Different roads to Shippensburgh--Foxes--South mountain and pine
woods--Shippensburgh--Strasburgh--North or Blue mountain--Horse
valley and Skinner’s tavern.
On the 25th January at 8 A.M. I left Carlisle, having previously taken
an egg beat up in a glass of wine. There are two roads, one called
the Mountrock road which goes from the north end of the town, and the
other called the Walnut-bottom road, which leads from the south end.
They run parallel to each other about three miles apart. I took the
latter, which is the stage road, as the wagon with my baggage was
to go that way, though I was informed that the first led through a
better country. I found mile-stones on the right hand all the way to
Shippensburgh, placed at the expence of the proprietors of the lands
on this road, to prove it shorter than the other, they having before
been computed at the equal length of twenty-one miles each; but now
this one is marked only nineteen. The first five miles are through a
very poor and stony country, thinly inhabited, and covered, except on
the cultivated parts of the few miserable looking farms, with short,
stunted, scrubby wood. The next seven miles are through a better
improved country, and a better soil, with large farms {34} and good
houses; then there are three miles over the northern skirt of the South
mountain, through gloomy forests of tall pines, with here and there a
log cabin surrounded by a few acres of cleared land, and abounding in
children, pigs, and poultry. The last four miles improve gradually to
Shippensburgh.
At eleven o’clock I stopt and breakfasted at a large tavern on the
right, seven miles from Carlisle, I got coffee, bread and butter, eggs
and excellent honey in the comb, for which I was charged only nineteen
cents. My landlord presented me one of the largest and finest apples
I had ever seen: it was the produce of his own orchard, where he had
several trees of the same species, raised by himself from the pippin,
and neither grafted nor budded. He had the manners of a New Englandman,
being desirous both of receiving and of communicating information,
but I soon gathered from him that he was a native of that part of
Pennsylvania, and of English extraction. On my entrance he had laid
down a book, which taking up afterwards, I found to be a volume of
Robertson’s Charles V.
As I proceeded from hence, two very beautiful red foxes playfully
crossed the road about a hundred yards before me; they then recrossed
it, and seeing me, made up a hill to the right with incredible
swiftness, leaping with ease a Virginia worm fence above six feet high.
At half past four I arrived at Shippensburgh, which was laid out for a
town, about fifty years ago, and named after the first proprietor and
settler, the father of judge Shippen of Philadelphia.[15] It contains
between 150 and 200 straggling houses, in one street, nearly a mile
in length: with nothing else interesting to recommend it to notice.
I stopt at Raume’s, a German house about the middle of the town, and
apparently the best tavern in it. I bathed my feet in cold water, and
dressed the left one which was {35} much blistered and very painful:
Soon after which, my wagonner Jordan, with three others in his company
arriving, we all sat down together, according to the custom of the
country, to a plentiful and good supper; after which, the wagonners
spread their mattresses and blankets round the stove in the bar room,
and I retired to a good bed, but without an upper sheet.
Monday, 26th January, at half past ten; I proceeded towards
Strasburgh, in preference to keeping the stage road to the left through
Chambersburgh,[16] as I shortened the road eight miles in a distance of
thirty-eight, to where the two roads again met.
The country to Strasburgh, eleven miles, is well inhabited, and the
soil is tolerably good; and the Blue mountains are full in front,
extending to the right and left as far as the eye can reach. Those
mountains are not higher than the highlands on Hudson river above New
York, about 2500 feet perpendicular from the plain below, from which
they rise abruptly, and the road is seen winding up their side to a
small gap near the top, which separates from the main ridge a pyramidal
knob, which, apparently higher {36} than the ridge, seems to hang
directly over Strasburgh. I met on the road, two wagons with six horses
each, from Zanesville in the state of Ohio, going to Philadelphia
for goods:--They had been a month on the road. At two miles from
Strasburgh, I past a direction post on the left pointing to Cummins’s
mills, and at 1 o’clock I entered that town and stopt at Bell’s, the
last tavern on the left. As there was no beer in the house, they had
to send for it to Merkel’s, a German house. And here it may not be
amiss to observe that the German taverns on these roads, are generally
better provided with both liquors and provisions, than the English or
Irish, but their manners are not the most agreeable, they being very
inattentive to any of the wants of a traveller, except the providing
his meals, and the bringing him what liquor he calls for.
It is twelve years since Strasburgh was laid out. It contains about
fifty indifferent houses, and does not seem to be thriving.
At two o’clock, I began to ascend the North or Blue mountains,
immediately from Strasburgh.--After ascending about a mile, I stopped
and rested at a hut, the only dwelling on the passage over the
mountain. Proceeding from hence, I was overtaken a little higher up
by a man driving before him his horse loaded with a bag of wheat. We
entered into conversation, and he entertained me with his exploits,
in killing bears,[17] wolves, racoons, and foxes, {37} which abound
on these mountains, as well as deer, wild turkeys, pheasants, and
squirrels. I stopped occasionally, to observe the view behind me,
which though a good deal impeded by the trees, is nevertheless very
extensive, over a woody country, terminated by the long range of the
South mountain, extending from the banks of the Susquehannah below
Harrisburgh to the S.W. as far as the eye can reach. Though extensive,
it is however an uninteresting prospect, as though I saw many patches
of cleared land, the town of Shippensburgh twelve miles distant, and
Strasburgh directly under me;--wood with its (at this season) brown,
sombre hue, is the prevailing feature. After ascending a mile and a
half from Strasburgh, I came to the top of the mountain, and looked
down on the other side into a dark narrow romantick vale called Horse
valley, with the two Skinner’s good farms, still house and mill, and
Conodogwinnet {38} creek gliding through the middle towards the N.E.;
while the middle mountain, rose immediately opposite me, from the other
side of the valley, the summit of it apparently not a mile distant from
where I stood, though in reality it is three miles, so much is the eye
deceived by the depth of the intermediate vale.
