in Lawrence County.

frontiersmen from New Castle in Delaware, founded the seat of justice New Castle now is the most important industrial center of western Pennsylvania.

Lebanon was formed out of Dauphin and a small section of the northern part of Lancaster county in 1813.

At the county court held in the spring of 1815, with John Joseph Henry, a noted soldier of the Revolution as presiding judge, it was announced from his desk that a treaty of peace had been signed between America and Great Britain which ended the second war for Independence.

Lebanon, the seat of justice of the new county, was laid out in 1750, when that region was in Lancaster county. Owing to the fertility of the land, the Commissioners named the new county Lebanon, because the fertile land surrounding the town is like the far famed Lebanon mentioned in the Bible.

A short distance south of Lebanon are the famous Cornwall iron mines, the largest in the world. Underneath three hills are remarkable veins of magnetic ore, the supply of which is practically inexhaustible. One of these hills is conical in shape and covers forty acres; another, thirty-five and the third thirty. These mines were opened before the Revolution and charcoal furnaces erected. Wrought iron was manufactured in large quantities and much of it made into cannon and balls for the patriots during the Revolution.

Midway between the picturesque scenery around Mauch Chunk and the city of Allentown is the Lehigh Water Gap. At this place the Lehigh River seems to have worn its way through the mountains, making two abutments high in the air to face each other. This geological feature caused the Indians to call the river Le high. In 1812 the western part of Northampton was formed into a new county which took its name from the river along its northern and eastern boundary.

Lehigh County, like Lebanon, was settled by German peasants who left their homes along the Rhine to take up their abode amid the primeval forests on the fertile land now embraced in this county.

In one of the churches in Allentown, the County seat of Lehigh, the historic Liberty Bell from Independence Hall was concealed for

several months while the British occupied Philadelphia during the winter of 1777-78.

Catasauqua, or the Indian name for "thirsty land," has several large furnaces and forges. Macungie, which in the Indian language means "the feeding place of bears," is a typical Pennsylvania-German town where the inhabitants still speak the language used by their ancestors who settled here nearly two hundred years ago.

Monroe, lying on the western bank of the Delaware, was formed out of Northampton in 1836 the year that James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States died. This County was occupied in early days by the Minisink Indians, a small tribe of the Delawares. Teedyuscung, the famous Delaware chief and friend of the white people during the colonial wars, lived in Monroe county for nearly half a century. The county was the birth place of General Daniel Brodhead of the Revolution, and also of Colonel Stroud in whose honor the county seat was named when laid out in 1810. About four miles south of Stroudsburg the Delaware River cuts its way through the Blue Mountains at the Delaware Water Gap.

Monroe has a variety of picturesque scenery and is a great summer

resort.

The fertile and productive region of Montgomery was organized out of Philadelphia County in 1784. It was named in honor of General John Montgomery, who commanded the Pennsylvania militia at Brandywine and Germantown; not in honor of Montgomery of Quebec.

The Swedes were the first white settlers to visit the virgin forests of this romantic county. They came here before the arrival of Penn in Philadelphia. The next settlers were intelligent Quakers. About the same time a large number of Welsh purchased lands in the eastern part of this county. Among their descendants born in Montgomery were General A. A. Humphreys, the noted soldier of the Civil war and George B. Roberts, for many years president of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

General Winfield Scott Hancock was probably the most distinguished son of this county. It was Hancock who took charge of three army corps at Gettysburg on the evening of the first day of that great battle. Hancock won fame in this contest and continued to command

the Second Corps under Grant in 1864, even to the surrender of Lee at Appomattox.

Major General John F. Hartranft of the Civil War and twice elected governor of his native state, was a descendant of PennsylvaniaGerman ancestry who settled in this county. Samuel W. Pennypacker, lawyer, jurist and governor, and president of the Pennsylvania Historical Society was also born near Norristown, the county seat.

The most historic spot in Montgomery is Valley Forge, where Washington held together his army during the darkest days of the Revolution. A large tract of land surrounding Washington's headquarters is now laid off in a beautiful park, visited annually by thousands of tourists from Europe and America. Here Steuben began to drill and discipline the troops under Washington in the military tactics which he had learned while serving under Frederick the Great It was here at Valley Forge that Lafayette brought the news to Washington from York, where Congress was in session during nine months of 1777-78, that the conspiracy to remove the head of the army from his command had collapsed.

Audubon, the famous naturalist spent several years of his life in a beautiful home on the banks of the Perkiomen Creek, near which now stands the oldest Quaker meeting house in Pennsylvania.

YORK, PA.

GEORGE R. PROWELL.

(To be continued.)

Si

ACOMA, OUR OLDEST CITY

T. AUGUSTINE, which is supposed by many to be the oldest city in the United States, is surpassed in that respect by the yet older Pueblo Indian city of Acoma, New Mexico. While no nothing

is known of St. Augustine prior to 1565, Acoma was in full bloom when Coronado, in 1542, reached it on an exploring tour northward from Mexico. He found the Pueblo Indians doing what they are doing now, and doing it in the same fashion, and the houses on the rocky mesas (islands) that rise several hundred feet out of the arid, cactus-covered plains are the same houses that Coronado's eyes rested on as he came within sight of the Indian city, only fifty years after Columbus landed on Watling's Island.

Years before Coronado found it, Acoma was a recognized abode of the Pueblo Indians. They told him that their first city was on Katzimo, the rocky island three miles away, which is also called the "Enchanted Mesa." Many years ago, said they, the original Acoma rested on the top of Katzimo.

One day, while all but three women were in the plain below, a great cliff fell, destroying the trail from the plain to the ancient city. The Indians took this as an indication that the Great Spirit was displeased over something they had done, and to punish them had cut off the path to their city. Instead of clearing the path and returning to their old homes on Katzimo, the Pueblos went to the adjoining tableland and there set up the present city of Acoma.

The Pueblos look upon the old city on its rocky site, nearly four hundred feet in the air, as a sacred place, and woe to the person caught trying to penetrate its precincts.

The present city of Acoma is on a plateau that rises three hundred and fifty feet out of the arid plains of New Mexico. The sides of the plateau, a mass of sandstone, are almost straight. To get to the top, one must climb a crude stairway cut in the stone. On top one will find three or four rows of primitive apartment-houses. These are three stories high and are built on each side of streets one thousand feet long. The houses follow a line that seems even straighter than the building line in great cities, since they are all of the same type of architecture

and are built up close to the line. The streets too are one hundred feet wide, another feature that modern city builders may have copied from the red men of the Southwest.

Another feature of this quaint city is that the houses have flat roofs. The upper floors are reached by outside stairways in the shape of ladders. The first floor is the longest. The second floor is ten feet shorter than the first, and the third floor is ten feet shorter than the second. These ten feet serve as back yards for each of the apartments. In summer the Indian and his family use this yard to sleep in; in winter they sleep indoors.

The houses are built of ordinary mud, shaped into blocks and baked hard. After centuries under the fierce rays of the sun, these blocks become as hard as stone. After the blocks were placed, the Indian builders smeared the joints with mud, so that they are seamless. The walls of most of the houses are eight feet thick, and the roof of each is supported by rafters of wood which were carried twenty miles, from the San Mateo Mountains, and they are as thick as the masts of the largest ships.

Taken as a whole, it is a wonderful piece of work. But one has indeed to be a good friend of the Pueblos, before he can obtain a near view of this forsaken city. The writer had the good fortune to be the means of saving the life of a Pueblo, from a half-drunken white man who had attacked him, and thus was permitted to visit the centuries' old ruins.

CHITWOOD, Mo.

J. R. HENDERson,