At Glen Eyre, the Blooming Grove Creek flows merrily into the
Lackawaxen, coming out from Blooming Grove Township to the southward,
an elevated wooded plateau in the interior of Pike, which is the
common heading ground for numerous streams radiating in every
direction, and containing a score of attractive lakes. This region is
a wilderness where deer, bears and other wild animals roam, while the
streams are noted angling resorts. In it are the two famous "Knobs,"
the highest elevations of the whole Pocono range, the southern or
"High Knob" rising two thousand and ten feet, out-topping the
Kittatinny "High Point." This "Knob" stands like a pyramid, at least
five hundred feet above all the surrounding country, excepting its
neighbor, the "North Knob," which is only one hundred feet lower.
These are the northeastern outposts of the Pocono range. Upon the top
of the "High Knob" is a large boulder of white conglomerate, dropped
by the ice in the glacial period, and this summit gives the most
extensive view in Pennsylvania, over dark, fir-covered ridges in every
direction, interspersed with lakelets glistening in the sunlight.
There is not a house to be seen, and scarcely a clearing, but all
around is one vast wilderness. The greater part of this region is the
estate of the "Blooming Grove Park Association," covering thirteen
thousand acres, surrounded by a high fence, and stocked with game and
fish, there being over $300,000 invested in the enterprise. Here elk
and deer are bred, there are abundant hares and rabbits, and also
woodcock, grouse and snipe shooting. The spacious club-house is
elevated high above the rocky shores of Lake Giles, a most beautiful
circular sheet of clear spring water, fourteen hundred feet above
tide, and to it the anglers and hunters take their families and enjoy
the pleasures of the virgin woods.
The Wallenpaupack Creek, coming out of the Pocono plateau and the
Moosic Mountain, makes the boundary between Pike and Wayne Counties,
and flows into the Lackawaxen at Hawley. For most of the distance its
course is deep and sluggish, but approaching the edge of the terrace,
within a couple of miles of the Lackawaxen, it tumbles over cataracts
and down rapids through a magnificent gorge, so that, from its
alternating characteristics, the Indians rightly called it the
Walink-papeek, or "the slow and swift water." It descends a cascade of
seventy feet, and then goes down the Sliding Fall, a series of rapids
interspersed with several small cataracts. Farther down are two
cascades of thirty feet each, and then the main plunge, the Paupack
falls of sixty-one feet, almost at its mouth, the whole descent being
about two hundred and fifty feet. Hawley has thriving mills, whose
wheels are turned by this admirable water-power, and it is also a
railway centre for coal shipping. Its people are noted makers of
silks, and of cut and decorated glassware. Judge James Wilson, one of
the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was an early settler
on the Wallenpaupack.
Above Hawley, in a broadened intervale of the Lackawaxen, was the
famous "Indian Orchard," where the first settlement, made in 1760,
grew afterwards into Honesdale, now the county-seat of Wayne. This was
a tract of land in the valley upon which the lofty Irving Cliff looks
down; and it was named from a row of one hundred apple trees which the
Indians had planted at regular intervals along the river bank. The
tradition was that ninety-nine trees bore sweet fruit, while one every
alternate year had a crop of sour apples. Upon a large clearing at the
water's edge, paved with flat stones, the Indians held their feasts
and performed their religious rites. The orchard and stones have
disappeared, but the plow still turns up Indian relics. This place was
selected by the Delaware and Hudson Company for the head of their now
abandoned canal, at the base of the Moosic Mountain, and it was named
Honesdale, in honor of the first president of the canal company,
Philip Hone, described as "the courtliest Mayor New York ever saw."
Within the town the two pretty streams unite which form the
Lackawaxen, making lakelets on the plain, and from the shore of one of
these the rocks rise almost perpendicularly nearly four hundred feet.
In 1841 Washington Irving came here with some friends, making the
journey on the canal, and climbed these rocks to overlook the lovely
intervale, and thus the Irving Cliff was named. Writing of his visit,
he spoke in wonder of the beautiful scenery and romantic route of the
Delaware and Hudson Canal, saying: "For many miles it is built up
along the face of perpendicular precipices, rising into stupendous
cliffs, with overhanging forests, or jutting out into vast
promontories, while upon the other side you look down upon the
Delaware, foaming and roaring below you, at the foot of an immense
wall or embankment which supports the canal. Altogether, it is one of
the most daring undertakings I have ever witnessed, to carry an
artificial river over rocky mountains, and up the most savage and
almost impracticable defiles. For upward of ninety miles I went
through a constant succession of scenery that would have been famous
had it existed in any part of Europe."
From Honesdale a gravity railroad crosses the Moosic Mountain into the
Lackawanna Valley at Carbondale. This was originally used to bring the
coal out for the canal, but has been abandoned for this purpose, being
now confined to passenger service. It has twenty-eight inclined
planes, and crosses the summit at Far View, at an elevation of nearly
two thousand feet. The first locomotive brought to America, built at
Stourbridge, England, in 1828, the "Stourbridge Lion," was used on the
levels of this railroad, the face of a lion adorning the front of the
boiler giving it the name. When brought out in 1829 the triumphant
claim was made that it "would run four miles an hour." The road passes
over extended mountain tops, giving far-seeing views; and among these
sombre rounded ridges in the wilderness of Wayne are the sources of
the Lackawaxen. Carbondale, built on the coal measures of the upper
Lackawanna Valley, has about eighteen thousand population; but all its
coal now goes to market by other railway routes, the gravity road and
the canal being found too expensive carriers in the fierce competition
of the anthracite industry.