The Marvellous Monongahela.
To realize why the Iron City is called the "Gateway of the West," a trip should be taken up the Allegheny River, down the Ohio River, and especially up the Monongahela River. A trip up the last-named is as delightful as it is instructive. Washington in his twenty-second year first visited this section in the winter of 1753, bearing despatches from Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, to the French Commandant at the "Forks of the Ohio," and to "inquire into the number and force of the French on the Ohio and the adjacent country." Later, General Braddock, the English commander, was mortally wounded here. The dying General was deserted by his panic-stricken followers, and "Braddock's Field," on the banks of this river, will remain for all time an object of interest.
Thirty years later Albert Gallatin, a young traveller, of Switzerland, then twenty-two years of age, came to the banks of this historic stream in quest of fortune, on the advice of Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia. Gallatin bought the beautiful estate at New Geneva, containing 500 acres, and it is the only piece of primeval timber land left standing between Pittsburg and Morgantown, the head of navigation. A glimpse of the roof and chimneys of Gallatin's old home can be caught from the boat through the thick grove of oaks that fringes the high bluff on which it stands. A grass-covered mound enclosed with a neat fence near the water's edge tells of a story of love and grief in the early life of this young man. He had been married but three weeks when his bride died. She was buried there, in a grave unmarked by memorial of any kind, in obedience to her dying request.
On the banks of the Monongahela, at West Brownsville, was born, sixty-five years ago, James G. Blaine. Until his twelfth year the hills and waters of the Monongahela were his favorite haunts. The Monongahela River and its tributaries cleave through a coal-field in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia exceeding in area the entire coal-field of 12,000 square miles of Great Britain. The coal is the famous Pittsburg seam, and almost all of it, lying along the river, is exposed above the surface of the water. Hundreds of coal tipples between Pittsburg and Morgan town are busily engaged in loading the fleets of coal barges that ply up and down the rivers of Ohio and Mississippi.
Some conception of this vast coal-field may be had when it is realized that the river cuts through it for over 200 miles. And this Pittsburg seam is but a part of the great Appalachian coal-field, the greatest in the world, comprising about 60,000 square miles, containing about a third more coal than all the coal measures of Europe combined. Southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia possess the most valuable part of this splendid area, which the Monongahela carries to the workshops of Pittsburg and the towns and cities as far away as the Gulf of Mexico.
"Eric Jonard."