In solemn procession, on June 23, 1694, led by Kelpius, they walked, two and two, through the little town, which then had some five hundred houses. They called on the Governor, William Markham, representing Penn, and took the oath of allegiance to the British Crown. In the evening they held a solemn religious service on "the Fair Mount," at the verge of the Schuylkill. In it they celebrated the old German custom of "Sanct Johannes" on St. John's eve. They lighted a fire of dry leaves and brushwood on the hill, casting into it flowers, pine boughs and bones, and then rolled the dying embers down the hillside as a sign that the longest day of the year was past, and the sun, like the embers, would gradually lose its power. The next morning was the Sabbath, and they went out to Germantown, where they were warmly welcomed. They built their first house, since called the Monastery, near the Wissahickon Creek, where they worked and worshipped. Their house they called "The Woman of the Wilderness," and upon its roof, day and night, some of them stood, closely observing the changing heavens. With prayers and patience they watched for the end of the world and the coming of the Lord, and they obeyed the ministry of Kelpius. He lived in a cave, and as his colony of enthusiasts gradually dwindled, through death and desertion, he came to be known as the "Hermit of the Wissahickon." Here he dug his well two centuries ago, and the "Hermit's Pool" still exists. He constantly preached the near approach of the millennium, and exhibited his magical "wisdom stone." Finally, wearying yet still believing, he gave up, cast his weird stone into the stream, and in 1704 he died, much to the relief of the neighboring Quaker brethren, who did not fancy such mysterious alchemy so near the city of Penn. These "Pietists," or "Kelpians," as they were afterwards called, dispersed over the country, and had much to do with guiding the religious life and mode of worship among the early German settlers in Pennsylvania. Everywhere in German Pennsylvania there are traces of their influence, and especially at Ephrata and Waynesboro they have had pious and earnest followers. After the death of Kelpius, their last survivor in Germantown was Dr. Christopher DeWitt, famed as a naturalist, an astronomer, a clock-maker and a magician. He was a close friend of John Bartram, lived an ascetic life, became blind and feeble, and finally died an octogenarian in 1765, thus closing with his life the active career of the Kelpian mystics. THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER.