The Lehigh above Bethlehem comes through the clear-cut "Lehigh Gap" in
the Blue Ridge, which stretches off to the northeast, where are two
other notches, one cut partly down and the other deeply cut--the first
being the "Wind Gap" and the other the "Delaware Water Gap." The
Indians used to tell the early pioneers that the wind came through the
one and the water through the other. The Jordan Creek flows out from
the South Mountain, and in the valley is Allentown, the chief city of
the Lehigh, having thirty thousand people, and numerous factories and
breweries. Here is the township of Macungie, which is Indian for "the
feeding-place of bears." It was to Allentown, when the British
captured Philadelphia, that in 1777 were hastily taken the Liberty
Bell and the chimes of Christ Church and St. Peter's Church, being
concealed beneath the floor of old Zion Church to prevent their
capture and confiscation. Above Allentown the Lehigh traverses the
valley between the South Mountain and the Blue Ridge, passing
Catasauqua, "the thirsty land," and Hokendauqua, seats of extensive
iron manufacture, the first of these establishments on the Lehigh,
founded in 1839 by David Thomas, who came out from Wales for the
purpose. Then we get among the slate factories in crossing the vast
slate measures that adjoin the Blue Ridge, and go quickly through the
deep notch in the tall and here very narrow ridge, the waters foaming
over the slaty bed, its thin layers standing up in long straight lines
across the stream. Beyond is another valley, and then comes the
wide-topped range known as the Broad Mountain. In this valley was
Gaudenhutten, where the Indian trail, known as the "Warrior's Path,"
crossed the Lehigh, and where the first Moravian missionaries from
Bethlehem came and built a church and converted the Indians. It was
the scene of one of the terrible massacres of the Colonial wars.
Within the gorge of the Broad Mountain is the oddest town on the
Lehigh, Mauch Chunk.
This noted coal town has two principal streets--one laid along the
front of a mountain wall above the river bank, and the other at right
angles, stretching back through a cleft in the mountain. Most things
are set on edge in Mauch Chunk, and the man who may have the front
door of his house on the street often goes out of an upper story into
the back yard, which slopes steeply upward. Mount Pisgah rises high
above, crowned with the chimneys of the machine-house of an
inclined-plane railway. A view from it discloses a novel landscape
beneath, the railroads, canal, river and front street all being
compressed together into the narrow curving gorge which bends around
Bear Mountain, the "Mauch Chunk" over opposite. The red sandstone is
universal, and the chocolate-colored roads leading out of town are
carved into the mountain walls. Through the centre of the place the
river pours over a canal dam, its roaring mingled with the noise of
constantly moving coal trains. The curious conical Bear Mountain,
around which everything curves, rises seven hundred feet high, and the
town, which has about four thousand people, rests at various
elevations, wherever houses can get room to stand--in gullies or
gorges, or hanging on the hillsides. From every point of view rises
the tall and quaintly turreted tower of St. Luke's Episcopal Church,
looking like an ancient feudal castle of the Rhine, which was built as
a memorial of Asa Packer by his widow; for here was his home, and his
grave is in the cemetery almost over the roof of his house.
At Summit Hill, nine miles northwest of Mauch Chunk, the anthracite
coal of this region was first discovered. Philip Ginter, a hunter,
found it while roaming over Sharp Mountain in 1791. This "stone coal"
was carried down to Philadelphia and exhibited, and a company was
formed, taking up ten thousand acres on the mountain and opening a
mine. For thirty years they had disappointments, as nobody would use
the coal, which cost about $14 per ton to transport to Philadelphia.
To cheapen this, efforts were made to improve the navigation of the
Lehigh, out of which grew the canal which was the early route of the
coal to that city. Asa Packer once said that in 1820 three hundred and
eighty-five tons went to Philadelphia, and this choked the market. In
1827, when the mining at Summit Hill had got a good start, the
"Switchback" gravity railroad was built to bring the coal out from the
mines to the river at Mauch Chunk. The loaded coal cars ran by their
own momentum nine miles down a grade of about ninety feet to the mile.
To get the cars back, they were hauled up the inclined plane on Mount
Pisgah, then run by gravity six miles inland to Mount Jefferson, where
they were hauled up a second plane, and then they ran three miles
farther by gravity to the mines. This route was used for many years,
but was afterwards superseded by another railway, and now the
famous "Switchback" is a summer excursion route for tourists who
delight in the exhilarating rides down the gravity slopes. At Summit
Hill and in the Panther Creek Valley, a large output of coal is mined
and sent through a railway tunnel to the Lehigh, and there is at
Summit Hill a burning mine which has been smouldering more than a
half-century. Asa Packer developed this region, while, farther up the
river, branch lines come in from the Mahanoy and Hazleton regions,
which were the field of operations of Ario Pardee; and the two went
hand in hand in fostering the prosperity of the Lehigh Valley.
[Illustration: _Mauch Chunk_]
The upper waters of the Lehigh flow through a wild canyon, the river
at times almost doubling upon itself as it makes sharp bends around
the bold promontories. Enormous hills encompass it about, the stream
often flowing through the bottom with the rush and foam of a miniature
Niagara rapids. The canal, abandoned above Mauch Chunk, was destroyed
by a freshet many years ago, but the amber-colored waters still pour
over the dilapidated dams and through the moss-grown sluices. There
are log houses for the lumbermen, also an almost obsolete industry,
and finally the railways abandon the diminutive Lehigh and climb over
the desolate Nescopec Mountain, to go through the Sugar Notch and down
the other side into the Vale of Wyoming and to the banks of the
Susquehanna. Upon the eastern slopes of the Nescopec the Lehigh has
its sources, gathering the tribute of many small streams between this
ridge and Broad Mountain.