A PLEA FOR THE CONESTOGARIVER.

"Are not Albana and Pharpar, riversof Damascus, better than all thewaters of Israel?"

Perhaps I cannot introduce mytheme more appropriately than byquoting a few lines from the greatestof Scotch poets, addressed to hisfriend, William Simson, entreatinghim to lend his aid in extolling thestreams of their native country,Scotland. He wrote:

"Ramsay and famous FergussonGied Forth and Tay a lift aboon;Yarrow and Tweed to mony a tune

Oure Scotland rings;While Irvin, Lugar, Ayr an' Doon

Naebody sings.

"The Ilissus, Tiber, Thames an' SelneGlide sweet in mony a tunefu' line;But Willie, set your fit to mine

And cock your crest,We'll gar our streams and burnies

shineUp wi' the best!"¹

One of the most beautiful streamsin the world flows quietly through thegreen meadows and along the sunnybraes of Lancaster county for a dis-tance of more than sixty miles,draining a territory 315 squaremiles in area, and zigzags aroundthe southeastern boundaries ofthis city in a way that makesit an unending pleasure to all who arethoroughly acquainted with its un-

¹Burns' "Address to William Sim-son,"

numbered attractions. During thepast fifty years it has been my lot toencounter the name in manuscriptand in print anywhere from 10,000 to20,000 times, more nearly the latterthan the former, perhaps, and onlyabout once in a thousand times is iteven by accident called a river. It isthe Conestoga "Creek" to most of ourpeople, "and it is nothing more." Itis only on the rarest occasions that itis dignified by the name of "River,"and yet a river it is in all that con-stitutes a river, just as truly as aresome of the most noted streams ofthe world. which have been calledrivers for thousands of years.,

This is hard to understand. Sev-eral times in the Pennsylvania Arch-ives I have found it called the Cones-toga River. That was well nigh 200years ago, and the men who so calledit were men who came from the OldWorld, where streams of less thanhalf its length and size were and arestill called rivers, not only in ordinaryspeech, but on the maps also, andrivers they will remain so long astheir currents run to the sea. Why,then, we may ask, is not our beauti-ful home stream, the winding Cones-toga, also called a "River" instead ofa "Creek" merely? Doubtless the re-markable expansion that attends allAmerican ideas is accountable for thisperversion of terms. The Americanpeople are not like the Old Worldpeople. Our ideas and views differ

2This phase of the question mayprofitably be carried a step further:315 square miles represent 201,600acres. Now, every one knows thatLancaster county is one of the bestwatered and drained counties in theState. If we estlmate one spring ortributary to every 1,000 acres, we have200 affluents, large and small, pouringtheir waters into the Conestoga. Thenumber is probably twice 200. To askus to call a stream with perhaps 400tributaries a "creek" is a propositionthat offends human intelligence.

widely from theirs on almost everysubject that can be named. They areslow and we are fast; we are aggress-ive and progressive,they are conserva-tive and slow. Our views are expan-sive; theirs are contracted. We lookthrough telescopes from the smallerend; they from the other. To us nostream can be a river that is muchless than a thousand miles long anda mile wide; they live on the banksof a little stream on which nothinglarger than a toy canoe can float, anddelight in calling it a river, and sing-ing its praises in song, while we liveour lives away on a larger and morebeautiful stream,see its charms everyday in the year, and content ourselveswith speaking of it under the undig-nified name of a "creek." Big sur-roundings are productive of big ideas.Just because some of our moun-tains are among the largest andhighest in the world, our prairies thewidest and greenest, and our riversamong the longest and widest anddeepest, we refuse to call anything ariver that does not partake of allthese grand proportions.

But this is all a mistake. Peoplelived on the banks of rivers, sailedand rowed on their waters, fished andbathed in their crystal waves forthousands of years before Americawas discovered. If anybody ever knewwhat a river meant, it must have beenthese people of the olden time, andwe cannot ignore the titles they gaveto the famous water-courses of theworld. They invented the names bywhich they should be known, and,having laid down the law governingsuch cases, thousands of years beforeColumbus sailed the seas, I hold thattheir ideas of what constitutes a riverare equal to, and quite as deservingof attention as our own.

