LUZERNE COUNTY. CHAPTER I. LUZERNE COUNTY. AS IT CAME FROM THE HANDS OF GOD-FIRST VIEWED BY CIVILIZED EYES-FESTIVAL OF THE FOLIAGE-THE RIVER AND THE VALLEY-MOUNTAINS AND STREAMS-THE UNKNOWN RACES OF MEN-INDIANS-MAMMOTH AND MASTODON-GLACIERS-GEOLOGICAL-COAL STRATA-FOURTEEN VEINS, CONTAINING NINETY FEET OF COAL THE COUNTY'S DRAINAGE THE INCREASE IN POPULATION-STATISTICS OF PRESENT POPULATION, ETC. RICH Lut whose feet are the valleys where the bright waters for ICH and beautiful Luzerne county! On thy face the hills swelling away ever sing their lullabies as the mountain brook joins the valley stream and both rush into the winding river in its merry, ceaseless race to the sea. When civilized man first clambered up the eastern incline of the Blue mountains and looked across toward the far-famed Pocono, and caught a glimpse of what was destined to be one of the most historical places in America, what grandeur and beauty of nature broke upon his vision! If in the spring with the fresh flowers and the new shining green leaves, the returning new life on every hand and the birds flitting from fragrant bower to bower and caroling to the limpid blue skies their joyous return from the south, or if, as is more likely, in "the mild September," when the nuts are brown, the grapes purple, the sumac flaming its red, and from the clear cold brook reflecting the images of the tall mountain top, this is the entrancing vision of the Festival of the Foliage; in either, or in any case, what a panorama of loveliness greeted his wondering eyes! He stops to breathe a moment and behind him, before him, to the right and left of him, bounded only by the limits of vision, what grandeur, what entrancing beauties! Here was nature's master effort of wide, peaceful and quiet beauty. Such rich coloring; such blending of rainbows, brawling brooks and forest-covered hillside; such billows of flame, from the dark gorge to the end of vision in one ever unfolding panorama, touched as is only possible by the master hand of God. Never was the face of the earth so beautiful, so restful, so witching to the human eye. Mountains, promontories and gently rolling hills and restful valleys, all crowned with flowers, brilliant foliage, birds of song and silvery streams. The first view from the Pocono to the west-bound traveler presented the famed Wyoming Valley completely encircled with its everlasting hills, except where the Susquehanna river breaks through from the north near Pittston and winds along nearly through the center of its entire length. In the river can be seen many green islands slumbering in its embrace. Across there is "Prospect Rock" and from this lookout the entire valley can be viewed. The Pocono range extends an hundred miles nearly parallel with the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers-with wild and rather desolate summits, but presenting on every hand the magnificent landscapes that constitute much of the glories of northern Pennsylvania. The Susquehanna river enters the valley at Lackawanna gap, coming in through a narrow defile in the mountain and passes out through a like narrow way below Nanticoke gap, traveling a distance of near twenty miles. The valley averages about three miles in width and the enclosing mountains are about 1,000 feet high on the eastern and about 800 feet on the western side. Then comes WilkesBarre mountain to the south, fronting its bold face and almost in articulate language saying, "Stop here!" And men simply passed along the river up and down, while the rugged hills covering all south and southeast of the Susquehanna were left to the wild forest denizens and the tireless hunters. But the white man was swarming from the old world and peeping all about the new. In due time he found the great authracite coal field of southern Luzerne, and here, in the ragged sublimity of nature, he has penetrated the bowels of the earth and from its dark secrets has fairly enriched the world. The Eastern Middle coal field in due time came to bless the human race, and nature's most rugged and repelling face has proved to be one of the most interesting spots of our hemisphere. When the white man's eyes first beheld this favored spot of earth that is Luzerne county this was something of its inviting wealth and beauties. The great valleys between the mountains were not only beautiful, but on their face told of the rich stores they contained for the future agriculturist. Had the beholder possessed the prophetic vision to see the incalculably rich mines beneath this fair surface-anticipated somewhat the change that one hundred years the magic touch of civilization had in store for this wonderland, could he have believed his supernatural vision, think you? Let the youth of to-day simply attempt to picture in his mind the conditions and appearances of his surroundings of 150 years ago, and after the fairest efforts doubtless he would draw the mental outline wide of the truth. The man who first looked upon this locality could he now revisit the glimpses of the moon, would find so little in appearance of what he really saw that he could not believe it was at all the same. The streams and the hills are still here, but even these are so changed, especially the latter. The pine trees no longer towering straight toward the clouds, but farms, and dividing lines, much like a piece quilt extending from the valley to the low mountain top. In the flat valley, often where once was the heavy timber so gracefully swaying in the breeze, are now equally high elevations, promontories, mounds and hills of culm that have been thrown behind the advancing miners as they dug for the black diamonds. Prehistoric Peoples.