"Gay was the mountain songOf bright Alfarata,Where sweep the waters ofThe blue Juniata:'Strong and true my arrows are,In my painted quiver,Swift goes my light canoeAdown the rapid river.'"
"Gay was the mountain songOf bright Alfarata,Where sweep the waters ofThe blue Juniata:'Strong and true my arrows are,In my painted quiver,Swift goes my light canoeAdown the rapid river.'"
"Gay was the mountain song
Of bright Alfarata,
Where sweep the waters of
The blue Juniata:
'Strong and true my arrows are,
In my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe
Adown the rapid river.'"
CROSSING THE MOUNTAIN TOP.
At the eastern base of the main Allegheny range a long mountain valley stretches broadly from the far northeast to the southwest, and here is Tyrone, a settlement of extensive iron works, and the outlet of the greatest bituminous coal-fields of Central Pennsylvania, the Clearfield district, the town of Clearfield being about forty miles to the northwest. Northeast of Tyrone, this valley is called the Bald Eagle Valley, a picturesque and fertile region; and to the southwest it is the Tuckahoe Valley. At the base of the Bald Eagle Mountain, thirty-three miles from Tyrone, is the town of Bellefonte, another iron region, handling the products of the Bald Eagle and Nittany Valleys, and receiving its name from the "Beautiful Fount" which supplies the town with water. This is one of the most remarkable springsin the Alleghenies, pouring out two hundred and eighty thousand gallons of the purest water every minute. Following the Tuckahoe Valley southward, at the base of the main Allegheny range we come to the Pennsylvania Railroad town of Altoona, and eight miles farther to Hollidaysburg. Each is a representative town—Hollidaysburg of the past methods of crossing the mountain top, and Altoona of the present.
In 1836 Mr. David Stephenson, the famous British railway engineer, made a journey across Pennsylvania by the methods then in vogue, and wrote that he travelled from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, three hundred and ninety-five miles by the route taken, in ninety-one hours, at a cost of three pounds sterling, about four cents a mile, and that one hundred and eighteen miles of the journey, which he calls "extraordinary," were by railroads, and two hundred and seventy-seven miles by canals. This was the line used for twenty years, a main route of travel from the seaboard to the West, having been put into operation in 1834. It followed the Columbia Railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia on the Susquehanna, the canal up the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers to Hollidaysburg, a portage railroad by inclined planes over the main Allegheny Mountain ridge to Johnstown, and the canal again, down the Conemaugh and Allegheny Rivers to Pittsburg. There were one hundred and seventy-two miles of canal from Columbiato Hollidaysburg, which went through more than a hundred locks and crossed thirty-three aqueducts, having risen about six hundred feet above the level at Columbia when it reached the eastern face of the mountain. The canal west of Johnstown was one hundred and five miles long, descended sixty-four locks, and went through a tunnel of one thousand feet. The Portage Railroad of thirty-six miles crossed the mountain by Blair's Gap, above Hollidaysburg, at twenty-three hundred and twenty-six feet elevation, through a tunnel nine hundred feet long. There were ten inclined planes, five on each side. The steepest side of the Allegheny Mountain being its eastern face, the railway from Hollidaysburg to the summit, though only ten miles long, ascended fourteen hundred feet, while twenty miles of railway on the western side descended eleven hundred and seventy-two feet. The cars hauled up the planes each carried three tons of freight, and three cars were hauled at a single draft. There could be twenty-four cars carrying seventy-two tons passed over in one hour, which was ample for the traffic at that time, the average business being three hundred tons of freight a day. This amount would be carried in less than ten of the big cars of to-day. It took passengers eight hours to go over the mountain, halting one hour on the summit for dinner.
This route was superseded by the Pennsylvania Railroad crossing above Altoona, opened in 1854, aroad made for ordinary trains; and then Hollidaysburg became a town of iron manufacture, losing the bustle and business of the Portage, which was abandoned. The railroad company acquired a large tract of land between the main Allegheny range and the Brush Mountain to the southward, which has a deep notch, called the "Kettle," cut down into it, opening a distant prospect of gray mountain ridges behind. Here has been established the most completely representative railway city in the world, having enormous railway shops, a gigantic establishment, and a population of thirty-five thousand, almost all in one way or another dependent on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Altoona is at an elevation of about eleven hundred feet above tide, and the railway climbs to the summit of the mountain by a grade of ninety feet to the mile, winding around an indented valley to get the necessary elevation. At its head this valley divides into two smaller glens, with a towering crag rising between them. Having ascended the northern side, the railway curves around, crossing the smaller glens upon high embankments, doubling upon itself, and mounting steadily higher by running up the opposite side of the valley to the outer edge of the ridge. This sweeping curve gives striking scenic effects, and is the noted Pennsylvania "Horse Shoe," and the huge crag between the smaller glens, in which the head of the Horse Shoe curve is partly hewn, is Kittanning Point. This means the "greatstream," two creeks issuing out of the glens uniting below it; and here was the route, at sixteen hundred feet elevation, of the ancient Indian trail across the mountain, the "Kittanning Path," in their portage between the Juniata and Ohio waters. It shows how closely the modern railroad builder has followed the route set for him by the original road-makers among the red men. The Pennsylvania Railroad carries four tracks over the mountain, piercing the summit by two tunnels at about twenty-two hundred feet elevation, with two tracks in each. The mountain rises much higher, and has coal mines, coke ovens and miners' cabins on the very top. This is the watershed dividing the Atlantic waters from those of the Mississippi, flowing to the Gulf, and Gallitzin, a flourishing mining village, is the summit station of the railway.
The Conemaugh near Florence
The Conemaugh near Florence
GOING DOWN THE CONEMAUGH.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century there were but two white men living in all this region. The first one there was Thomas Blair, whose cabin was on the mountain at Blair's Gap, where the Portage Railroad afterwards came over. The other was Michael Maguire, who came along in 1790, and going through the Gap, concluded to settle among the Indians about twelve miles away, at what was afterwards Loretto. These rugged pioneers spent most of their time fighting and watching the Indiansand wild beasts, and gathered a few companions around them. Here afterwards came Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, who left the Russian army in 1792 and visited America, designing to travel. He became a Catholic priest, and liking these mountains, established a mission at Loretto in 1798, spending a fortune in maintaining it, his missionary charge ultimately extending over the whole mountain region. He attracted a population of about three thousand, chiefly Germans and Irish, repeatedly refused the episcopacy, and continued his labors until his death at Loretto in 1840. His remains lie in front of his church, surmounted by a monument, while the centenary of this St. Michael's Church of Loretto was marked in October, 1899, by erecting his bronze statue, the Prelate-Prince Gallitzin being portrayed as he appeared in the Allegheny wilderness, wearing cassock, surplice and a skull-cap in lieu of the beretta, this being his usual head-gear at service. Loretto, named after the city on the Adriatic, was the first nucleus of population in this elevated district, and is about five miles north of the railway. Loretto was the first settlement in this region, but afterwards the coal and iron attracted the Welsh, who came in numbers, and founded the town of Ebensburg, about eleven miles from the railway. They gave their familiar name of Cambria to the county. Here on the mountain side, at an elevation of over two thousand feet, are the Cresson Springs,a noted health resort, with a half-dozen medicinal springs, the chief being an astringent chalybeate and a strong alum.
The route west of the mountain is down the valley of the Conemaugh, in a district underlaid with coal, and having at every village evidence of this industry. The Conemaugh is "the other stream" of the Indians, and winding down its tortuous valley, with coal and iron all about, the railway comes to the settlement of Conemaugh, which spreads into the larger town of Johnstown, the seat of the great Cambria Steel Works. The Conemaugh Valley is a deep canyon, and Conemaugh village was the western terminus of the mountain portage, where the canal began. A little flat space about a mile beyond, at the junction of Stony Creek, was in early times an Indian village, then known from its sachem as "Kickenapawling's Old Town." When the white men ventured over the mountain, there came among them a hardy German pioneer named Joseph Jahns, who built a log cabin on the flat in 1791, and from him the cluster of little houses that grew afterwards became known as Jahnstown. Then came the Welsh miners and iron-workers, and they set up charcoal furnaces, and soon changed the name to Johnstown. From this humble beginning grew the largest iron and steel establishment in Pennsylvania. Its ores, coal and limestone were originally all dug out of the neighboring ridges, though now it uses Lake Superiorores. The Conemaugh Valley is here enclosed by high hills, and in the centre of the town the railroad is carried across the river on a solid stone bridge with low arches.
This region, on May 31, 1889, was the scene of one of the most appalling disasters of modern times. A deluge of rain for the greater part of two days had fallen upon the Alleghenies, and made great freshets in both the Juniata and the Conemaugh. On the South Fork of the Conemaugh, fifteen miles above Johnstown, is Conemaugh Lake, a reservoir there formed by damming the stream, so that it covered a surface of five hundred acres—the dam, a thousand feet long, being in places one hundred feet high. This had been made as a fishing-ground by a club of Pittsburg anglers. The excessive rains filled the lake, and the weakened dam burst, its twenty millions of tons of waters rushing down the already swollen Conemaugh in a mass a half-mile wide stretching across the valley and forty to fifty feet high, carrying everything before it. The lake level was about three hundred feet higher than Johnstown, and every village, tree, house, and the whole railway, with much of the soil and rocks, were carried before the resistless flood to Johnstown, where the mass was stopped by and piled up behind the stone railway bridge, and there caught fire, the resistless flood, to get out, sweeping away nearly the whole town in the valley bottom. This vast calamity destroyed from three to five thousandlives, for no accurate estimate could be ever made, and ten millions of property. It took the flood about seven minutes of actual time to pass over the fifteen miles between the lake and Johnstown, and there was left, after it had passed, a wide bed, like a great Alpine glacialmoraine, filled with ponderous masses of sand and stones and wreckage of every description, the resistless torrent being afterwards reduced to a little stream of running water. It required many months to recover from this appalling destruction; but the people went to work with a will and rebuilt the town, the steel works and the railway, which for a dozen miles down the valley had been completely obliterated. This terrible disaster excited universal sympathy, and a relief fund amounting to nearly $3,000,000 was contributed from all parts of the world.
LIGONIER AND HANNASTOWN.
The whole mountain district west of Johnstown is filled with coal mines, coke ovens and iron furnaces, this being the "Pittsburg Coal District." The Conemaugh breaks through the next western ridge, the Laurel Mountain, and the broadening river winds along its deep valley between high wooded hills. It is a veritable "Black Country," and ten miles beyond, the river passes the finest mountain gorge on the western slope of the Alleghenies, the deep and winding canyon of the Packsaddle Narrows, by which the Conemaugh breaks out of the Chestnut Ridge, thewestern border of the Allegheny ranges. For two hundred miles the railroad has gone through or over range after range, and this grand pass, encompassed by mountains rising twelve hundred feet above the bottom of the gorge, is the impressive exit at the final portal. The main railroad then leaves the Conemaugh, and goes off southwestward along the slope of Chestnut Ridge towards Greensburg and Pittsburg. The river unites with the Loyalhanna Creek below, and then flows as the Kiskiminetas down to the Allegheny. The name of Loyalhanna means the "middle stream," while the tradition is that an impatient Indian warrior, anxious to move forward, shouted in the night to his comrades encamped on the other river—"Giesh-gumanito"—"let us make daylight"—and from this was derived its name of Kiskiminetas. A branch railroad from here goes to Blairsville, named in memory of the solitary pioneer of Blair's Gap, and another northward leads to the town of Indiana. The great Chestnut Ridge which the main railway runs along, gradually descending the slope, is the last mountain the westbound traveller sees until he reaches the Rockies. For seventy miles to the southwestward the Chestnut Ridge and Laurel Mountain extend in parallels, their crest lines being almost exactly ten miles apart, and enclosing the Ligonier Valley, out of which flows northward the Loyalhanna Creek, breaking through the Chestnut Ridge. Near this pass in 1757 wasbuilt Fort Ligonier, another of the frontier outposts which resisted the incursions of the French and Indians, who then held all the country to the westward. In the Chestnut Ridge at Hillside is the "Great Bear Cave," an extensive labyrinth of passages and spacious chambers stretching more than a mile underground, which, like most such places, has its subterranean river and its tale of woe. A young girl, stolen by gypsies, to escape from them took refuge in this cave, and losing her way, perished, her bones being found years afterwards. Explorers since have always unwound balls of twine in this labyrinth, to be able to retrace their steps.
In a good farming district of the Westmoreland region is Greensburg, another railway junction where branches go southward to the Monongahela coalfields. Robert Hanna built a house near here in the eighteenth century, around which gathered some thirty log cabins, and the place in course of time became known as Hannastown, prominent in the early history of Western Pennsylvania. Here was held the first court convened west of the Alleghenies, and here were passed the patriotic resolutions of May 16, 1775, upon receipt of the news of the battle of Lexington at the opening of the Revolution, which sounded the keynote for the Declaration of Independence the following year. Here also first appeared during the Revolution General Arthur St. Clair, an immigrant from Scotland, the grandson ofthe Earl of Roslyn, who lived in an humble house on Chestnut Ridge. He served in the French and Indian wars, and was the British commander at Fort Ligonier. Horrible Indian massacres and terrible retributions by the settlers were the chief features of the Revolutionary War in Westmoreland. At its close, the whites sent an expedition in 1782 against the Wyandottes, which was defeated. The savages soon wreaked fearful vengeance, raiding the region in July of that year and burning Hannastown, which was never rebuilt. Greensburg appeared soon afterwards, however, and in 1875 it celebrated the centenary of the Hannastown resolutions with patriotic spirit. In its Presbyterian churchyard lie the remains of General St. Clair, who, after founding and naming the city of Cincinnati, returned here, and died in 1818, at the age of eighty-four, in his lonely cabin on Chestnut Ridge, in unmerited poverty and obscurity. The stone over his grave has this significant inscription: "The earthly remains of General Arthur St. Clair are deposited beneath this humble monument, which is erected to supply the place of a nobler one due from his country." Being in a region of fine agriculture and prolific mines, Greensburg is a prosperous and wealthy town.
BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.
Natural gas is added to coal and coke in the region beyond Greensburg, and the villages displayflaring gas torches at night for street lamps. The whole country, north, south and west, is a network of railways and a maze of mines, having long rows of burning coke ovens lighting the sky with their lurid glare. Here are mined the Westmoreland gas coals. The valley of the Monongahela River, coming up from West Virginia, approaches from the southward, a great highway for coal boats out to the Ohio and the West, also receiving a large coal tribute from its branch, the Youghiogheny, flowing by crooked course through Fayette County. Alongside the Monongahela is the great Edgar Thomson Steel Works, one of the chief establishments of the Carnegie Steel Company, making railway rails. Here is the famous Colonial battlefield of Western Pennsylvania, made immortal by General Braddock's defeat in July, 1755. This region was then a thick forest, through which an Indian trail coming over the Monongahela led to the junction of the two rivers forming the Ohio, where the French had established their stockade and trading post of Fort Duquesne. Braddock came into this region from beyond the mountains, his object being the capture of the fort. His defeat, a great event in our Colonial history, was due to his ignorance of the methods of Indian fighting and his refusal to listen to those who understood it; but he paid the penalty with his life, being shot, as was believed at the time, by one of his own men, after having had five horses shot under him. It wasin rallying the defeated remnant that Washington, the senior surviving officer, won his first military laurels. Braddock crossed the river and was caught in an ambuscade, eight hundred and fifty French and Indians surprising and defeating his force of about twenty-five hundred British regulars and Virginia Provincial troops, the loss being nearly eight hundred. Washington led the remnant back to Virginia, carrying Braddock about forty miles on the retreat, when he died. He was buried at night in the centre of the road, Washington reading the Episcopal burial service by torchlight, and the defeated army marched over the grave to conceal its location from the enemy. A handsome monument is erected on the battlefield at Braddock's. And thus, through iron mills and coal mines, amid smoke and busy industry, the Pennsylvania Railroad enters Pittsburg, the "Iron City."
THE GREAT IRON CITY.
The Monongahela River coming from the southward, and the Allegheny River flowing from the northward, drain the western defiles of the Alleghenies, and at Pittsburg unite to form the Ohio River. Each comes to the junction through a deeply-cut canyon, and at the confluence is a triangular flat upon which the original town was built. Like most American rivers, all these have names of Indian origin. Monongahela is the "river of high banks, breakingoff in places and falling down." Ohio is a Seneca word, originally pronounced "O-hee-o," and meaning the "beautiful river" or the "fair water," and Allegheny in the language of the Delawares has much the same signification, meaning "the fairest stream." All the Indians regarded the two as really the same river, of which the Monongahela was a tributary. The first white men exploring this region were the French, who came down from the lakes and Canada, when they spread through the entire Mississippi Valley. In 1753, however, Washington with a surveying party was sent out by Virginia and carefully examined the site of Pittsburg, advising, on his return, that a fort should be built there to check the advance of the French, and the next year this was done. Scarcely was it completed, however, when the French sent a summons to surrender, addressed "From the Commander-in-chief of His Most Christian Majesty's troops now on the Beautiful River to the Commander of those of Great Britain." A French force soon appeared, and the fort was abandoned. This began the French and Indian Colonial War that continued seven years, the French then erecting their famous fort and trading-post guarding the head of the Ohio, which they named after the great French naval commander of the seventeenth century, Marquis Abraham Duquesne. Then came Braddock's defeat in 1755, and for some time the region was quiet. Moravian missionary influence, however,had by 1758 detached many of the Indians from the French interest, and after another British attack and repulse, General Forbes came with a large force, and the French abandoned the fort and blew it up. Immediately rebuilt by the English, a Virginia garrison occupied the post, and it was named Fort Pitt. Then a larger fort was built at a cost of $300,000 and garrisoned by artillery, which the enemy vainly besieged in 1763. The next year a town site was laid out near the fort, and in 1770 it had twenty log houses. After the long succession of wars and massacres on that frontier had ceased, the village grew, and business began developing—at first, boat- and vessel-building, and then smelting and coal mining and the manufacture of glass. In 1812 the first rolling-mill started, and the war with England in that year caused the opening of a cannon foundry, which became the Fort Pitt Iron Works. The village of Fort Pitt had become Pittsburg, and expanded vastly with the introduction of steam, and it became an extensive steamboat builder for the Western waters. Railroad connections gave it renewed impetus; natural gas used as a manufacturing fuel was a wonderful stimulant; and it now conducts an enormous trade with all parts of the country, and is the seat of the greatest iron, steel and glass industries in America.
Few views are more striking than that given from the high hills overlooking Pittsburg. Rising steeply,almost from the water's edge, on the southern bank of the Monongahela River, is Mount Washington, three hundred and fifty feet high. Inclined-plane railways are constructed up the face of this hill, and mounting to the top, there is a superb view over the town. The Allegheny River comes from the northeast and the Monongahela from the southeast, through deep and winding gorges cut into the rolling tableland, and uniting form the Ohio, flowing away to the northwest also through a deep gorge, although its bordering ridges of hills are more widely separated. Pittsburg stands upon the low flat surface of the peninsula, above the junction of the rivers, which has some elongated ridgy hills, stretching eastward through the centre. Its situation and appearance have thus not inaptly been compared to a flatiron, the point being at the head of the Ohio, and these ridgy hills making the handle. The city has overflowed into extensive suburbs across both rivers, the aggregate population being more than a half-million. Numerous bridges span the rivers, the narrow shores between the steep hills bearing a mixed maze of railways and factories. Countless chimney-smokes and steam-jets come up in all directions, overhanging the town like a pall; and so impressive is the obscuration, combined with the lurid glare of furnaces and the weird white gleam of electric lights, that the elevated view down into Pittsburg seems a veritable pandemonium. So startling is it on a lowering day that ithas been pointedly described by one who thus for the first time looked upon the "Smoky City," far down in its deep basin among the high hills, as appearing like "Hell with the lid off." There are plenty of railways in the scene, and scores of odd-looking, stumpy-prowed little steamboats built high above the water, having huge stern-wheels to drive them, with their noses thrust up on the sloping levee along the river bank, whereon is piled the cargoes, chiefly of iron products. The swift current turns all the sterns down stream, so that they lie diagonally towards the shore. Fleets of flat, shallow coal barges are moored along, waiting to be made up into tows for their journey down the Ohio, as Pittsburg has an extensive river trade, covering over twenty thousand miles of Western waters. Out of the weird and animated scene there come all sorts of busy noises, forges and trip-hammers pounding, steam hissing, railroad trains running, whistles screeching, locomotives puffing, bells ringing, so that with the flame jets rising, and the smokes of all colors blowing about, there is got a good idea of the active industries of this very busy place.
PITTSBURG DEVELOPMENT.
This wonderful industrial development all came within the nineteenth century. There is still preserved as a relic of its origin the little block-house citadel of the old Fort Pitt, down near the point of the peninsula where the rivers join. Thishas recently been restored by the Daughters of the American Revolution—a small square building with a pyramidal roof. The surrounding stockade long ago disappeared. There is in the Pittsburg City Hall an inscribed tablet from Fort Pitt bearing the date 1764. The old building, which was the scene of Pittsburg's earliest history, for it stands almost on the spot occupied by Fort Duquesne, is among modern mills and storehouses, about three hundred feet from the head of the Ohio. Pittsburg, after an almost exclusive devotion to manufacturing and business, began some years ago to cultivate artistic tastes in architecture, and has some very fine buildings. There is an elaborate Post-office and an interesting City Hall on Smithfield Street; but the finest building of all, and one of the best in the country, is the magnificent Romanesque Court-house, built at a cost of $2,500,000, and occupying a prominent position on a hill adjoining Fifth Avenue. There is a massive jail of similar architecture, and a "Bridge of Sighs" connects them, a beautifully designed arched and stone-covered bridge, thrown for a passageway across an intervening street. The main tower, giving a grand view, rises three hundred and twenty feet over the architectural pile, and, as in Venice, the convicted prisoner crosses the bridge from his trial to his doom. There are attractive churches, banks and business buildings, and eastward from the city, near Schenley Park, is the attractive Carnegie Libraryand Museum in Italian Renaissance, with a capacity for two hundred thousand volumes, a benefaction of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, originally costing $1,100,000, to which he has recently added $1,750,000 for its enlargement. The residential section is mainly on the hills east of Pittsburg and across the Allegheny River in Allegheny City, there being many attractive villas in beautiful situations on the surrounding highlands.
But the great Pittsburg attraction is the multitude of factories that are its pride and create its prosperity. Some of these are among the greatest in the world—the Edgar Thomson Works and Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company, the Duquesne Steel Works, the Keystone Bridge Company, and others. The Edgar Thomas mills make over a million tons of rails a year, and at Homestead fifteen hundred thousand tons of steel will be annually produced, this being the place where nickel-steel armor-plates for the navy are manufactured. They largely use natural gas, and employ at times ten thousand men at the two great establishments. The Duquesne Works, just above Homestead on the Monongahela, have the four largest blast furnaces in the world, producing twenty-two hundred tons of pig-iron daily. The Keystone Bridge Works cover seven acres, and have made some of the greatest steel bridges in existence. The Westinghouse Electrical Works manufacture the greatest dynamos, including those of theNiagara Power Company, and the Westinghouse Air-Brake Works is also another extensive establishment. In the Pittsburg district, covering about two hundred square miles, the daily product of mines and factories is estimated at $6,000,000.
The two men whose names are most closely connected with Pittsburg's vast industrial development are Andrew Carnegie and George Westinghouse. Carnegie was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1837, and his father, a potter, brought him to Pittsburg when eleven years old. He began life as a telegraph messenger boy, attracted the attention of Colonel Thomas A. Scott, and was by him brought into the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Then he entered business, and became the greatest developer of the iron and steel industries of Pittsburg and its wealthiest resident. He some time ago sold out his interests to the Carnegie Steel Company, in which he is largely interested. Westinghouse, born in New York State in 1846, combined with business tact the genius of the inventor. He invented and developed the railway air-brake now in universal use, has established a complete electrical lighting and power system, and was the chief adapter of natural gas to manufacturing and domestic uses, being the inventor of many ingenious contrivances for its introduction and economical employment. He had a gas well almost at his door, for Pittsburg overlaid a great deposit. The enormous coal measures underlying andsurrounding the city have been its most stable basis for industry and profit, as the Pittsburg coal-field is one of enormous output. The deposits of Lake Superior furnish the ores for its furnaces, and the railroad development is such that each enormous establishment now has its special railroad to fetch in the ores from Lake Erie, where they are brought by vessels. Across in Allegheny City, where most of these ore-bringing roads go out, about one hundred acres in the centre of the city are reserved for the attractive Allegheny Park, one portion rising in a very steep hill, almost at the edge of the Allegheny River. Upon its top, seen from afar, stands a Soldiers' Monument, a graceful column, erected in memory of four thousand men of Allegheny County who fell in the Civil War. Soldier statues guard the base, and look out upon the smokes and steam jets of the busy city below, and thousands climb up there to enjoy the grand view.
COAL, COKE AND GAS.
The four counties adjoining Pittsburg turn out over thirty millions of tons of bituminous coal in a year. To carry this coal away, besides railways, the city has about a million and a half of tonnage of river craft of various kinds, a greater tonnage than all the Mississippi River ports put together. Its coal boats go everywhere throughout the Western water ways, and two thousand miles down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. Its stumpy but powerful littletugs, with their stern-wheels, will safely convey fleets of shallow flatboats, sometimes over twenty thousand tons of coal being carried in a single tow. These flatboats are collected in the rivers about Pittsburg, waiting for the proper stage of water on the Ohio; and to regulate the depth at the city the curious movable dam was constructed at Davis's Island, four miles below Pittsburg, at a cost of $1,000,000, the dam opening when necessary to let freshets through, and having a lock five hundred feet long and one hundred and ten feet wide to pass the boats. The Monongahela River above Pittsburg has for miles a series of coal mines in the high bordering banks, the river being lined with coal "tipples," which load the flatboats; and it is also provided with a series of dams, which aid navigation and divide the channel into a succession of "pools." The very crooked Youghiogheny flows in at McKeesport, fifteen miles above Pittsburg, another river of coal mines, whose name was given as a signification of its crookedness by the matter-of-fact Indians, the word signifying "the stream flowing a contrary, roundabout course." This river comes northward out of the chief coke district of America, in the flanks of the long Chestnut Ridge, the Connellsville coke region sometimes turning out ten millions of tons annually from its ovens. Railways run in there on both river banks to Connellsville, a town of six thousand people, in the midst of the coke ovens, and about fifty-six miles south of Pittsburg.
Pittsburg is decreasing its use of natural gas for manufacturing, as the diminishing supply and greater distance it has to be brought are making it too costly for the iron and glass works, which are returning again to coal and coke, but the city is still said to use forty-five thousand millions of cubic feet in a year, mostly for domestic purposes. Pittsburg stands in a great but partly exhausted natural-gas district. The gas is stored under pressure beneath strata of rock, being set free when these are pierced. This is a gaseous member of the paraffin series, of which petroleum is a liquid member, and is mainly marsh-gas, the "fire-damp" of the miner. It originates in the decomposition of animal and vegetable life, and usually has but little odor, whilst its illuminating power is low, but in fuel value eight cubic feet equal one pound of coal. It was first used at Fredonia, New York, in 1821, for lighting purposes, being procured from a well. The natural-gas region is the part of Pennsylvania west of the Alleghenies, extending into New York, Ohio and West Virginia; and gas is also found in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Kansas. It is held under enormous pressure within the pockets beneath the rocks, and when first reached in drilling, the tension has been known to equal a thousand pounds per square inch. It is not uncommon, when a well is drilled, to have all the tools and casing-pipe blown out, while an enormous thickness of masonry has to be constructed to hold down the capthat covers the well. Its use began in Pittsburg in 1886, the chief field of supply then being Murrysville, about twenty miles east of the city, while there are also other fields southwest and east of Pittsburg. The pipes underlie all the streets, and a main route of supply is along the bed of the Allegheny River. There are said to be about sixteen hundred miles of pipes laid down to lead the gas to Pittsburg from the different fields.