In proof of the idea I have here ad-

vanced I shall take it upon myselfto call up some of the great historicstreams of the world, going back intothe very beglnning of recorded time,and follow it down, although not inchronological order, to the presentday, with examples known to you all,and, in this way, endeavor to convinceyou of the fact that you have all yourlives done injustice to one of themost charming water-courses, as Ibelieve, in the world, and win you toa more generous judgment in favorof our Conestoga. I shall not makemy appeal to sentiment only, but towhat the verdict of the past 5,000years has been. I shall show you thatsome of the greatest deeds of all timeoccurred on banks of streams nolarger, nor as large as the Conestoga;that their names have come down tous in song and story linked with theheroic deeds of all ages, and that, inmany instances, they were far moreinsignificant in themselves than thecne which it has been the pleasure ofyou all, during all your days, to havedenominated by the insignificant andundignified title of "Creek."

Before proceeding further it may bewell to get at the meaning of theword "creek." The word originallymeant "a small inlet of the shore ofthe sea or of a river;" "a little bay;""a nook in a harbor where anythingis landed;" "a small inlet, bay orcove, a recess in the shore of the seaor of a river;" "the tidal estuary of asmall river, where vessels may findharbor." In Great Britain, the wordis used in the customs service tomean "a small inlet, either into theshore or into a small tidal river,whereanything is landed;" "a shallowwater-course with much tumbling andbreaking over stony places." In theBible we have this same definition ofthe word creek, in the description of

Paul's shipwreck, where it is written,"and when it was day they knew notthe land: but they discovered a cer-tain creek with a shore, into whichthey were minded, if it were possible,to thrust the ship." It seems unnec-essary to pursue this phase of thequestion any further. What was orig-inally meant to apply to the outlet ofa stream became at last the namegiven to the entire water-course, fromits fountain head to its mouth.

The name Conestoga (Kanastoge)was undoubtedly applied to thatbranch of the Algonquin family of RedMen living along the SusquehannaRiver and its branches. The mean-ing of the word, as given by the In-dians themselves, is, "at the place ofthe immersed pole." 3 Later it wasgiven to the stream also, and to themagnificent domain of hill and ver-dant valley drained by it. Still laterto the fine breed of draught horsesbred in the valley, and ultimately alsoto the large and commodious wagonsbuilt here for more than a century forcommercial uses at home and distantpoints.

The Conestoga.

The main one of the two streamswhich go to form the headwaters ofthe Conestoga rises in the "BigSwamp," in Caernarvon

township, Lancaster county; it flows eastwardlyacross the county line into Berkscounty, where, after a course of aboutfour miles, it turns westwardly,crosses back into Lancaster county,and pursues its course within ourcounty limits until its waters fall intothe Susquehanna. I am aware thatthe claim is made that its entirecourse is through Lancastercounty, but careful investigations

3Ha ndbook of American Indians,Vol. 1. p. 335: Hanna's "The Wilder-ness Trail," Vol. 1, p. 35.

among persons of the highest verac-ity living along its headwaters con-vince me that its course as I haveoutlined it is the true one. The factthat it flows as far eastward as Mor-gantown, four miles from the countyline, and back again by a shorterroute seems to be convincing.

There are three mills on it in Berkscounty, namely, Kurtz's, Graham's,and Hart's. In Lancaster countythere are at present( this was writ-ten about 1905) the following millslocated on the stream coming east-ward from the Berks county line:Grube's, Hertzler's, Weaver's, Mar-tin's, Overholtzer's, A. A. Martin's,Samuel Martin's, Rupp's and Nolt'sin Earl. I regret that the page ofnotes on which the remaining millswere named has been lost. I remem-ber, however, that in all there weretwenty-seven grist mills on thestream. There are perhaps as manymore on its various affluents. No noteis taken of the numerous saw-millsand other mills on its banks. To callsuch a stream a creek seems almostfarcical.

