Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
great amount of water in ordinary seasons, and it seems as much by
strategy as by power to have overcome the obstacles and made its
mountain passes. The rended mountains, steep tree-covered slopes and
frequent isolated sentinel-like hills rising from the glens, have all
been moulded into rounded forms by the action of the elements, leaving
few abrupt precipices or naked rocks to mar the regularity of the
natural beauties. The valleys and lower parts of the mountain sides
are generally cultivated, the fields sloping up to the mantle of
forest crowning the flanks and summits of the ridges. Every change of
sunshine or shadow, and the steady progress of the seasons, give new
tints to these glens and mountains. At times the ravines are deep and
the river tortuous, and again it meanders across the rich flat bottom
lands of a broad valley. In its winding course among these mountain
ranges, this renowned river passes through and displays almost the
whole geological formation of Pennsylvania. The primary rocks are to
the eastward of the Susquehanna, and the bituminous coal measures
begin on the western Allegheny slope, so that the river cuts into a
rock stratification over six miles in thickness, as one after another
formation comes to the surface.
We go through the narrow Tuscarora Gap, and are journeying over the
lands of the Tuscaroras, one of the Iroquois Six Nations, who came up
from the South, and were given the name of Tuscarora, or the
"shirt-wearer," because long contact with the whites had led them to
adopt that garment. Beyond the Gap, the Tuscarora Valley is enclosed
on its northwest side by the Turkey Mountain, the next western ridge,
and it was a region of terrible Indian conflicts and massacres in the
pioneer days, when the first fort built there was burnt, and every
settler either killed or carried off into captivity. Here was fought
the "Grasshopper War" between the Tuscaroras and Delawares. They had
villages on opposite sides of the river, and one day the children
disputed about some grasshoppers. The quarrel involved first the
squaws and then the men, a bloody battle following. Mifflin, an
attractive town, is located here, and to the westward the Juniata
breaks through the next great ridge crossing its path, passing a
massive gorge formed by the Shade and Blue Mountains, flowing for
miles in the deep and narrow winding canyon between them, the
far-famed "Lewistown or Long Narrows," having the railway hanging upon
one bank and the canal upon the other. Broken, slaty shingle covers
most of the hill-slopes, and in the broad valley, above the lengthened
gorge, is Lewistown, nestling at the base of a huge mountain at the
outlet of the beautiful Kishicoquillas Valley, spreading up among the
high hills to the northward--its name meaning "the snakes are already
in their dens." The hero of this attractive region in the eighteenth
century, and then its most distinguished inhabitant, was Logan, the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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