of a water-course. The handkerchief, covered with yellow sediment, was now lifted from the spout. The glittering product thus gathered by the chief was placed in a stone vessel with great care. After the fire was extinguished, and certain incantations performed with ceremonial exactness, the Indians left the spot in charge of the wild rock surrounding it, and resumed their march toward their land of maize among the lakes.

Six days' walk led the party to Kingston, New York, where the treasures of the mountain, thus artfully obtained, were exchanged with the whites, for such articles as want or caprice suggested to the occupants of the forest.

In after years the returned hero often related the incident to his family and friends, some of whom thoroughly traversed every portion of Bald Mount and Campbell's Ledge without discovering the secret channel or the golden spring.

SALT SPRINGS.

The three salt springs were respectively located, one at Martin's Creek, one in the mountain gap between Providence and Abington, the other on the Nay-aug, about five miles from the junction of this stream with the Lackawanna at Capoose. The last-named one, manipulated by the Indians to come out of the bed of the brook, was considered by the wild tribes as the richest, as it yielded the largest quantity of salt with the least labor. When When a knowledge of this spring first came to the white man, deer came hither in herds. Sometimes there were hundreds in a drove around these salt licks; and it was rare during the spring or summer months not to find the buck or fawn cropping the wild grass growing luxuriantly around these briny places. In the upper part of Leggett's Gap, in the mountain west of Providence, there was a salt spring strongly impregnated with saline

properties. When the white adventurer first sought the valley for his home, and found no luxury but steak from the bear or haunch from the deer, and heard no voice but that issuing from the throat of the rifle, the waters of this spring were often sought to obtain the scarce and necessary salt. The warriors' path from Oquago salt spring to Capoose passed by its waters. Much of the salt for the earliest settlers of the Lackawanna and Wyoming valleys was granulated

here.

Mr. Blackman, who was taken captive from Wyoming, relates of the Indians, that when salt became scarce, they went up the Lackawanna and returned the next day, loaded with the desired article, which was sometimes warm. From a knowledge of this spring, advantage was early taken by the hunter and trapper, for in such numbers deer frequented this fountain to lap its waters, that they easily and often fell a trophy to the woodsman's gun.

A hunter of seventy winters tells the writer that, in his younger days, deer were so tame in the vicinity of this spring, that he has killed and dressed during his lifetime one hundred and forty-seven deer at this place alone!

That the natives frequented this place for the purpose of killing deer and curing venison, is satisfactorily proven by the quantity of warlike and domestic Indian relics found immediately around it at an early day.

LEAD MINE.

Tuscarora Creek, a wild, clear, rapid stream, retaining its original Indian name, and lying between Meshoppen and Wyalusing, puts into the east side of the Susquehanna, about thirty miles above the Lackawanna. Half a mile from its mouth, under a cliff leaning gloomily over a sharp bend of the stream, where the rocks go down

into the waters here deeper than at any other point, a lead mine was worked by the Indians for making bullets, after they had been taught the use of the rifle by the English and the French. The Oneida chief informed Mr. Teal, that not only were the Wyoming Indians supplied with lead from this Tuscarora mine, but the French, while in harmony with the Iroquois, drew largely upon it.

The Indian, in his wild dream of future hope, imposed silence so effectually upon the rock along the Tuscarora, that although several companies have exhausted large sums of money in attempting to discover the lost mine, no knowledge of its location is had other than that coming from Indian tradition.

Tuscarora Creek has a scrap of history of its own. The great war-path from Tioga down to Wyoming, crossed the mouth of this stream. It was in the certified township of Braintrim and county of Westmoreland. In 1779, Gen. Sullivan, with his army, crossed the Tuscarora at this point. When his rear-guard had reached the south bank, where a large mountain, covered with oak, with little or no underbrush intervening to obstruct the view for a great distance, comes down to the very stream, a body of savages were seen stealing down its side for the purpose of securing a few prisoners. Familiar with the mode of Indian warfare, the guards leaped behind the trees, affording them partial shelter. The Indians, more skilled in the art and advantage of woodside encounter, as quickly betook themselves to the oak, which concealed even their presence, when the skirmish began.

Soldiers fell, wounded or dead, without knowing from what particular quarter bullets issued. At length Mr. Eleazer Carey, who saw his fellow-soldiers fall one after another, simultaneously with the crack of the rifle near by where he was standing, espied the dusky form of a warrior cautiously peering out from behind a tree not fifty yards from where he was standing, with his well-aimed gun in his

hand, bring down a soldier at each discharge of his weapon. After the Indian had reloaded, Carey, who had resolved to kill him if possible when he should attempt to shoot again, watched with intense solicitude the warrior's rifle as it was again brought beside the tree. No sooner had the slight projecting cheek and eye of the Indian come out so as to be discerned by Carey, when the avenging bullet was sent forthwith into his brain. He gave one high leap, uttered one deep yell, and fell to rise no more. The Indians ran, caught up his body, and fled into the forest.

So much for mines and springs, which some day may possibly have more interest than that given them by rumors and vague recollections of tradition.

GENERAL HISTORY.

The earliest history of the Lackawanna Valley is so interwoven with that of Wyoming, that, to present a faithful picture of one, material must be largely drawn upon the other. In fact, while Wyoming in its limited signification now gives a name to a valley unsurpassed for the beauty of its scenery or the romance of its history, it was formerly used in a more enlarged sense to designate all the country purchased by the New England men of the Indians in 1754, lying in what is now known as Luzerne, Wyoming, Susquehanna, and Wayne counties. Thus the inhabitants of Providence, Salem, and Huntington, all comparatively remote from Wyoming Valley, were designated as "Wyoming Settlers," and came under the disputed jurisdiction of Connecticut.

In 1752, the cabin of no white man had broken the Wyoming forest. After a casual reconnoissance along its eastern border by the hunter, made with indefinite knowledge of the character of the plain occupied by Teedyuscung and Backsinosa, a Monsey chief at Capoose, and

1 Miner.

reported with glowing exaggeration to adventurous men living in Hartford desiring to develop the western portion of their possessions, "a number of persons, principally inhabitants of Connecticut, formed themselves into a company for the purpose of purchasing the Susquehanna lands of the Indians, and forming a settlement at Wyoming. This association was called the "Susquehanna Company, and during the same year, 1753, they sent out commissioners to explore the contemplated territory, and to establish a friendly intercourse with such Indian tribes as should be found in possession of it." These facts, carried to Philadelphia by Indian scouts and interpreters, alarmed the Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania, which also claimed this wild tract yet unlocked by any Indian treaty, grant, or title to any party. Daniel Broadhead and William Parsons, two justices of the peace in Lower Smithfield Township, Northampton County, on the war-path from Connecticut to Wyoming, were instructed by Pennsylvania to watch all persons and parties going hither either to explore or begin a settlement.

In fact no inland point within the province was watched with greater solicitude or devotion through many years of strange vicissitude than was Wyoming. The deep, broad Susquehanna coming down through the magnificent highlands and mountains from the wood-rimmed lakes of New York, carrying its flood sometimes rudely over its banks where the cabin-dwellers roamed in no doubtful security, gave to a valley naturally beautiful all the needed charms to captivate the Indian or allure the eye of the white man. Alive with moose, bear, and deer, fluttering with the wild turkey or the more gentle quail, the woods expanded into forest far extending in every direction of the compass, while water-fowl, and fish of every hue and variety-especially the shad-animated the river and all its winding tributaries.

Chapman, p. 51.