Belvidere, the "town of the beautiful view," nestles upon the broad
terraces under the Jersey ridges at the mouth of Pequest Creek, and
looks prettily out upon the high hills and distant mountains across
the Delaware. Above the town, the river makes a great bend to the
westward in rounding the huge and almost perpendicular mass of Manunka
Chunk Mountain, a name which has been got by a process of gradual
evolution from its Indian title of "Penungauchung." Here, through a
gorge just above, is got the first view of the distant Water Gap,
cleft down in the dark blue Kittatinny ten miles away. Approaching it
as the river winds, all the views have this great Gap for the gem of
the landscape, the ponderous wall of the Kittatinny stretching broadly
across the horizon and steadily rising into greater prominence as it
comes nearer.
"I lift my eyes and ye are ever there,
Wrapped in the folds of the imperial air,
And crowned with the gold of morn or evening rare,
O, far blue hills."
As it is gradually approached, the Gap and its enclosing ridge attain
enormous proportions, dwarfing the smaller hills, among which the
narrow, placid river flows below; and it is realized how tame are all
the other ridges through which the Delaware has passed compared with
this towering Blue Ridge, having the low-lying Blockade Mountain just
behind, and partly closing the Gap. Soon we reach the foot of the
range, and, bending with the river suddenly to the left, enter the
Gap. Scarcely have we entered when the river, which has been swinging
to the left, bends around again gradually to the right, and in a
moment we are through the gorge, the river then circling around the
Blockade Mountain, which has been so named because it seems always
stupidly in the way.
The Indians called the Water Gap "Pohoqualin," meaning "the river
between the mountains." The Delaware flows through it with a width of
eight hundred feet and at an elevation of about three hundred feet
above tide. It is twenty-nine miles northeast of the Lehigh Gap where
the Lehigh River passes the Blue Ridge, and there are five other gaps
between them, of which the "Wind Gap," heretofore referred to, is the
chief. For many years this Wind Gap provided the only route to reach
the country north of the Kittatinny. About two and a half miles
southwest of the Delaware is "Tat's Gap," named in memory of Moses
Fonda Tatamy, an old time Indian interpreter in this region, and
familiarly called "Tat's" for short. The greatest of all these passes,
however, is the Water Gap, where the Blue Ridge, rent asunder, has two
noble peaks guarding the portals, towering sixteen hundred feet high,
and named in honor of the Indians--Mount Minsi in Pennsylvania, after
the tribes of the Minisink, and Mount Tammany in New Jersey, for the
great chief of the Lenni Lenapes.
"Crags, knolls and mounds, in dire confusion hurled,
The fragmentary elements of an earlier world."
The Water Gap is a popular summer resort, there being numerous hotels
and boarding-houses in eligible locations all about it, and the
romantic scenery has been opened up by roads and paths leading to all
the points of view. It is on such a stupendous scale, and exhibits the
geological changes wrought during countless ages so well, that it
always attracts the greatest interest. To the northward spread the
fertile valleys of the Minisink; and the Delaware, which below the Gap
flows to the southeast, passing through all the ridges, comes from the
northeast above the Gap, and flows along the base of the Kittatinny
for miles, as if seeking the outlet which it at length finds in this
remarkable pass.