A long, low bridge carries the Pennsylvania Railroad across the river
in front of Dauphin Gap, and a short distance above, in a delta of
fertile islands, the Susquehanna receives its romantic tributary, the
Juniata, flowing for a hundred miles from the heart of the
Alleghenies, and breaking out of them through a notch cut down in the
long ridge of the Tuscarora Mountain. Here is the iron-making town of
Duncannon, settled by the sturdy Scotch-Irish, who were numerous along
the Juniata and in its neighboring valleys, and who suffered greatly
from Indian forays in the early days of the frontier. Upon Duncan's
Island, the chief one in the delta, at the mouth of the Juniata, was
the place of the council-fire of the Indian tribes of all this region.
Now, this island is mainly a pleasure-ground, having spacious and
shady groves, while the canal, crossing it from the Susquehanna to the
Juniata, goes directly through an extensive Indian mound and
burial-place. We will enter the fastnesses of the Alleghenies by the
winding gorge of the "beautiful blue Juniata," flowing through
magnificent scenery from the eastern face of the main Allegheny range
out to the great river. It breaks down ridge after ridge, stretching
broadly across the country, and presents superb landscapes and
impressive mountain views. The route is a series of bends and gorges,
the river crossing successive valleys between the ridges, now running
for miles northeast along the base of a towering mountain and then
turning east or southeast to break through it by a romantic pass. The
glens and mountains, with ever-changing views, give an almost endless
panorama. Softness of outline, massiveness and variety, are the
peculiarities of Juniata scenery. The stream is small, not carrying a
great amount of water in ordinary seasons, and it seems as much by
strategy as by power to have overcome the obstacles and made its
mountain passes. The rended mountains, steep tree-covered slopes and
frequent isolated sentinel-like hills rising from the glens, have all
been moulded into rounded forms by the action of the elements, leaving
few abrupt precipices or naked rocks to mar the regularity of the
natural beauties. The valleys and lower parts of the mountain sides
are generally cultivated, the fields sloping up to the mantle of
forest crowning the flanks and summits of the ridges. Every change of
sunshine or shadow, and the steady progress of the seasons, give new
tints to these glens and mountains. At times the ravines are deep and
the river tortuous, and again it meanders across the rich flat bottom
lands of a broad valley. In its winding course among these mountain
ranges, this renowned river passes through and displays almost the
whole geological formation of Pennsylvania. The primary rocks are to
the eastward of the Susquehanna, and the bituminous coal measures
begin on the western Allegheny slope, so that the river cuts into a
rock stratification over six miles in thickness, as one after another
formation comes to the surface.
We go through the narrow Tuscarora Gap, and are journeying over the
lands of the Tuscaroras, one of the Iroquois Six Nations, who came up
from the South, and were given the name of Tuscarora, or the
"shirt-wearer," because long contact with the whites had led them to
adopt that garment. Beyond the Gap, the Tuscarora Valley is enclosed
on its northwest side by the Turkey Mountain, the next western ridge,
and it was a region of terrible Indian conflicts and massacres in the
pioneer days, when the first fort built there was burnt, and every
settler either killed or carried off into captivity. Here was fought
the "Grasshopper War" between the Tuscaroras and Delawares. They had
villages on opposite sides of the river, and one day the children
disputed about some grasshoppers. The quarrel involved first the
squaws and then the men, a bloody battle following. Mifflin, an
attractive town, is located here, and to the westward the Juniata
breaks through the next great ridge crossing its path, passing a
massive gorge formed by the Shade and Blue Mountains, flowing for
miles in the deep and narrow winding canyon between them, the
far-famed "Lewistown or Long Narrows," having the railway hanging upon
one bank and the canal upon the other. Broken, slaty shingle covers
most of the hill-slopes, and in the broad valley, above the lengthened
gorge, is Lewistown, nestling at the base of a huge mountain at the
outlet of the beautiful Kishicoquillas Valley, spreading up among the
high hills to the northward--its name meaning "the snakes are already
in their dens." The hero of this attractive region in the eighteenth
century, and then its most distinguished inhabitant, was Logan, the
chief of the Mingoes and Cayugas, whose speeches, preserved by Thomas
Jefferson, are a favorite in school declamation. He was of giant
mould, nearly seven feet high, and lived at Logan's Spring in the
valley. He was the friend of the white men, but when the frontier
became too well settled for him longer to find the deer on which he
subsisted, selling their skins to the traders, he went westward to the
Ohio River, locating near Wheeling. Here, without provocation, his
family were cruelly massacred, and this ended Logan's love for the
whites. He became a relentless foe, wreaking indiscriminate vengeance,
until killed in the Shawnee wars beyond the Ohio, having joined that
hostile tribe. The Lewistown Narrows are the finest mountain pass of
the Juniata, the peaks precipitously rising over a thousand feet above
the river, which forces a passage between them for more than eight
miles, the densely wooded cliffs so enclosing and overshadowing the
gorge as to give it an appearance of deepest gloom.