PETROLEUM.
The great petroleum fields lie in and near the Pittsburg region, in the basin of the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, and extend from New York southwest to West Virginia, and also into Ohio. This region has had enormous yields in different parts of the river basin, the wells, however, ultimately dwindling as their supplies are drawn out. The petroleum industry, which has been one of the greatest in Pennsylvania, has been gradually all absorbed by the Standard Oil Company, which is probably the most extensive industrial combination in America, and certainly the most powerful. Yet we are told that those financial magnates began their wonderful career with an aggregate capital of only $24,000, largely borrowed money. There have been forty millions of barrels of petroleum taken from this great basin in a single year. The oil wells are bored in many places, south, southwest, north and northeast of Pittsburg. The "Panhandle Railroad," whichcrosses West Virginia to the Ohio, exhibits many of them. A branch of this railroad goes to Canonsburg, and thence to the town of Washington, on the old "National Road," thirty miles from Pittsburg. At Canonsburg was founded in 1773 Jefferson College, in a log cabin, which has now become the Jefferson Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church. Washington is a town of about four thousand people, rambling over a pleasant hilly region in Southwestern Pennsylvania, having as its chief institution Washington and Jefferson College, also a Presbyterian foundation, started in 1806 in what was then a remote Scotch-Irish colony beyond the mountains. Near this town in 1888 were struck the greatest petroleum wells the world ever knew. One of them, the Jumbo well, in sixty days after the first strike had poured out one hundred and forty thousand barrels of oil, flowing a steady circular stream of almost white oil, about five inches in diameter, at the rate of forty-two hundred gallons an hour. Another well, afterwards bored not far away, in its freshness of infancy poured out sixty-three hundred gallons an hour. Additional wells were bored with almost the same results; but they all afterwards dwindled, and finally ceasing a free flow, had to be pumped. This is the universal experience of all the oil regions, the "gushers," soon after the great strikes, giving out, as the store of petroleum in the reservoirs beneath becomes exhausted. But all thisshows how enormous is the natural wealth of the Pittsburg district—oil, coal, coke and gas, with iron, steel and glass, electricity and railways, contributing to the wonderful prosperity.
The greatest petroleum field, however, was up the Allegheny River, in Northwestern Pennsylvania, and the first wells bored to obtain it were sunk at Titusville, on Oil Creek, in 1859. The early settlers knew of the appearance of oil about the headwaters of the Allegheny in New York and Pennsylvania, and the name of Oil Creek was given a stream for this reason in Allegheny County, New York, and also to the one in Venango County, Pennsylvania. The Indians had long collected the oil on the shores of Seneca Lake in New York, a course that the white settlers followed, and it was for years sold as a medicine by the name of Seneca or Genesee oil. When its commercial value for illuminating purposes began to be recognized, Colonel E. L. Drake went to Titusville to see if it could be obtained in sufficient quantities. He bored the first well about a mile south of Titusville, and on August 26, 1859, the oil was struck at a depth of seventy-one feet. The drill suddenly sunk into the cavity of the rock beneath, and the oil rose within a few inches of the surface. A small pump was introduced which brought out four hundred gallons daily, and then a large pump, increasing the daily flow to a thousand gallons. Soon a steam-engine was applied, and the flow continueduninterrupted for weeks. Titusville had at the time three hundred people. Many wells were sunk in the neighborhood with varying success, and the product of the Oil Creek district became so large that the market could not absorb it, and at the beginning of 1861, with two thousand wells in operation, the price declined to twenty-five cents per barrel. The two great wells were the Empire, originally yielding twenty-five hundred barrels daily, and the Phillips, nearly four thousand barrels. In 1863 the production had slackened, but the uses had expanded, and prices rose proportionately. Vast fortunes were then rapidly made, and as soon squandered. In the first twelve years of the development of this district, which extended over about four hundred square miles, there were taken from some four thousand wells forty-two millions of barrels of oil, which were marketed for $163,000,000. At first it was carried away by the railroads, of which several sent branches into the district, but there have since been laid extensive lines of pipes which convey it in various directions, and largely to New York and Philadelphia for foreign export. When this district was at the height of its yield it produced four hundred millions of gallons a year.
ASCENDING THE ALLEGHENY.