--We call our continent the new world, simply because it is new to us. Both geologists and archeologists tell us that it is a matter of much doubt, but that these appellations should be changed. Geology is the most ancient of all history-the history of mankind is the most modern, because of all life man was the last to appear from the womb of time. Evidences are scattered across the continent that there were peoples here before the native Indians. One certain and probably two other distinct races. They are lost to history, whether one or many. The Mound Builders mu-t have been a numerous race that were dead or a dying people probably before the pyramids or the Sphynx were built. They covered this continent and to this day the works of their slave-lives are seen in the systems of great artificial mounds that we can trace from northern Canada, running southeast and along the whole of North America and the peninsula into South America. And of these innumerable hosts, with many evidences of considerable civilization, not even a trace of tradition has been passed down to us. Whether this numerous people so long held together by some form of organization—a form that had a controlling head that enslaved the masses, and finally broke up into warring factions and became the builders of the fortifications, with skilled engineers to plan and lay them out as we can dimly trace the remains, and thus hurried all to mutual destruction, or whether the uncovered cities and remains of public works and these extensive forts and places for military defense were from a new and distinct race succeeding the Mound Builders, we are wholly left to conjecture. History is but agreed fiction, but there is much realism in the fiction, while here all evidences of peoples, of civilizations, powerful society organizations that rose, flourished and passed away, concerning whom we have no tradition. All life is but swift change. The centuries chase each other as the ripples on the water; national life grows old and dies, plunging into the river of time like the snow-flake. Slowly and painfully civilizations are builded, every step marked by the blood of its martyrs; every age by its wars for glory and for pelf. There is no day nor time with nature, while with all else it is but birth and death-the very change that is life itself. In Luzerne county there exist some remains of ancient fortifications, which appear to have been constructed by a race of people very different in their habits from those who occupied the place when first discovered by the whites. Most of these ruins have been so much obliterated by time that their forms can not now be distinctly ascertained. That which remains the most entire is situated in the township of Kingston, upon a level plain on the north side of Toby's creek, about 150 feet from its bank, and about half a mile from its confluence with the Susquehanna. It is of an oval or elliptical form, having its longest diameter from the northwest to the southeast, at right angles to the creek, 337 feet, and its shortest diameter from the northeast to the southwest 272 feet. On the southwest side appears to have been a gateway about twelve feet wide, opening toward the great eddy of the river into which the creek falls. From present appearances it consisted probably of only one mound or rampart, which, in hight and thickness, appears to have been the same on all sides, and was constructed of earth, the plain on which it stands not abounding in stone. On the outside of the rampart is an entrenchment or ditch, formed probably by removing the earth of which it is composed, and which appears never to have been walled. The creek on which it stands is bounded by a high, steep bank on that side, and at ordinary times is sufficiently deep to admit canoes to ascend from the river to the fortification. When the first settlers came to Wyoming this plain was covered with its native forest, consisting principally of oak and yellow pine, and the trees which grew on the rampart and in the entrenchment are said to have been as large as those in any other part of the valley. One large oak particularly, upon being cut down, was ascertained to be seven hundred years old. The Indians had no tradition concerning these fortifications; neither did they appear to have any knowledge of the purpose for which they were constructed. The distinct traces of another fortification similar in many respects to the above were found in Jacob's Plains, near Wilkes-Barre, in the highest part of the low grounds. Seventy-seven years ago Mr. Chapman and Charles Miner carefully examined these works, and while they were then but very dim, could be more readily traced than now and of their examination they inform us that its outlines could be best traced when the waters overflowed the flats, when it appeared as an island entirely surrounded by the waters. The eastern extremity is near the line dividing the farms of John Searle and James Hancock, where, from its safety from inundation, a fence has long since been placed; and to this circumstance is to be attributed the preservation of the embankment and ditch. In the open field so entirely is the work leveled that the eye can not trace it. But the extent west is known, for "it reached through the meadow lot of Captain Gore" (said Cornelius Courtright) "and came to my lot one or two rods." The lot of Captain Gore was seventeen perches in width. Taking then these 280 feet, add the distance it extended eastwardly on the Searle lot and the extension westerly on the lot of Esquire Courtright, we have the length of that measured by Mr. Chapman so very nearly as to render the inference almost certain that both were of the same size and dimensions. |