THE FIRST ATTEMPTED SETTLEMENT-FIRST WHITE MEN TO VISIT THIS SECTION-CHARACTER DEVELOPED UNDER ADVERSITY-OLD FRENCH WAR--MASSACRE OF SETTLERS JOHN AND EMANUEL HOOVER, NOAH HOPKINS-CAPT. LAZARUS STEWART-AGAIN THIS IS A SILENT DESERT-NEXT ATTEMPT AT SETTLEMENT 1769-FIRST PENNAMITE AND YANKEE WAR-FIRST FORTY SETTLERS, LIST OF FOUR TIMES THE SETTLERS DRIVEN OFFCAPT. BUTLER AND CAPT. AMOS OGDEN-LIST OF THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED CONNECTICUT SETTLERS-RENEWAL OF THE TROUBLES BETWEEN YANKEES AND PENNAMITESEFFORT TO FORM A NEW STATE-A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF, ETC.

Incallable wegth of natural deposits within this favored county.

N the preceding chapter is attempted something of a short account of the So far reference has been confined to the natural resources-that existing order for the good of man as it came from the hand of the Creator. The preparation for the arrival of the white man and the taking permanent possession of the country had gone on, like everything in nature, through the geological eons, being slowly evolved, first deposited in the beds of the ocean, then uplifted and made dry lands and mountains, valleys and rivers, and as the ages were reeled off this and that came, flourished and passed away, the rocks slowly grew and hardened, the vegetable coals deposited and nature's prodigious alembic was busy gathering the sunbeams and laying them away for our use and benefit. The incalculable energies of nature and the inconceivable lapses of time combined, fashioned our world as we see it. What an awful miracle is the most insignificant animal or even vegetable life, looked upon with the eye of science! What an inconceivably little speck is this ever-wheeling world of ours from the astronomer's view! Impalpable star dust compared to the average heavenly bodies that are without numbers or bounds. Suppose there is life in the average of these other worlds or planetary systems; then we may suppose that the length of individual life there is proportioned to the increased size of the particular planet; in that case there are many worlds where the longest animal or vegetable life here would be comparatively as seconds to centuries.

Having traveled hurriedly over the account of the work of nature, in preparing this as the most favored spot of earth for civilized man, it is well now to consider something of the obstacles that lay in the way of the pioneers in the stupendous work of making this garden we see of the tangled wilderness. Imperfect as this will necessarily be, yet it is a little of the other side of the story of the greatest movement of men that has occurred in history. Hence this, while one of the world's comparatively young places, is pregnant with history, if not the philosophy of the movements of the mind. There were three chief obstacles confronting the pioneers: first, the rocks and hills and the dense and dark old woods that everywhere cumbered the earth, and that required many a stroke of the woodman's axe

to admit the first glint of sunshine to warm the rich dank soil beneath; second, the dangerous wild beasts on every hand and his more dangerous congener the wild forest Indians, and third and greatest of all was the long, bitter and often bloody contention between the "Yankee and Pennamite," where Greek met Greek, and made wounds that are hardly healed to this day. The first two mentioned were average of the pioneer's difficulties in other portions of the land. They had in addition to go through the same experience attendant upon the first settlement of every part of the continent, namely, of malarial diseases that always come of turning the virgin soils. We hear of these things now with little appreciation of the terrible afflictions they brought to our forefathers. Frequently there were times when there were hardly enough of the well to attend the sick; when physicians were scarce and medicines very difficult to obtain even after long journeys. The majority of cases at one time when families from necessity doctored themselves; barks, herbs and roots of the forest were diligently gathered and teas and decoctions were provided in every household. It is the oaks that battle with the storms that strike their roots deepest in the earth, and this principle ripens manhood for the severe trials of life. These people had little protection from the unfriendly elements about them, and brave hearts and strong hands were a first necessity.

Within a circle of ten miles from the Wilkes-Barre court house, where is now a population of considerably over 100,000, was for fifty years the heart of the battlefield between savagery and civilization, and then came the War of the Roses in contention for the possession and ownership of the soil. The wave of the death struggle swept back and forth; literally charges and retreats and counter charges; captures and expulsions and then recaptures and again repulsed; the swarming immigrant this year, the sad exodus the next; the victory to-day, the bloody massacre almost sure to swiftly follow. The scythe of death mowed its winrows in the ranks and eagerly came others in the place of the dead. What destiny hung in the balance, so long suspended by a single hair! This was something of the alembic that distilled the remarkable manhood that has inscribed high in the temple of the immortals the names of most of the first settlers of what is now Luzerne county. Illustrious men and glorious women, all as brave as death! Your sufferings and your dearly earned triumphs deserve the record of the inspired pen, and that page would be the most luminous in history. Men, real men, develop best under adversity; the weak and inefficient faint and fall by the way, and the fittest survive and stamp their iron qualities upon their offspring, and this natural selection brings us a race of men on whose shoulders may rest a world. Heroes indeed, a race of the world's bravest and best. The simple story of their struggles and the final supreme triumphs are each and all an epic that should be written in every living heart. Let their deeds be immortal! their memories most sacred.

The climax of the struggle came only when it was Puritan versus Quaker over the question of ownership of the soil. This was serious indeed; no men were ever more intensely earnest in the claims on both sides of the question. The law as interpreted by authority was on the side of the Quakers; yet the plain equity was with the Puritans. Both were right and both were, not intentionally, wrong. This paradox only expresses the general phase of the great problems. As a question of the letter of the law the Quaker's triumph was complete, yet to-day from Old Shamokin (Sunbury) to Tioga Point (Athens), this once disputed land is as Yankee in fact as any portion of Connecticut. When these forces were arrayed in armed hostility, the scant records now left us of the communications between the respective leaders, communications offering adjustments, proclamations giving the world the facts in the case; petitions to the Pennsylvania authorities, and statements in the nature of pleas for justice, as well as arguments before courts, show these pioneers . from the Nutmeg State mostly as remarkable statesmen, diplomats and broad con