a tree," laughed Roger.

"Just about that," accepted grandfather.

"Are there any waterfalls around here?" asked Ethel Brown.

"Not any waterfalls, but the very land we are on was an obstacle to the Indians who wanted to travel from Canada southward."

"Oh, I begin to see," said Helen. "They paddled across Lake Erie--"

"That was Lake Erie we were riding side of this morning," interrupted Ethel Blue.

"Yes, that was Lake Erie and the gray cloud that we could see way over the water was Canada."

"O-oh," cried both Ethels at once; "we've seen Canada!"

"When they reached the American sh.o.r.e," went on grandfather, "they had to carry their canoes over the twelve miles of country that we are pa.s.sing over now until they reached the head of Chautauqua Lake."

"Where we are going!"

"Just beyond the village of Mayville we shall see the very spot where they put their canoes into the water again and tumbled in themselves to paddle southward."

"Weren't their feet tired?" asked practical d.i.c.ky.

"I guess they were, old man," returned Roger, leaning forward to tweak his ear affectionately.

"If they were," went on grandfather, "they had plenty of time to rest them, for they didn't have to leave their boats again unless they wanted to until they got to the Gulf of Mexico."

"The Gulf of Mexico!" rose a chorus that included every member of the party except d.i.c.ky whose knowledge of geography was limited to a very small section of Rosemont, the New Jersey town he lived in.

"It's a fact," insisted Mr. Emerson. "The outlet of Lake Chautauqua is the little stream called the Chadakoin River. It flows into Conew.a.n.go Creek, and that loses itself in the Allegheny River."

"I know what happens then," cried Ethel Brown; "the Allegheny and the Monongahela join to form the Ohio and the Ohio empties into the Mississippi--"

"And the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico!" concluded Ethel Blue triumphantly.

"Good children," commented Roger patronizingly as he turned around to give a condescending pat on the two girls' heads. Finding that their hats prevented this brotherly and cousinly attention he contented himself with tweaking each one's hair before he turned back as if he had accomplished a serious duty.

"Can't you see the picture in your mind!" murmured Helen, looking out of the window. "Just imagine all those tall brown men carrying their canoes on their shoulders and tramping through the forest that must have covered all this region then."

"More interesting men than Indians went over this stretch of country in the olden days," said Mrs. Emerson.

"Who? Who?" cried the Ethels, and d.i.c.ky asked, "Was it the President?"

Mr. Wilson, the former Governor of his own state, having been the most interesting personage he had ever seen.

"In a minute Grandfather will tell you about the Frenchmen who came here, but I want you to notice the farms we are going through now before we climb the hill and leave them behind."

"I never saw so many grape vines in all my life," said Roger.

"No wonder," commented his grandmother. "This is one of the greatest grape-growing districts of the whole United States."

"You don't say so!" cried Roger. "Why is it? Is the soil especially good for them?"

"Do you remember how flat it was in the village of Westfield? We are only just now beginning to climb a little, and you see we are some distance from the station and the station is some distance from the lake."

"That must mean that there's a strip of flat land lying along the lake,"

guessed Roger.