Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
The Lehigh River flows out of the Alleghenies through a deep and
tortuous valley which rends the mountain ridges until it strikes
against the South Mountain range, here called the Durham Hills, and
then turns northeast along its base to the Delaware. At this bend the
Saucon Creek comes in from the south and the Monocacy Creek from the
north, and here, twelve miles from Easton, is Bethlehem. This
manufacturing town of twenty thousand population is one of the noted
places of the Lehigh Valley. A large part of the lowlands along the
river are occupied by the extensive works of the Bethlehem Steel
Company, where the big guns, armor and crank-shafts are made for the
navy, while on the slopes of the South Mountain are the noble
buildings of the Lehigh University, the munificent benefaction of Asa
Packer, supporting four hundred students of the technical studies
developing mining and railways. On the hill slopes of the northern
river bank is the original Moravian town, oddly built of bricks and
stone, with a steep slate roof on nearly every house. It was one of
the earliest and the most important of the settlements in America of
the refugee followers of John Huss, the "Congregation of the United
Brethren," and for a century was under its absolute government. In the
winter of 1740 the first trees were cut down that formed the log hut
which was the first house on this part of the Lehigh. Count
Zinzendorf, their leader, arrived from Moravia, with his young
daughter Benigna, before the second house was built, and celebrated
with the settlers the Christmas Eve of 1741. They had called the place
Beth-Lechem, "the house upon the Lehigh," but it is related that
towards midnight on this occasion Zinzendorf, becoming deeply moved,
seized a blazing torch and earnestly sang a German hymn:
"Not Jerusalem--lowly Bethlehem
'Twas that gave us Christ to save us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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