The diminutive Schuylkill breaks its passage through this elevated
range, with Penn's Mount on one side and the Neversink Mountain on the
other, and here is located the most populous city of the Schuylkill
Valley--Reading, with seventy thousand population, a seat of
iron-making and extensive railway shops, having a fertile agricultural
region in the adjacent valleys. This expanding and attractive city
gives its name to, and obtains much of its celebrity from the
"Philadelphia and Reading Railway," the colossal financial institution
whose woes of bankruptcy and throes of reconstruction have for so many
years occupied the attention of the world of finance. This great
railway branches at Reading, and its western line runs off through red
sandstone rocks and among iron mills and out upon a high bridge,
thrown in a beautiful situation across the Schuylkill, and proceeds
over the Lebanon Valley to the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg. This
rich limestone valley, between the South Mountain and the Blue Ridge,
is a good farming district, and also a wealthy region of iron
manufacture. The Reading system also sends its East Pennsylvania route
eastward to Allentown in the Lehigh Valley, and thence to New York.
Factory smokes overhang Reading, through which the Schuylkill flows in
crooked course, spanned by frequent bridges, and puffing steam jets on
all sides show the busy industries. A good district surrounds Reading
in the mountain valleys, and the thrifty Dutch farmers in large
numbers come into the town to trade. The high forest-clad mountains
rise precipitously on both sides, with electric railways running up
and around them, disclosing magnificent views. The "old red sandstone"
of these enclosing hills has been liberally hewn out to make the
ornamental columns for the Court House portico and build the
castellated jail, and also the red gothic chapel and elaborate
red gateway of the "Charles Evans' Cemetery," where the chief
townsfolk expect, like their ancestry, to be buried. The visitor who
wishes to see one of the most attractive views over city, river,
mountain and distant landscape can climb by railway up to the "White
Spot," elevated a thousand feet above the river, on Penn's Mount. This
point of outlook is an isolated remnant of Potsdam sandstone, lying,
the geologists say, unconformably on the Laurentian rock.
[Illustration: _Loop of the Schuylkill from Neversink Mountains_]
Beyond Reading, the Schuylkill breaks through the Blue Ridge at Port
Clinton Gap, eighteen miles to the northwest. The winding and romantic
pass is about three miles long, and just beyond there is, at Port
Clinton, a maze of railway lines where the Reading Company unites its
branches converging from various parts of the anthracite coal-fields.
The Little Schuylkill River here falls into the larger stream, and a
branch follows it northward to Tamaqua, while the main line goes
westward to Pottsville. The summit of the Blue Ridge is the eastern
boundary of the coal-fields, and the country beyond is wild and
broken. The next great Allegheny ridge extending across the country is
the Broad Mountain beyond Pottsville, though between it and the Blue
Ridge there are several smaller ridges, one being Sharp Mountain. The
country is generally black from the coal, and the narrow and crooked
Schuylkill has its waters begrimed by the masses of culm and refuse
from the mines. Schuylkill Haven, ninety miles from Philadelphia, is
where the coal trains are made up, and branches diverge to the mines
in various directions. Three miles beyond is Pottsville, confined
within a deep valley among the mountains, its buildings spreading up
their steep sides, for here the malodorous and blackened little river
breaks through Sharp Mountain. This is a city of fifteen thousand
people, and the chief town of the Schuylkill or Southern coal-field,
which produces ten millions of tons of anthracite annually. The whole
country roundabout is a network of railways leading to the various
mines and breakers, and there are nearly four hundred miles of
railways in the various levels and galleries underground. We are told
that in the eighteenth century John Pott built the Greenwood Furnace
and Forge, and laid out this town; and afterwards, when coal-mining
was developed, there came a rush of adventurers hither; but of late
years Pottsville has had a very calm career.
To the northward of the Schuylkill or Southern coal-field, and beyond
the Broad Mountain, is the "Middle coal-field," which extends westward
almost to the Susquehanna River, and includes the Mahanoy and Shamokin
Valleys. Both these fields also extend eastward into the Lehigh
region; and it is noteworthy that as all these coal measures extend
eastward they harden, while to the westward they soften. The hardest
coals come from the Lehigh district, and they gradually soften as
they are dug out to the westward, until, on the other side of the main
Allegheny range, they change into soft bituminous, and farther
westward their constituents appear in the form of petroleum and as
natural gases. The region beyond Pottsville is unattractive. Various
railways connect the Schuylkill and Lehigh regions, and cross over or
through the Broad Mountain. The district is full of little mining
villages, but has not much else. It is a rough country, with bleak and
forbidding hills, denuded of timber by forest fires, with vast heaps
of refuse cast out from the mines, some of them the accumulations of
sixty or seventy years. Breakers are at work grinding up the fuel,
which pours with thundering noise into the cars beneath. The surface
is strewn with rocks and _débris_, and the dirty waters of the streams
are repulsive. These blackened brooks of the Broad Mountain are the
headwaters of the Schuylkill River.