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."
Dalles of the St. Croix River.
The Dalles enjoy a fame that is historic. They consist of high vertical cliffs which flank the valley of St. Croix River as it winds its way to the Mississippi. A great formation of trap-rock a thousand feet thick crosses this part of the country, and the river flows through a fissure formed, probably, during the process of cooling in this mass of volcanic outflow. The gulch thus originally formed has been deepened and widened through the lapse of ages by the action of the water, until it has become a mighty chasm through which a wide river rolls and tumbles. Many and strange are the shapes into which the water has carved the stone as it has worn its course through the barriers.
Here and there are such strange rock formations as "The Old Man of the Dalles," the "Devil's Kitchen," "Devil's Chair," "Devil's Pulpit," and "Elbow Rock." In fact, the "Dalles of the St. Croix" (as the river here is called) is full of the most wonderful stone formations.
The Devil's Chair is a massive vertical column which buttresses the formation beside the river to a height of 150 feet. It has a tall back, an ample seat and foot-rest, and seems peculiarly fitted to be the resting-place of some mythical and colossal human shape. Other curious features are the wells, varying in size and depth from a few inches to thirty feet. These are shafts in the solid trap-rock a hundred feet or more above the surface of the river. Their origin is due to the grinding power of bowlders which, rolling into a depression or a hole in the rock, the water whirled into the cavity with a spiral motion, thus causing the bowlders to revolve, and in the course of ages the wells have been bored as if by some titanic power, until the subsidence of the stream has annihilated the force, and the work has ceased, leaving the bowlders in the bottom of the cavity.