The Tohickon Creek, the chief stream of Bucks County, flows into the
Delaware at Point Pleasant, its Indian name of Tohick-hanne meaning
"the stream crossed by a drift-wood bridge." Here in the river are
many rapids or "rifts," some having been given curious names by the
early raftsmen who used to "shoot" them--such as the "Buck Tail rift,"
the "Cut Bite rift," the "Man-of-War rift," the "Ground Hog rift," and
the "Old Sow rift." The river makes many sweeping curves in passing
through the gorges, and it displays the Nockamixon Rocks or
"Pennsylvania Palisades," a series of about three miles of beetling
crags, of rich red and brown sandstone, rising four hundred feet,
almost perpendicularly, and making a grand gorge known as the Narrows.
The ridge which the river thus bisects is known as Rock Hill in
Pennsylvania, and across in New Jersey stretches away to the northeast
as the Musconetcong Mountain. Above, the Musconetcong River, the
Indian "rapid runner," flows in at Reigelsville, a town on both sides
of the Delaware. This was the Indian village of Pechequeolin in the
early eighteenth century, where iron works, the first on the Delaware,
were started in 1727, famous for making the "Franklin" and "Adam and
Eve" stoves that were so popular among our ancestors, the latter
bearing in bold relief a striking representation of our first parents
in close consultation with the serpent. Just above, the Delaware comes
out through the massive gorge of the Durham Hills or South Mountain,
north of which the Lehigh River flows in from the southwest amid iron
mills and slag heaps, with numerous bridges bringing the various
Lehigh coal railways across from Easton to Phillipsburg. This is the
confluence with the Lehigh, known in early times as the "Forks of the
Delaware." To this place the Lenni Lenapes often came to treat and
trade with the Penns, and a town was founded there when John Penn was
the Proprietor. He was then a newly-married man, and had courted his
bride, a daughter of Lord Pomfret, at her father's English
country-house of Easton in Northamptonshire. So the new town was
called Easton and the county Northampton, at the junction of the
Delaware with the Indian Lechwiechink, signifying "where there are
forks." This name was shortened to Lecha, and afterwards became the
Lehigh. The two towns literally hang upon the hillsides, Mount
Parnassus looking down upon Phillipsburg, named after the old chief
Phillip, who had the original village there, while Easton is
compressed between the South Mountain and the long ridge of Chestnut
Hill, rising seven hundred feet, where the Paxinosa Inn recalls the
sturdy Paxanose, the last of the Shawnee kings who lived east of the
Alleghenies. Through these towns and across the bridges spanning the
Delaware roll constant processions of coal trains bringing the
anthracite out from the Lehigh and Wyoming coal-fields to market.
Easton dates from 1737 and has about fifteen thousand people, but its
growth did not come until the coal trade was developed. The Lehigh
Canal started this, and upon it Asa Packer was a boatman before the
railway era, and carried goods for the industrious Frenchman, Ario
Pardee, who then had a mill and store at Hazleton, back in the
interior. These were the two leaders in developing the Lehigh coal
trade. The chief institution of Easton is Lafayette College, a
Presbyterian foundation, its main building being Pardee Hall, a gift
of Ario Pardee. It is largely a school of the mine, and is devoted to
that branch of scientific research. Here often came the famous
Teedyuscung, the eloquent sachem of the Lenni Lenapes, who, in the
councils at the "Forks," pleaded for his people's rights. The last
remnant of his tribe, having been pressed farther and farther towards
the setting sun, now live as the "Delaware Indians" out in Oklahoma,
there being barely ninety of them, where Hon. Charles Journeycake, at
last advices, was the "King of the Delawares," the successor of
Teedyuscung and of St. Tammany. Phillipsburg was originally settled by
Dutch, and its prosperity was based chiefly on the Morris Canal, which
crossed New Jersey through Newark to New York harbor, a work since
abandoned for transportation purposes. It was a wonderful canal in its
day, crossing mountain ranges of nine hundred feet. This was made
possible by the high elevation of Lake Hopatcong, which furnished most
of the water for the levels. While some of the elevations were
overcome by locks, the greater ones were mounted by inclined planes up
which the boats were drawn, the machinery of the planes being worked
by water-power taken from the higher canal levels. Its chief
usefulness now is the supply of water to Newark, the descent from Lake
Hopatcong on that side being nine hundred and fourteen feet. This
beautiful lake, supplied with the purest spring water, is nine miles
long and about four miles wide, dotted with islands, its rock-bound
shores encompassed by surrounding mountains giving charming scenery.
Small steamboats navigate it, and the name Hopatcong means "Stone over
the Water," referring to an artificial causeway of stone the Indians
had, connecting with one of the islands, but which is now submerged.