Although satisfied that the foregoingaccount of the rise and course of theConestoga was correct, to make assur-ance doubly sure, on July 14, 1911, Imade a tour through the region de-scribed to verify the account alreadygiven. Citizens at Churchtown, Mor-gantown and beyond were visited andinterviewed, and on the return the"Forest" country was traversed, andold men living in the neighborhoodwere carefully questioned, and theirinformation carefully sifted and com-pared with what I personally saw.The large township maps of Lancas-ter and Berks counties were also ex-amined and found to tell the samestory in all particulars save one,short-ly to be mentioned.

The source of the Conestoga is inwhat for a century has been knownas "The Forest," a once heavily-wooded and still-timbered country, inCaernarvon township, Lancaster coun-ty. The immediate locality of the largespring that gives the river birth isknown as "Bortz's Swamp," the "BigSwamp" and "Pengall Field," the prop-erty at present being in the owner-ship of Peter Wertz. The countrynear the head of the stream is marshyand covered with underbrush, and Iwas advised by persons living withina mile of the spot not to attempt toreach it in the automobile in which Itraveled, but the exact locality waspointed out to me from an elevatedpoint. Milton D. Curley, along andthrough whose father's farm the

stream runs for a considerable dis-tance, and who has been familiar withthe land for miles around from boy-hood, told me that within a mile ofthe rise of the Conestoga, half a dozensprings empty into the main stream,which, as I traced it, crosses thecounty line into Caernarvon township,Perks county, at a point four milesfrom its source.

It flows close by the ancient villageof Morgantown, where, turning west-wardly, it enters Lancaster countyagain, whence it pursues its zig-zagcourse about sixty miles further, untilit debouches into the Susquehanna atSafe Harbor. Its course in Perkscounty is four and a half or fivemiles. On the Lancaster county mapsthe stream is called the ConestogaCreek throughout its entire course,but the Berks county cartographers,envious, perhaps, that so noble a rivershould belong to our county exclusive-ly, have called it the "Swamp Creek"during its short course in their coun-ty, and have given the name of Con-estoga Creek to a little tributary that

takes its rise at the foot of the WelshMountains, just where that rangeloses its name, and, although this af-fluent is only about two and one-halfmiles long and not more than one-third as large as the main stream—our Conestoga—and loses itself in thelatter close by Morgantown, theyclaim the Conestoga rises in "OldBerks," a claim that, of course, cannotbe tolerated for a moment. To per-mit a small stream two and one-halfmiles long falling into one eight mileslong at the point of junction, withthrice the former's volume of water,and give the larger and far more im-portant water-course its own name, isopposed to common fairness as wellas to common sense.

The Rubicon.

No river in all the world, whetherlarge or small, is more noted than theRubicon, a little stream famous asthe limit prescribed by the RomanSenate to the advance of Cæsar onhis march toward the Eternal City tocontest with Pompey for the empireof the world. When Cæsar, at thehead of his legions, reached this smallstream he paused for a little space onits banks before taking a step thatprobably meant death or the domin-ion of the world to him. "We maystill retreat," he said to those abouthim, "but if we pass this little bridge,nothing is left for us but to fight itout in arms." "Jacta est alea," he ex-claimed, "the die is cast," the Rubi-con was crossed, and Caesar went for-ward to become the first man in Romeand the master of the world. Andyet the world-famous Rubicon is hard-ly more than a shallow, brawling riv-ulet only twenty miles long." 4

'There was a very ancient law ofthe Republic, forbidding any Generalreturning from the wars to cross theRubicon with his troops under arms.Suetonius—Bohn's ed. p. 22.

The Mersey.

The Mersey, commercially consid-ered, is one of the important riversof Great Britain, and of the world. Itslength is seventy miles, but that in-cludes an estuary or bay sixteenmiles long, leaving only fifty-fourmiles for the river proper. The cityof Liverpool is located on it. the sec-ond largest city in the kingdom, with1,000,000 souls, including its suburbs.It is the greatest cotton mart in theworld. Its imports and exports united-ly amount to $1,500,000,000. It is oneof the world's great cities.

The Trebia.