From Pittsburg, through bold and pleasing scenery, we ascend the Allegheny River, the broad channelflowing grandly around stately bends enclosed between high hills. Thirty miles above Pittsburg the Kiskiminetas comes in, and in a region of coal mines and furnaces is found the town of Kittanning, which retains the name of the Indian village standing there in Colonial days. This original Indian village was attacked by Colonel Armstrong and three hundred troops at dawn on August 8, 1757, and the Indians, who sided with the French, refusing to surrender, they were pretty much all killed and their village burnt. Armstrong's name is preserved in the county. Beyond is Brady's Bend, a great curve of the river, and here are seen the derricks of many deserted oil wells, as the farther journey above for miles also discloses. This was the Modoc oil district. The Morrison well was struck in 1872, yielding five hundred barrels daily, and immediately a town was laid out, not inappropriately called Greece City, and it soon had a large population. This was a prolific oil region at one time, and back from the river were the well-known oleaginous towns of Modoc City, Karns City and Petrolia. The Allegheny River gradually leads us up to Venango County, which was the chief oil region. Franklin, the capital of the county, has about five thousand inhabitants, and is built at the mouth of French Creek, the site of the old French Fort Venango, which Indian word meant "a guiding mark on a tree." It stood on a commanding ridge, and was one of the chain of posts theFrench built from the lakes across to the Ohio, to hold their possessions, dating from 1753. The French had a large garrison there, but after Canada was captured the English got possession, and in 1763 it was the scene of a terrible massacre, the Indians taking it, murdering the entire garrison, and slowly roasting the commandant to death.
Five miles above, Oil Creek flows into the Allegheny, and here is Oil City, the petroleum headquarters. It has had a varying history, being once almost destroyed by flood and twice by fire, but maintains its supremacy and is a complete oil town—the air filled with petroleum odors, and the lower streets saturated with the fluid. On the Allegheny, nine miles from Oil City, is Oleopolis, and a short distance inland is Pithole City, which was one of the famous oil towns whose rise and decline were so phenomenal. A few farmers here tried to get a scanty subsistence from the rocky and almost barren soil, where, on a hill, there was a fissure two to four feet wide, called the "pithole," from which came out at intervals hot air and bad smells. This was on the Holmden farm, which had been nominally valued at five dollars an acre. Somebody thought he detected the smell of oil among the odors coming up, and a well was bored. It struck oil in the winter of 1864-65, and was the greatest strike made down to that time—the United States Well yielding seven thousand barrels daily. Multitudes flocked thither, andin six months Pithole City arose in the wilderness with fifteen thousand inhabitants, two theatres, an opera house, a daily newspaper, and seventy-two hotels of various degrees. Numerous wells were sunk, and the oil sold at $5 to $8 per barrel, being readily sent to the seaboard. The Holmden farm was soon sold for $4,000,000. There were some amazing speculative trades made. The story is told of a well striking oil and a speculative bystander at once buying a three-fourths interest in it for $18,000, agreeing to pay the money next day. Turning away from the seller, he met a man seeking such an investment, and promptly resold his interest for $75,000, receiving immediate payment. The yield of this region was so prolific that railroads and pipe lines were soon constructed to carry the oil away. Pithole had its great boom in the autumn of 1866, wells being bored in every direction, and real estate fetching enormous prices. One old fellow who had a few acres of arid land in the centre of the excitement sold his farm and hovel for $800,000, paid him on the spot in $1000 notes; and then he sorrowfully bemoaned, as he took a last look at the hovel he had occupied all his life, "Now I haint got any home." The rise of this wonderful town was rapid, and its downfall came all too soon. The oil supply became exhausted, the speculators left, the inhabitants dwindled in number, and by 1870 Pithole had reverted almost to its original condition. The chief hotel, which had cost$31,000 to build, was afterwards sold for $100, and the population had declined in 1873 to nine families.
The valley of Oil Creek is filled with derricks and oil tanks, having a few pumping engines at work, but most of the derricks are over abandoned wells. Eighteen miles up Oil Creek is Titusville, and when the oil yield was at its height, about 1865, this valley had a population of seventy-five thousand people. Titusville is pleasantly built in the broadened intervale, surrounded by hills, the streets being wide and straight, and the residences comfortable, each in its garden enclosure. There are oil refineries, and iron works which make engines, tubing and other supplies; and the town, which has eight thousand people, is a headquarters for the Standard Oil Company. Twenty-seven miles farther northward is Corry, a prominent railroad centre, at the northern entrance to the Pennsylvania "Oil Dorado," as the region has been popularly called. Its name of Corry was that of the farmer who originally cultivated the soil when the place became a railway station in 1861, and the location of oil refineries then began its prosperity. There are now about six thousand inhabitants. It is within a short distance of the New York State boundary, and marks the northern limit of the Pennsylvania oil region. This whole district, once the prominent petroleum field of Pennsylvania, has been eclipsed, however, by other and more prolific oil basins. Fortunes were made here, but most of thewealth passed away; and the history of the Pennsylvania petroleum trade and its vicissitudes, with the absorption of everything of value by the Standard Oil Company, has emphasized the truth so pointedly told by Robert Burns, that "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley." Its wonderful tide of prosperity and its subsequent ebb recall Shelley's lines "To Men of England":