What do any of my young readers know about the Delaware River? Have any of you seen the wide, swift stream which flows between the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and runs into the broad body of water known as Delaware Bay? On its banks stands the great city of Philadelphia, in which live more than a million people, and where there are thousands of busy workshops and well-filled stores. This large and fine city came from the way the king paid his debt. King Charles was not a good man, but he did one thing that had a good ending.
There were white men there before the Quakers came. Many years earlier a number of people from Sweden had come and settled along the river. Then the Dutch from New York said the land was theirs, and took possession of the forts of the Swedes. Then the English of New York claimed the land as theirs. Then Quakers came and settled in New Jersey. Finally came William Penn, in a ship called by the pretty name of the "Welcome," and after that the land was governed by the Quakers or Friends, though the Swedes stayed there still.
We have something very pleasant to say about good William Penn. He knew very well that King Charles did not own the land, and had no right to sell it or give it away. So he called the Indians together under a great elm tree on the river bank, and had a long talk with them, and told them he would pay them for all the land he wanted. This pleased the red men very much, and ever afterwards they loved William Penn.
Do you not think it must have been a pretty scene when Penn and the Quakers met the Indian chiefs under the great tree—the Indians in their colored blankets and the Quakers in their great hats? That tree stood for more than a hundred years afterwards, and when the British army was in Philadelphia during the war of the Revolution their general put a guard around Penn's treaty tree, so that the soldiers should not cut it down for firewood. The tree is gone now, but a stone monument marks where it stood. A city was laid out on the river, which Penn named Philadelphia, a word which means Brotherly Love. I suppose some brotherly love is there still, but not nearly so much as there should be.
Streets were made through the woods, and the names of the trees were given to these streets, which are still known as Chestnut, Walnut, Pine, Cherry, and the like. People soon came in numbers, and it is wonderful how fast the city grew. Soon there were hundreds of comfortable houses, and in time it grew to be the largest in the country.
The Indians looked on in wonder to see large houses springing up where they had hunted deer, and to see great ships where they had paddled their canoes. But the white men spread more and more into the land, and the red men were pushed back, and in time none of them were left in Penn's woodland colony. This was long after William Penn was dead.
But while Penn's city was growing large and rich, he was becoming poor. He spent much money on his province and got very little back. At last he became so poor that he was put in prison for debt, as was the custom in those days. In the end he died and left the province to his sons. The Indians sent some beautiful furs to his widow in memory of their great and good brother. They said these were to make her a cloak "to protect her while she was passing without her guide through the stormy wilderness of life."