At 4 o’clock, I stopped at Skinner’s, where at my particular request,
I was gratified with hasty pudding or mush, as it is called in this
state, with plenty of good milk and apple pye for supper. My host was
born near Woodbridge in Jersey, from whence his father had removed
to this country many years ago. There are now about twenty families
settled in the valley, which extends from the south end twelve miles
above Skinner’s, to a gap in the Blue mountains five miles below,
through which the Conodogwinnet flows from its source at the upper end
of the valley, which it waters in its whole length of seventeen miles,
to join the Susquehannah near Harrisburgh, forty miles distant.
One Wagstaff, formerly an English soldier, who had been wounded and
made a prisoner at the battle of Monmouth, and now a farmer near
Pittsburgh, and a lad returning home to the same neighbourhood, after
assisting to drive a herd of a hundred and fifty hogs to Philadelphia,
which had employed him a month, put up here for the night, and I was
much amused with the anecdotes of the old soldier and my host, who had
also been a soldier on the patriotick side, during the revolutionary
war. They had been opposed to each other in several battles, and
reminded each other of many incidents which happened at them. My
landlord was a politician, but his system of politicks and his general
ideas were completely original. Amongst other topicks, Col. Burr’s
present situation and intentions were discussed, when our host gave it
as his decided opinion, that he had secured {39} the friendship and
assistance of a warlike and powerful nation of Indians, inhabiting a
country on the banks of the Missouri about 1500 miles in circumference,
where is the celebrated mountain of salt. That they fought on horseback
and were armed with short Spanish caribines; and that with their aid
he meant to conquer Mexico, and erect an empire independent of both
Spaniards and Americans.
Mrs. Skinner was confined to her bed in an advanced stage of a
consumption: I recommended her inhaling the steam of melted rosin and
bees-wax, and wrote directions for her accordingly. When I retired to
rest, I had once more the luxury of clean sheets and a good bed.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] See note on Shippensburg in Post’s _Journals_, vol. i of this
series, p. 238, note 76.--ED.
[16] Chambersburgh is a thriving town, capital of Franklin co.,
Pennsylvania, 162 miles east of Pittsburgh, the mail route, and 11
beyond the Big Cove mountain. The Philadelphia and Baltimore mail
stages meet here, the former three times a week, the latter twice a
week, this circumstance, with other advantages, makes it a tolerable
lively place. It contains about 250 houses, has two paper mills, a
grist mill in the town, and several others within a short distance,
all turned by a spring which heads about two miles from the town.
An original bank has been lately established here, with a capital
of a quarter of a million of dollars, Edward Crawford, president,
A. Colhoun, cashier. Two weekly papers are published here, one of
which is German. It has a number of mercantile houses, and taverns in
plenty, some of which are well kept, and principally by Germans. The
stage-master here is a Mr. Davis, formerly of M’Connellstown--He is
well spoken of for his attention and politeness to passengers, a very
necessary qualification for a stage-master.--CRAMER.
[17] In the New York Medical Repository, vol. 5, page 343-4, we find
the following curious facts concerning the mode of generation in the
American bear.
“The singular departure from the common course of nature in the
procreation of the opossum and the shark, are already known; but
the manner in which the fœtus is matured by the female bear is not
so generally understood. The following information was given to Mr.
Franklin, senator of the United States from North Carolina, by the
hunters. This animal hybernates, and, during the winter, retires to
hollow trees and caverns, but does not become torpid, or sink into the
sleeping state. Though found often in great numbers on the frontier
settlements, and frequently killed and eaten by the inhabitants, there
has never been an instance of a female killed in a pregnant condition,
or big with young. The reason is, that almost immediately after
conception, the fœtus, while shapeless, and resembling merely a small
animated lump, is excluded from the womb. Thus born, and exposed to the
open air, it has no connection with the teat like the opossum, nor with
an egg like the shark. There is no trace of a placenta nor umbilical
vessels. The growth of this rudiment of a future bear is supposed to
be promoted by licking; and the saliva of the dam, or some other fluid
from her mouth, appears to afford it nourishment. In the course of
time, and under such management, the limbs and organs are evolved, the
surface covered with hair, and the young cub at length rendered capable
of attending its parent. Thus far the inquiries of the hunters have
gone. The facts are so curious, that the subject is highly worthy of
further investigation. And when the entire history of the process of
generation in this animal shall be known, new light will be shed upon
one of the most obscure parts of physiology. It is to be hoped that
gentlemen whose opportunities are favourable to the prosecution of this
inquiry, will furnish the learned world shortly with the whole of these
mysterious phenomena.”--CRAMER.