The line westward from Lancaster crosses one long ridge-like hill
after another stretching broadly over the country, and finally comes
to the outlying ridge of the Allegheny range, the South Mountain,
beyond which is the great Appalachian Valley. One railroad route
boldly crosses this mountain through the depressions in the Conewago
hills, where the picturesque Conewago Creek, the Indian "long reach,"
flows down its beautiful gorge to the Susquehanna, and this railroad
finally comes out on that river at Middletown below Harrisburg; the
other route follows a more easy gradient westward ten miles to
Columbia, and this is used by the heavier freight trains. Coming
towards it over the hills, the wide Susquehanna lies low in its broad
valley, enclosed by the distant ridge of the Kittatinny bounding
Cumberland County beyond the river. As it is approached, the thought
is uppermost that this is one of the noblest, and yet among the
meanest rivers in the country. Rising in Otsego Lake in New York, it
flows over four hundred miles down to Chesapeake Bay, receives large
tributaries, its West Branch being two hundred miles long, rends all
the Allegheny Mountain chains, and takes a great part of the drainage
of that region in New York and Pennsylvania, passes through grand
valleys, noble gorges and most magnificent scenery, and yet it is so
thickly sown with islands, rocks and sand-bars, rapids and shallows,
as to defy all attempts to make it satisfactorily navigable excepting
by lumber rafts, logs and a few canal boats. Thus the Indians
significantly gave its name meaning the island-strewn, broad
and shallow river, and it is little more than a gigantic drain for
Central Pennsylvania.
On its bank is Columbia, a town of busy iron and steel manufacture, as
the whole range of towns are for miles up to and beyond Harrisburg. At
Columbia first appeared, about 1804, that mysterious agency known as
the "Underground Railroad," whereby fugitive slaves were secretly
passed from one "station" to another from "Mason and Dixon's Line" to
Canada, mainly through the aid and active exertions of philanthropic
Quakers. All through Chester and Lancaster Counties and northward were
laid the routes of this peculiar line, whose ramifications became more
and more extensive as time passed, making the Fugitive Slave Law
almost a nullity during the decade before the Civil War. There were
hundreds of good people engaged in facilitating the unfortunate
travellers who fled for freedom, and many have been the escapades with
the slave-hunters, whose traffic long ago happily ended. At Middletown
the Swatara River flows in from the hills of Lebanon County, there
being all along the Susquehanna a prodigious development of the steel
industry as well as rich farms on the fertile bottom lands. Here is
the historic estate of Lochiel, which was the home of Simon Cameron,
who for many years ruled the political destinies of Pennsylvania. He
was born in 1799 at Maytown, near Marietta, on the Susquehanna, a few
miles above Columbia, in humble circumstances, and came as a poor
printer's boy to Harrisburg, rose to wealth and power, and when he was
full of years and honors placed the mantle of the United States
Senatorship upon his son. Their "Clan Cameron" which ruled
Pennsylvania for two generations has been regarded as the best managed
political "machine" in the Union, having in its ranks and among its
allies not only politicians, but bankers, railway managers, merchants,
manufacturers and capitalists, and men in every walk of life,
ramifying throughout the Keystone State.
Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, stands upon the sloping
eastern bank of the river in the grandest scenery. Just above, the
Susquehanna breaks through the Kittatinny at the Dauphin Gap, giving a
superb display of the rending asunder of the towering mountain chain.
Opposite are the forest-clad hills of York and Cumberland bordering
the fertile Cumberland Valley spreading off to the southwest, while
behind the city this great Appalachian Valley continues between its
enclosing ridges as the Lebanon Valley northeast to the Schuylkill
River at Reading. Market Street is the chief Harrisburg highway, and
the Pennsylvania Railroad is the back border of the town. The State
Capitol, set on a hill, was burnt, and is being rebuilt. A pleasant
park encloses the site, and from the front a wide street leads down to
the river, making a pretty view, with a Soldiers' Monument in the
centre, which is an enlarged reproduction of Cleopatra's Needle. The
Front Street of the city, along the river bank, is the popular
promenade, and is adorned with the Executive Mansion and other fine
residences, which have a grand outlook across the broad expanse of
river and islands. Bridges cross over, among them the old "camel's
back," a mile long, and having its shelving stone ice-breakers jutting
up stream. This is the old wooden covered bridge that Charles Dickens
wrote about in his _American Notes_. On his first American visit he
came into Harrisburg from York County on a stage-coach through this
bridge, and he wrote: "We crossed the river by a wooden bridge, roofed
and covered on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was
profoundly dark, perplexed with great beams, crossing and re-crossing
it at every possible angle, and through the broad chinks and crevices
in the floor the river gleamed far down below, like a legion of eyes.
We had no lamps, and as the horses stumbled and floundered through
this place towards the distant speck of dying light, it seemed
interminable. I really could not persuade myself at first as we
rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with hollow noises--and I held
down my head to save it from the rafters--but that I was in a painful
dream, and that this could not be reality." The old bridge is much the
same to-day as when Dickens crossed it.
Harrisburg was named for John Harris, who established a ferry here,
and alongside the river bank is the little "Harris Park" which
contains his grave. The stump of the tree at the foot of which he was
buried is carefully preserved. A drunken band of Conestoga Indians
came this way in 1718, and, capturing the faithful ferryman, tied him
to the tree to be tortured and burnt, when the timely interposition of
some Indians from the opposite shore, who knew him and were friendly,
saved him. His son succeeded him and ran the ferry, and an enclosure
in the park preserves this spot of historic memory.