[Page 1:78]29 August: At about nine o’clock in the morning, we left Widow Sachs’ inn and began our journey to Mauch Chunk. Since the entire region, far and wide, is nothing but forest, one follows a beautiful wild forest path, which the rather poor highway crosses running straight. This forest is magnificent, with a very dense mixture of hemlocks, pines, and the most beautiful deciduous trees, a real bear’s haunt into which one can hardly see. Fallen trees, which no one puts to use, lie all about in it. The maples had already begun to turn red. There were beautiful tall beeches in the thicket, and nothing was lacking but a good black bear to perfect my delight at this sublime natural forest. In several places small wooden houses have been built near the road and pieces of land cleared of forest. One saw here, from the splendid primeval condition of the forest, that the forest conflagrations had not yet reached this far.

We crossed a bridge over a forest brook, the Two Mile Run, which emerges from the picturesque darkness of the forest, and after a few miles we reached a sizable clearing in the forest (it has been cut away here), where the village Stoddartsville on the Lecha (Lehigh) is situated. This river is still small here. The environs of this place are wild. The trees have been sawed off or chopped down 2 or 3 feet above the ground, and an abundance of wild plants, such as Verbascum, Rhus typhinum, Kalmia, Phytolacca, Antirrhinum linaria, Polygonum aviculare, thistles, and the like, cover the barren areas. One descends from an elevation and looks directly onto the street of the town, which provides a nice view since it has several attractive houses. One then again climbs over a hill and continues through dense, lofty forest, where several small nameless creeks flow among picturesquely wild tree trunks. Wagons were all loaded with boards or shingles, the main products of this wild forest region.

At an inn, which is still called Bock’s Inn for its former owner, we refreshed ourselves and watered the horses. As in the entire region, all the local inhabitants speak German, but many of them English as well. In the dense wild forest of hemlock trees, intermingled with several different kinds of deciduous and other timber, we reached Shades Creek, where there is a sawmill in a wildly romantic location. On the house we saw a pile of antlers of the white-tailed deer hanging. We stopped and bought four antlers, which were immediately tied below the carriage.

From there, the road again leads over a hill to another wild valley, where Bear Creek bursts forth out of dark hemlock woodlands. Here, too, is a most wildly picturesque scene. A single wretched habitation is situated on the slope. Everywhere, in every place where the forest had been cut, everything is densely overgrown with Rhus shrubs. Below, near the water, there is a sawmill; the millrace, consisting of piled-up logs, cost 300 dollars. Bear and deer are said to be still numerous in the extensive wild tracts of this region.

From Bear Creek the road leads to Tenmile Run Creek, which flows through a gentle valley. Here there were quite a few birds: robins, catbirds, the blue jay (Corvus cristatus), the golden-winged woodpecker (Picus auratus), and several small birds. Here there are fewerhemlock firs, which diminish from now on;[Page 1:79] on the other hand, [there are] more trunks of pitch pine trees (Pinus rigida), which are more slender higher and not as picturesque as the firs. Another small creek is without a name; its opposite bank is completely overgrown with birches, which here fill the entire valley. Next come woods of chestnuts and various kinds of oaks. Along the road, thickets of Spiraea salicifolia and tomentosa, several varieties of asters, which are so abundant in North America, etc. And then oak forest with a dense understory. We traveled over considerable elevations, everything uniform, covered with ruined timber that had been burnt off earlier. Here a dense undergrowth (root sproutings) of chestnuts, oaks, sassafras, and the like uniformly covers the slopes, from which individual Pinus rigida tower upward everywhere. Thus peak after peak and ridge after ridge succeed each other. The highest of these Pocono peaks is the so-called Pimple Hill, near Sachs’ house, where we spent the night of 25 August.

We presently reached a place that, to a certain extent, is the dividing line, for here one suddenly has a view far into the deep Wyoming Valley in which the Susquehanna flows, and to the rear an endlessly wild mountain and forest view of the Blue, or Allegheny Mountains, peak by peak, without interruption, covered with dark woods far into the distance.M31According to measurements, the place here mentioned is said to be 1,050 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, this grand panorama has not been sketched. [At this point] one begins to descend the slope toward the Susquehanna, a very long declivity with great variety, where the forest becomes more and more intermingled and inviting and the pine trees completely give way to deciduous timber. The road makes various kinds of turns, and now and then fresh green forest covers it like a vault. Beautiful trees grow here: chestnuts, oaks, Platanus, tulip trees, walnut, hornbeam, beeches, birches, maples, etc., all wildly intermingled. Here the formation of the conglomerate appears, which is always an indication of the presence of anthracite coal. It is not very far now to the large deposits of this fossil.

When one has descended somewhat more than halfway down the mountain, one reaches a place where the traveler is led away from the road about 100 to 200 paces to the right, in order to enjoy here the magnificent panorama of the valley. A cluster of the conglomerate arises from the dense forest. One ascends it, after going 30 to 40 paces through thickets of Kalmia and other bushes, and presently finds oneself high and free above the Wyoming Valley. This prospect is magnificent! The broad, extensive valley full of villages and individual habitations alternates pleasantly with forest and field. The river flows through its entire length. Right at our feet, at its midpoint, [is] the inviting town of Wilkes-Barre, into the streets of which one can see. What a marvelously beautiful, surprising scene! One easily realizes that this valley was once a dense primeval forest, for everywhere one discerns fields intersected by strips of forest; here one can only regret that scarcely a trace of the earlier primeval condition of the land and its inhabitants exists any longer.

