Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Here is Shohola Township, on the Pennsylvania shore, a wild and rocky
region fronting on the river for about ten miles, and Shohola Creek
rushes down a rocky bed through a deep gorge to seek the Delaware. It
was at this place the surveyors' line was drawn from the Lehigh over
to the Delaware, after Marshall's fateful walk. The "Shohola Glen," a
favorite excursion ground, has the channel of the creek, only forty
feet wide, cut down for two hundred feet deep into the flagstones, and
it plunges over four attractive cascades at the Shohola Falls above.
A short distance northward the Lackawaxen flows in through a fine
gorge, broadening out as the Delaware is approached; and the canal,
after crossing the latter on an aqueduct, goes up the Lackawaxen bank.
A grand amphitheatre of towering hills surrounds the broad flats where
the Lackawaxen brings its ample flow of dark amber-colored waters out
of the hemlock forests and swamps of Wayne County to this picturesque
spot. Here was fought, on July 22, 1779, the battle of Lackawaxen or
the Minisink, the chief Revolutionary conflict on the upper Delaware.
The battlefield was a rocky ledge on the New York side, elevated about
five hundred feet above the river, amid the lofty hills of Highland
Township, in Sullivan County. The noted Mohawk chief, Joseph Brandt,
with a force of fifteen hundred Indians and Tories, came down from
Northern New York to plunder the frontier settlements. Most of the
inhabitants fled down to the forts on the Lehigh or across the Blue
Ridge, upon his approach; but a small militia force was hastily
gathered under Colonels Hathorn and Tusten to meet the enemy, whom
they found crossing the Delaware at a ford near the Lackawaxen.
Hathorn, who commanded, moved to attack, but Brandt rushed his Indians
up a ravine, intercepting Hathorn just as he got out on the rocky
ledge, and cutting off about fifty of his rear guard. Hathorn had
ninety men with him, who quickly threw up a rude breastwork,
protecting about a half-acre of the ledge. Their ammunition was scant,
it was a terribly hot day, they had no water, and were soon
surrounded; but for six hours they bravely defended themselves, when,
the ammunition being all gone, the Indians broke through their line.
Tusten was attending the wounded, and with seventeen wounded men, whom
he was alleviating, was tomahawked, all being massacred. The others
fled, many being slain in the pursuit. Forty-four of the little band
were killed, and the fifty in the rear guard who had been cut off were
never afterwards heard of. Years afterwards, the bones of the slain in
this terrible defeat were gathered on the field and taken across the
Blue Ridge to Goshen for interment, and in 1822 a monument was erected
at Goshen in their memory, Colonel Hathorn, who was then living,
making an address. On the centenary anniversary in 1879 a monument was
dedicated on the field, where faint relics of the old breastwork were
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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