In the winter of 216 B. C. Hannibalcrossed the Alps from Gaul and en-tered upon the plains of Italy. Hehad 50,000 infantry and 9,000 horsewhen he began the ascent. When hearrived in the valley of the Po he had20,000 of the former and 6,000 of thelatter left. On opposite banks ofthe Trebia the Carthagenian and Ro-man armies lay encamped, HannibalIn command of the former, the Con-suls Scipio and Sempronious of thelatter. For several days the com-manders maneuvered for advantage,but at last the Consuls fell into atrap Hannibal had laid for them, andone of the world's greatest victorieswas won, and the army of 40,000 mencommanded by Scipio and Sempron-ious was cut to pieces; only 10,000escaped by flight. The Trebia, onwhose banks this great battle wasfought, is a mountain stream onlyfifty-five miles long, which, in sum-mer, runs babbling over a broad grav-elly bed, so shallow that the foottraveler can easily walk across it, but,after heavy rains, it temporarily be-comes a rapid torrent.

The Bannockburn.

Six hundred years ago, on June 24,1314, King Robert Bruce, of Scotland,defeated King Edward II., of England,in the greatest pitched battle thatScotland ever saw, on the banks of alittle stream called Bannockburn,which thereby gained world-widecelebrity, since enhanced by Burns'immortal lyric of that name. TheScotch army, assembled with extremeeffort, amounted to only 30,000 men;that of the English King numbered100,000, commanded by Edward inperson. After the combat seventy-five English nobles and knights re-mained lying on the battlefield, andas many more were taken prisoners.England had never before lost sogreat a battle, nor Scotland won sogreat a victory. It achieved the in-dependence of the latter kingdom. Ihave gone to some trouble to learnall I could about the rivulet Bannock-burn, which, on that day, acquired aworld-wide fame. A correspondentresiding hard by on the burn writes tome as follows: "The Bannock rises inEarl's Hill, in the parish of St. Ni-man's, and flows in an easterly direc-tion through the parish till it fallsinto the river Forth at Powmalse. (Themouths of streams in this part of thecountry are called pows). Its aver-age width from bank to bank is aboutforty-five feet; the width of the wateris at most twenty-five feet. In the firstpart of its course the Bannock is ashallow, brawling stream; when itreaches the lower ground it flows lessrapidly. In the latter part of itscourse its depth is about two feet. Itis never dry." Our Conestoga maywell match the Bannock, but whoamong us can match Burns' blood-stirring battle hymn:

"Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,Scots whom Bruce has often led;Welcome to your gory bed,

Or to victory!Now's the day and now's the hour;See the front of battle lour;See approach proud Edward's power—

Chains and slavery!

"Wha will be a traitor knave?Wha can fill a coward's grave?Wha so base as be a slave?

Let him turn and flee!Lay the proud usurper low!Tyrants fall in every foe!Liberty's in every blow!

Let us do or die!"

The Aufides.

I have already told you of Hanni-bal's great victory on the Trebia in217 B. C. That battle was followedby a still greater one in the followingyear on the banks of the Aufides. TheRoman forces this time were underthe command of the Consuls Aemiliusand Varro. The Carthagenian armynumbered 50,000 men of all arms; theRoman force, 76,000. Hannibal'sarmy was drawn up in a loop of thelittle river Aufides. Never was therea more decisive victory or a bloodier.Of the 76,000 Romans who went intothe fight, 70,000 lay on the field ofbattle, among whom was a Consul,two Pro-Consuls, both the Quaestors,twenty-one out of forty-eight Tri-bunes, two-thirds of the staff officers,and eighty men of Senatorial rank.History records no defeat more com-plete, and few more murderous. Han-nibal's loss is variously estimated byhistorians at from 6,000 to 8,000. TheAufides is a river a little longer thanthe Conestoga, and so shallow every-where as to have been easily crossedon foot by both armles.'

'The slaughter in battle in ancienttimes was comparatively much greaterthan in modern, owing to the fact thatthose were mainly hand-to-hand con-flicts, and few were left wounded onthe field. The wounded are never

The Nith.

Whose heart does not grow soft andtender when Maxwelton's banks,where Annie Laurie gave her prom-ise true, are brought to mind. Thosebraes lie along the river Nith, whichis just about as large as the Cones-toga. When will some Pennsylvaniabard do for our beautiful stream whatLady Scott has done for the Nith?

The Lee.

