Reading is a very pretty town on the Schuylkill, with 6,000 or 7,000 inhabitants; it has seven churches, and a new one was just then building. There are about 400 negroes and people of colour. Some of the streets were not paved in the middle, but have on the sides a pavement of bricks for the foot passengers, planted with acacias, planes, poplars, and other trees. All these towns are rapidly increasing. The cholera had already carried off many persons here, but the inhabitants would not confess this. We saw a funeral procession returning home, in which there were several women on horseback; the veils on their large fashionable hats fluttered in the wind, and gave this caravan of Amazons a singular appearance. Much fruit is grown in the neighbourhood, and the apples are good, but not the plums. Peaches thrive very well; we saw whole wagon-loads of them brought into Reading, around which the people crowded to buy, while the children stole them.
56 On the 18th of September it was with very great difficulty that we got places in the stage, the travellers being very numerous. After we had passed Kakusa Creek, we came to Womelsdorf, founded by Germans, fourteen miles from Reading, where we stopped to dine, and then proceeded over Dolpahaga Creek, to Lebanon County, which is in a tract diversified with eminences and wooded mountains. On this road we several times passed the Union Canal, which goes from Baltimore to Pittsburg, is very nearly completed, and is said to have cost 18,000,000 of dollars. After we had passed the River Swatara, which runs into the Susquehannah, we continued our journey in a dark but fine evening; the crickets and grasshoppers chirped all around; but their note is by no means so loud as that of those in the Brazils. At length we perceived a number of lights before us, and came to Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, the end of our journey to-day.
Harrisburg is a small town, with only 5,000 inhabitants, situated between the Susquehannah and the Union Canal. It has broad streets crossing each other at right angles; but many of the buildings are of wood, for which they are now, however, gradually substituting better ones of brick. Rows of trees are planted in front of the houses. The inn at which we put up was in a square, which they were just covering with broken stones. Here, too, is the market-hall, a long roofed building supported by pillars, in which the productions of the country are exposed for sale, as in most of the towns in the United States. Harrisburg, being the capital of the state, is the residence of the Governor. The state-house is built on a gentle eminence on the canal, near the town, and with its two wings is a very considerable building, with a colonnade and a cupola supported by pillars. Another interesting point of the town is the view of the Susquehannah, which is very broad here, and forms an island. A long bridge, covered at top, and enclosed at the sides, is built over each arm of the river. One of these bridges is about 600 paces in length. In the first there are twenty-three glass windows, and it has two pillars on shore, and five in the river. There are colossal bridges of this kind in the United States; and there is one further down the Susquehannah, which is one and a quarter mile and four rods in length, and has fifty-two pillars. The view from this bridge up the river is peculiarly beautiful. Verdant wooded islands adorn its surface, which is broad, but it was at this time very shallow. There are 500 negroes and people of colour. Germans are met with everywhere, and we were told that an able German physician lived here.
The defective arrangements of the post-houses obliged us to stop here three days, and it was not till the 21st of September, in the evening, that we could leave the town to continue our journey during the night. We passed the Susquehannah, and the Juniata, which comes from the Alleghany Mountains, and flows into it. On the 22nd, at day-break, we were at the little village of Mexico.
Mexico is in Mifflin County, forty miles from Harrisburg. Three miles further is the village of Mifflin Town, the capital of the county, where they were just building a new town-hall. The Union Canal, which connects Philadelphia and Baltimore with Pittsburg, in general follows the 57 same direction as the river Juniata, near which it often runs at a greater elevation, and sometimes is even carried over it. The river is here about as broad as the Lehigh, but was at this time very shallow. Beyond Mifflin Town it receives the Los Creek. From this place we observed in the valley many robinias, which grow very high and vigorous, as well on the mountain, which is rather dry, as by the water-side; vines as thick as a man's arm twine round the trunks, and frequently rise to the very summit. The nettle tree (Celtis) grew in great abundance, and the maples were just assuming their red tinge. The picturesque forest is intermingled with Canadian pines, many of which are quite blighted and withered. The valley now became wilder and more romantic; on the right hand rose a high precipice, covered with bolders, fragments of rock, mouldering trunks, and the finest trees of the country, forming a real wilderness. A very narrow part of the valley, where we watered our horses at an insulated house, bears the name of the Long Narrows; and the steep wooded mountain, on the south bank of the river, is called Blacklog Mountain; it is said to be the haunt of bears and stags. The cattle belonging to the log-houses were grazing among the rocks. After some time the valley grew more open, and at a wider spot, near the road, which descended towards the defile of James Creek, was a group of lofty and slender robinias, on which a flock of tame turkeys were sitting. These birds resemble in colour the wild ones which are common in this country; they often go into the forests, where they breed, and come home again with their young ones. After passing Kishikokinas Creek, we reached, at a broad part of the valley, the village of Louis Town, in which there are some considerable houses. The country people were ploughing and harrowing their fields; and I may here observe, that, in all Pennsylvania, they never employ oxen in these operations, but horses only, of which they have great numbers. The plough is rather different from that of Germany.
