510 M. DUNKIRK, Pop. 19,366.
(Train 3 passes 8:23; No. 41, 1:00; No. 25, 12:45; No. 19, 4:57. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 10:24; No. 26, 11:26; No. 16, 3:10; No. 22, 6:08.)
Dunkirk, settled about 1805, has a fine harbour and extensive lake trade, and lies, moreover, in fertile agricultural and grape-growing country. The property of the town, assessed at $10,000,000 is chiefly in factories producing locomotives, radiators and other steel and iron products, wagons, silk gloves, and concrete blocks. There are several pleasant parks, of which Gratiot and Washington are the largest. Brocton (519 M.) and Westfield (526 M.) are junctions for travellers bound for Chautauqua (about 20 M. south of Brocton on Chautauqua Lake), the principal seat of the Chautauqua educational movement.
The Chautauqua movement, instituted more than 46 years ago in the west, has here its largest station. Each summer 15,000 or 20,000 people from all over the country assemble here to take courses in a great variety of subjects, from Italian Primitivism to Camp Cookery. Chautauqua makes its chief appeal, perhaps, to the middle-aged and elderly who in their youth were working too hard to have had any opportunities for study.
Just beyond Ripley (534 M.) we cross the state line into Pennsylvania.
557 M. ERIE, Pop. 93,372.
(Train 3 passes 9:30; No. 41, 2:06; No. 25, 1:36; No. 19, 5:59. Eastbound No. 6 passes 9:25; No. 26, 10:30; No. 16, 2:03; No. 22, 5:08.)
Erie stands on the site of the old French fort Presque Isle, built in 1753 and surrounded by a village of a few hundred inhabitants. Although Washington protested on behalf of the Governor of Va. against the French occupation of this territory, it remained in French hands until 1758 when an epidemic of small-pox broke out, making the fort untenable. Two years later the British seized it, and three years after the Indians, rising against their white rulers in the Conspiracy of Pontiac, took possession. In 1765 the British recaptured the fort and kept it until 1785, when it passed into the possession of the U.S. Gen. Anthony Wayne, who was given the task of occupying the lake posts delivered up by the English, came here soon after to negotiate the famous treaty of Greenville with the Indians in 1795. He died in 1796 at Erie.
Certain hostile tribes in northwest of Ohio who had defeated Gen. St. Clair in 1791, sent away in scorn a mission asking permission for white men to settle beyond the Ohio (1793). Wayne, angry at this insolence, gathered together some troops of the recently organized American army and after having given the Indians one more chance of a peaceable settlement, defeated them thoroughly in the battle of Fallen Timbers, 80 miles north of Cincinnati. By the resulting treaty of Greenville, he opened up the northwest to civilization.