Everybody has heard of Frank Ma-honey, that versatile Irishman who.under the pseudonym of "FatherProut," so long mystified the loversof true poetry by his jovial songs andimitations. "The Bells of Shandon"is one of the most tuneful lyrics inthe language; you have all heard it,but here are a few lines of it to showhow the pretty little river Lee, onlythirty-five miles long, has become oneof the best-known rivers, not only ofIreland, but of the world

"I've heard bells chimingFull many a clime in,Tolling sublime in

Cathedral shrine,But all their music

Speak naught like thine;For memory dwellingOn each proud swellingOf the belfry knelling

Its loved notes freeMade the bells of ShandonSound far more grand onThe pleasant waters

Of the river Lee."

I wish there was time to give youthe remaining stanzas also. In amagazine issued for the presentmonth of January, I find this rivercalled "the tiny Lee."

The Anio and the New Anio.

These are the names of two streams,

mentioned by ancient 'historians. Per-haps the wounded were all killedafter the battle by the victors.

forty miles long, rising in the districtof Umbria, Italy. Caius Caligula, oneof the worst of the Caesars whoruled in Rome—if one can be saidto have been worse than therest—began a magnificent aque-duct to carry the waters of thesesmall rivers to Rome. One of thestreams was carried on arches imme-diately after leaving its source for adistance of three miles. The other,the Anio Novus, also began on arches,which continued for upwards of twen-ty miles. After this the waters ofboth rivers were conveyed under-ground; but at the distance ofmiles from Rome they were againunited and carried upon arches allthe rest of the way. This is regardedas the most perfect of the ancientaqueducts, and it has been repairedso as to also convey the waters of theAcqua Felice, one of the threestreams that now supply Rome. Thewaters of the Anios were distributedthrough the city by a number ofsplendid reservoirs. Horace speaksaof the falls of the Anio.°

The Dee.

Every song collection has the pleas-ant ballad of "The Miller of the Dee,"written by Charles Mackay, and mostof you have no doubt played or sungit yourselves. The miller was a mancontent with his lot, and so he sangone day, as King Hal came riding byand heard him troll his lay:

"I owe no one I cannot pay, I thankthe river Dee,

That turns the mill and grinds thecorn to feed my babes and me."

To this and more like it, King Halresponded:

6See note in Suetonius' "Lives of theCaesars," Bohn's edition, p. 265.

"Thy mealy cap is worth my crown,thy mill my kingdom's fee!

Such men as these are England'sboast, oh miller of the Dee."

Charles Kingsley, in one of themost pathetic lyrics in the Englishlanguage, has also immortalized theword in "The Sands 0' Dee:"

"O Mary, go and call the cattle home,And call the cattle home,And call the cattle home,Across the sands o' Dee!

The western wind was wild and darkwi'foam,

And all alone went she."

There are three rivers Dee; one inWales, seventy miles long; one inIreland, twenty miles long, and athird in Scotland, fifty miles long.Take your choice of the lot, I havenever seen either of them, but haveno doubt that our Conestoga excellsthem all.

The Metaurus.

More than 2,000 years ago—to beprecise, it was in 207 B C.—one ofthe greatest battles of the world wasfought. The Second Punic War wason, the war between the two great re-publics of the ancient world, Romeand Carthage. Hasdrubal had enter-ed Italy to assist his brother, Hanni-bal. The two Carthagenian armieswere at a considerable distance apart,and they were maneuvering to uniteand capture the proud city on theseven hills. Hasdrubal's army wason the banks of the Metaurus. TheRoman armies, under the ConsulsClaudius Nero and Livius Salinator,out-maneuvered Hasdrubal, and hedetermined to steal away by nightand join Hannibal. His guides de-serted him, and rains having swollenthe Metaurus river, he was unable toford it and lost his way. The Consulsfell upon his army, and Livy, perhaps

the greatest of historians, relates theresult. He says: "At no time duringthe war were so many of the enemyslain in one battle: 56,000 of the en-emy (Carthagenians) were killed and5,400 captured. The other booty wasgreat of every kind, and also of goldand silver. About 8,000 of the Ro-mans were killed. When Hasdrubalsaw the day had gone against him, heput spurs to his horse, rushed uponthe Roman cohorts, and fell fighting,as was worthy of the son of Hamilcarand the brother of Hannibal."'