Beyond Louis Town we saw a number of horsemen, assembled for the fox-chase. The fox was caught in a trap, then let loose at a certain spot, and hunted with many dogs, as in England. In a district diversified with forests and cultivated fields, we came to Waynesburg, a small town agreeably situated in a valley. The forests began to assume their autumnal tints; the maples, the dogwood (Cornus Florida), and the sumach, were partly red; the walnut trees, and the hickory, yellow, which gave great variety to the landscape. Near some habitations we observed weeping willows of extraordinary size. The surrounding mountains were covered with forests, into which we penetrated to ascend the first ridge of the Western Alleghanys. The road, which is, for the most part, in bad condition, rose obliquely on the side of a rude picturesque precipice. Except a pheasant, which flew past us, we saw but few living objects. Advancing into the valley we again came to the Juniata, over which the canal is here carried by an aqueduct, supported by four pillars. In this part of the river there are several dams, such as we had seen in the Lehigh, near Bethlehem, with this difference that here they are triple. For this purpose, rows 58 of stones, piled one upon another, are laid across the river, forming, in the direction of the stream, acute angles, where a basket is placed, in which the fish are collected.
At a place where three valleys meet stands the village of Huntingdon,[56] ninety miles from Harrisburg, where we found a tolerably good inn, on an eminence above the banks of the Juniata. From this inn we proceeded, during the night, through high rude tracts and forests, past Alexandria, and at midnight reached Yellow Springs, and then the highest points of this ridge, called the summit, between 2,400 and 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, in the vicinity of Blair's Gap. This wild mountain region bears hemlock spruce firs of colossal magnitude, mixed with other timber. The night was clear and cool; towards morning fogs arose from the deep valleys, which at daybreak covered the pine forest through which we descended. We passed the Conomaugh Creek, and then arrived at the little town of Ebensburg, on an open spot in the forest. We stopped here at a small inn to wait for our travelling companions.
Ebensburg, the capital of Cambria County, is an inconsiderable place, consisting of wooden buildings, forming not much more than one broad, unpaved street, but has a town-house and a pretty large church. The inhabitants, about 300 or 400 in number, are of English, Irish, and some of German extraction. The surrounding country is very mountainous and woody, and is said to abound in all sorts of game, as indeed the many skins of lynxes, racoons, martens, and minks, fastened against the houses, prove; bears, stags, and wolves, are said not to be uncommon, as lofty and dark forests surround the town within a couple of hundred paces. Ebensburg derives some profit from the numerous wagons, drawn by two, four, or six strong horses, that pass through it on the high road to Pittsburg.
Our hunting excursions in this rude country were very interesting. We proceeded first in a northern direction into the forest, which we found to be quite a primeval wilderness. The mountains rise peak above peak, with deep ravines, where pines, beeches, chestnuts, birches, maples, and walnut trees of various kinds, form a gloomy forest, and fallen and decayed trunks check your advance at every step; cool, sylvan brooks rushed foaming through all the defiles, and we had continually to cross them on natural bridges, formed by the fallen trunks of trees. Such old trunks are covered with a whole world of mosses, lichens, fungiwood, sorrel, ferns, &c.; nay, even young shoots of maple, beeches, and tulip trees, had taken root on them. We clambered over the trunks, went round the fallen giants of the forest, and found everywhere, on the ground, traces of the numerous squirrels (Sciurus cinereus), in the remains of fruit and shells, especially, of the chestnut.
But there was also an interesting wilderness in the opposite direction. Here a very extensive fall of timber had been commenced—a gigantic labour, as in Brazil, where the wood is burnt afterwards, as soon as it is sufficiently dry. The sturdy woodcutters were of German extraction, and spoke German. From this place a dark narrow path led through an old pine forest, where 59 the little creeping Michella repens, here called ground berry, with its beautiful red berries, grew among the moss, and often covered the ground. Several small runs and muddy ditches crossed the forest, over which I walked or rode on trunks of trees that served as bridges; in doing which my clothes suffered not a little. Woodpeckers abounded here, especially the great black woodpecker (P. pileatus), which we had not seen before. It is nearly as large as a crow, and its splendid bright red tuft is conspicuous at a great distance. They were very shy; knocked and hammered on the dead pine trees, which stood like the ruins of a colonnade, and were pierced and bored by their strong bills. This fine large bird is called here, and in general, woodcock. A young man who lived in the forest, some miles off, told me that bears, stags, and other wild animals, were very numerous, particularly the pheasant, or cock of the wood (Tetrao umbellus), one of which we shot. There is a saw-mill here, among the lofty pines, on an arm of Conomaugh Creek, in a wild, lonely spot. The owner was not a little astonished at my double-barrelled percussion gun. After we had spent two days here in exploring the woods, our travelling companions, Dr. Saynisch and Mr. Bodmer, at length joined us, on the 26th, but as the latter still had need of rest, on account of his wound, we took their places, and set out immediately for Pittsburg.