This is one of the most harmonious combinations of mountain, vale, and river, to be found in America; we know not whether to call it more beautiful or grand. Fine as is all the scenery of this neighbourhood, however, it is not till very lately that the current of travel has turned thither, and but partially yet. Harper’s Ferry will soon be a resort for admirers of nature from all nations, and it may well share the honours of pilgrimage with Trenton Falls and Niagara. Steam navigation across the Atlantic will make our New World _lions_ as tame as the Pyramids. It is difficult, at least for me, to stand on any eminence commanding a landscape, wild, yet formed for a blest human residence, without seeing in it the forfeited inheritance of the red man. The unpicturesque new village of the white man, his mill, or his factory, does not convey to my imagination an image of happiness; and I regret the primitive rover of the wild, who neither blackened nature with smoke, nor violated her harmony with brick and shingle. The tide of sympathy seems turning of late against these oppressed tribes, and it is not amiss sometimes to remember our own atrocities as well as theirs. What will be thought hereafter of the massacre of the poor Conestogoes, as related in the history of these middle regions of our territory! “On the first arrival of the English,” says the chronicler, “messengers from this tribe entered into a treaty of friendship with the first proprietary, William Penn, which was to last as long as the sun should shine, or the waters run in the rivers. “This treaty has been since frequently renewed, and the chain brightened, as they express it, from time to time. It has never been violated on their part, or ours, till now. As their lands by degrees were mostly purchased, and the settlement of the white people began to surround them, the proprietor assigned them lands on the manor of Conestogoe, which they might not part with; there they have lived many years in friendship with their white neighbours, who loved them for their peaceable inoffensive behaviour. “It has always been observed, that Indians, settled in the neighbourhood of white people, do not increase, but diminish continually. This tribe accordingly went on diminishing, till there remained in their town on the manor but twenty persons, namely, seven men, five women, and eight children, boys and girls. “Of these, Shehaes was a very old man, having assisted at the second treaty held with them by Mr. Penn, in 1701, and ever since continued a faithful friend to the English; he is said to have been an exceeding good man, considering his education, being naturally of a kind, benevolent temper.