Horace says the battle of Metauruswas the salvation of Italy: "Then bythe death of Hasdrubal fell all thehope and future of Carthage." TheMetaurus, which, from this battle, hasbecome one of the historic rivers ofthe world, is hardly fifty miles long,and everywhere fordable in ordinaryweather. It may be compared withthe Pequea for size.

The Dove.

The English poet, Wordsworth, hasimmortalized the river Dove in hisexquisite little poem called "Lucy."than which there are few finer thingsin any language. Listen to a fewlines:

"She dwelt among the untrodden waysBesides the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none topraise

And very few to love.

"She lived unknown, and few couldknow

When Lucy ceased to be,But she is in her grave, and Oh!

The difference to me."

Yet the Dove river is a small streamin England, not two-thirds as long asour Conestoga, and never less thanthirty or more than sixty feet wide.

7Livy: History of Rome, book 27.

The Chickahominy.

I must not omit a notable streamin our own country, which, half a cen-tury ago, was as familiar to our peo-ple as' the Conestoga itself; it wasthe Chickahominy, famous in ourCivil War annals. For several yearsthe Federal and Confederate armiesfaced and fought each other along itsbanks. Four battles were foughtthere in June, 1862. I have interview-ed a score of men who were there andsaw it daily during that year. Nottwo of them could give me a corrector the same account of it. At last Igot into communication with an oldresident upon its banks, acquaintedwith its waters from source to mouth.He detailed at much length its wind-ings, width and depth at many places.Unfortunately, his long description islost. It is longer than the Conestogaby twenty miles, is not so wide, andis fordable at most places except tow-ards its mouth.

The Battle of Chevy Chase or Otter-burn.

What student of English llteraturehas not read or heard of the very oldballad of Chevy Chase, also called thetattle of Otterburn, a battle that holdsa conspicuous place in Scottish andEnglish history? It was fought in1388. At that time James, Earl ofDouglas, was warden of the Scottishmarches or borders, and Henry Lord

Percy, warden of the English marches.Lord Percy's son, Henry, best knownin history by the surname of Hotspur,from his fiery temper, evidently hav-ing nothing worth doing on his hands,sent word to the Earl of Douglas thathe and his clansmen would take a fewdays' hunting across the border inScotland. It meant more than a hunt,however, and well Earl Douglas un-derstood it, for the "Fiery Cross"

summoned all the clans to the Doug-las banner to meet Percy, who hadassembled a large body of his vassals.The Scots were encamped in a mead-ow, through which flowed the riverRead, or Otterburn, a stream so in-significant that I have not been ableto locate it on the maps or in the en-cyclopedias. It was probably notlarger than the average Lancastercounty farmhouse spring. Yet onthat little brook was fought one of themost hardly-contested battles of thatage. The Earl of Douglas was killedand the Earl of Murray was mortallywounded. Harry Hotspur and hisbrother, Ralph, were taken prisoners.There are several versions of the bal-lad, one giving the victory to the Eng-lish, the other to the Scotch. Addi-son devoted two numbers of the Spec-tator to a critique of the ballad ofChevy Chase. Speaking of the poem,Sir Philip Sidney, that gentle poet,scholar and gallant knight, said: "Inever heard the old song of Percyand Douglas that I found my heartmore moved than with a trumpet;yet it is sung by some blind crowderwith no regular voice than rude style;what would it do trimmed with thegorgeous eloquence of Pindar?"

The Asopus.

Who has not heard of the battle ofPlatea, one of the proudest names inGrecian story?

"There had the Persian thousandsstood;

There had the glad earth drunk theirblood

On old Platea's day."