After we had enjoyed the grand view for a while, we continued our journey and soon reached a lone inn, where we purchased a live rattlesnake. This snake had been in a box for three weeks and had eaten nothing at all; therefore, its rattling, whenever it was provoked, was very feeble. We bought it for two and one half dollars—it was very large and beautiful—and placed it in a pot filled with grain spirits in which it was transported to Wilkes-Barre. The plump housewife, in a very rural negligee, did not quite seem to believe our words, since we did not have the exact change. She put on her city finery and, when we left, followed closely after us. A large hat covered her head, and she carried a blue silk parasol; in addition, she was made up, a striking contrast with her former domestic garb. What was most striking, however, was that despite her heavy, corpulent body, she reached the village as soon as we did.

From this woman’s house, one soon reaches the bottom of the valley and the hamlet, or village (town), Wilkes-Barre, which has about 1,200 inhabitants, three churches, and rather regular, unpaved streets where the buildings stand apart and form several long streets. The place gets its name from the first two builders, Wilkes and Barre.[Page 1:80] It has farmers, artisans, storekeepers, merchants, and the owners of the collieries, which are located to the left, or west, of the road that we followed down from the mountain. The coal formation extends for 14 miles along the course of the Susquehanna Valley and then stretches across other mountains. More about this later. A new canal for shipping coal has been dug here but was not yet completely finished. Its purpose is to connect the works (mines) with the river, beyond which the large canal that joins Pennsylvania with Maryland and, indeed, through the Susquehanna, is already complete. This Pennsylvania Canal is will be [——] miles long, has with Baltimore as its main port, but it is still not completely finished. The inn in Wilkes-Barre, where we stopped, is run by a German, a certain Christ, who calls himself “Doctor.” It seems to be just as inadvisable to entrust oneself to his medical knowledge as to his cuisine.

In the afternoon we continued our journey after we had placed our fine rattlesnake in a cask. Instead of following the usual road on the valley floor, we again turned left toward the wooded mountains, passed the canal (already begun but still dry), and, scarcely an hour later, reached a wild, densely wooded ravine at the foot of the mountains where Solomon’s Creek, rushing wildly over rocks in the dense, dark forest, comes roaring down. Near a nice, large mill, which belongs to General Ross, it forms several most picturesque cascades, which Mr. Bodmer sketched. The brook falls down over black, darkly moss-covered rocks, some of which are steep and smooth, with an eroded hollow underneath and picturesque thickets and forest all around. Two cascades are located one above the other, the second of which is larger; the highest point follows, where the water from the wooden millrace shoots down vertically over a steep rock about as high as a house. Unfortunately it was already late when we arrived here, and no more sketching could be done today. The miller spoke German, and his mother had come from Germany. He gave us drinking water, which had a very ironlike or somewhat sulphurlike taste. Since there was no inn here, we still had to go 3 miles that evening, as far as the crest of the mountain. This, however, proved to be very trying.

The road climbs along the left mountain wall of Solomon Creek in dense forest over rocky ground, so that to the right, one is always close to the precipice. Two coaches cannot pass each other. Fortunately wagons travel very infrequently in this wilderness. Because we were told there was much game here, we loaded a gun with ball. We moved high uphill and into a forest bottom, where a few lonely farmhouses in the dense wilderness scarcely had a bit of clearing for pasture and a small neglected garden. The houses, which were built of logs or trunks, looked shabby. From there we climbed higher and higher. The road was very overgrown. In the twilight we met several tanned, wild-looking men, with their axes and guns, returning from their work in the forest. Under other circumstances, one would probably have avoided them in this wild, secluded place. There are no robbers in these regions; at least none have been reported; but it must be admitted that this wilderness was perfectly suitable for them. We found rocks and large stones on the [Page 1:81]road so that it required all the alertness of our driver, Wöhler, to keep from turning over. Tree trunks often lay wildly [scattered] beside the road, and in several places there were marshy spots, one, especially, at a level bend in the road where there was so much Lobelia cardinalis in the marsh that a splendidly bright red spot arose in the forest. With it there grew in abundance a plant with white flowers, Chelone obliqua; we had first observed this plant on the bank of Tobyhanna Creek. We continued driving upward, and to our delight, the moon emerged to illuminate our lonely dark path.

Finally, when we were rather near the summit of the mountain, the road divided and we had to make a choice. Fortunately, we succeeded in taking the correct road. At nine o’clock, right in front of us in a small clearing, we suddenly caught sight of a lone house from which a friendly light glimmered toward us. We went in and found a shabby house where two women, one old and haggard, the other somewhat younger but very thin and tall, sat by the fire and smoked small clay pipes. They were astonished not a little at our late visit, but the fire was immediately rekindled and water for potatoes and coffee placed on the fire. The owner of the house was named Wright, and only English was spoken here. He was away and was not expected to return soon. This house was part of Hanover Township but had no special name. Nearby, the Wapwallopen Creek rushed through the dense brush. Our supper was finished in an hour, and then, with our clothes on, we lay down on the beds, which were located in a large atticlike room; [they] were double beds, as is almost always the case in this country. The night passed quickly for us.