It was in the year 479 B. C. that aPersian Army of about 300,000 menunder Mardonius confronted the con-federated forces of Greece, the Spar-tans, Lacedemonians, Corinthians,

and some Athenians, on the banks ofthe Asopus, under the command ofPausanius and Aristides, numbering,all told, about 110,000 men, which wasperhaps the largest army unitedGreece ever put into the field. Aftermaneuvering for some days on oppo-site sides of the Asopus, Mardoniuscrossed that stream and attacked theforces of Greece. Desperate deeds ofvalor were performed on both sides.The light-armed Persians hurledthemselves on the serried ranks ofthe Spartan phalanx. Mardoniushimself, at the head of 1,000 pickedmen, threw himself into the thick ofthe fight and was struck down bythe hand of Aimmestus, a valorous.Spartan. A panic seized his soldiersand they fled in wild disorder untilthey again reached their fortifiedcamp on the opposite side of the Aso-pus. The camp was stormed, and ahorrible carnage ensued. Herodotustells us that only 3,000 men exclusiveof the division of Artabazus escaped.That account is undoubtedy exagger-ated, but the Persian loss was unques-tionably very great. The Greek lossesdid not exceed 1,400 men. Ten dayswere required to bury the dead anddivide the booty. The latter was im-mense. The "Father of History" re-lates that among the spoils were"tents decorated with gold and silver,gilt and plated couches, and goldenbowls and cups and other drinkingutensils; they also found sacks on thewagons in which were discovered goldand silver cauldrons, and from thebodies that lay dead they strippedbracelets, necklaces and scymeters ofgold." 8 And how about the Asopus?It is described as "a small, sluggishstream, not easily forded after heavyrains," perhaps twenty-five miles long.

8Herodotus: Book 9.

The Boyne.

Who has not heard of the memor-able battle of the Boyne, fought onJuly 1, 1690, on the river of that name,between King James II., of England,and his son-in-law, William III., Princeof Orange, Stadholder of the Nether-lands, the prize being the Englishthrone. The fight occurred at Old-bridge, where the river was hardlymore than 200 feet wide. A cloudlesssun shone on that bright and tranquilstream, and on the beautiful valley ofthe Boyne, on that summer morning.On the one side waved the flag of theHouse of Stuart, and on the other theflag of the House of Bourbon.

On the southern bank was encamp-ed the army of King James. 30,000 innumber, composed of Irish, some Eng-lish, and an auxiliary French army.On the northern bank, in battle array,stood the 36,000 soldiers of PrinceWilliam. In his ranks were Scotch,Welsh, Dutch, Germans, Danes andSwiss. About 10 o'clock in the morn-ing the soldiers of William began tocross the stream in half a dozenplaces, some of the bravest fighting inmid-stream. The superior numbersand skill of the Prince of Orange tri-umphed completely, and ere sundownthe allied army was in wild flight, andWilliam and Mary became King andQueen of England. The Boyne is alittle longer, but net larger, than theConestoga, and fordable the greaterpart of its course.

The Esk.

All of us, in our school days, de-claimed Scott's stirring ballad of"Young Lochinvar." Don't you re-member how that gallant wooer

"Swam the Esk river where ford therewas none."

Now, there are four Esk rivers in

Scotland: One in Dumfriesshire, forty-three miles long; one in Edinburg-shire, twenty-three miles long; theSouth Esk, forty-nine miles long, inForfarshire, and the North Esk, twen-ty-nine miles long. Take your choiceof the lot. The Conestoga is largerand deeper and broader than eitherof them.

The Awe.Let me call up another Scottish

stream immortalized by Scott in thatpretty song, "Nora's Vow." The cold,fair lady declares

"The Awe's fierce stream may back-ward turn,"

before she will wed the Earl's son."Now, that "fierce stream" is just fivemiles long. Of its "fierceness' I haveno record. For the ending of the story,I refer you to the song itself.

The Avoca.If I am not mistaken, it was Tom

Moore who wrote that pretty song,"The Vale of Avoca." Well, theAvoca, in County Wicklow, Ireland,is just nine miles long, and corre-spondingly deep and wide.

The Till.Once more our story takes us back

to Scotland, and again we see a greatvictory won on and across a brookletso insignificant that you will have diffi-culty in finding the name in the geo-graphical lexicons. Two hundred yearsafter the decisive battle of Bannock-burn, another great victory was won,but this time 10,000 of Scotland's bestand bravest lay dead on the field, andEngland won perhaps her greatest tri-umph, and Scotland sustained hergreatest defeat. James IV., of Scot-land, with an army of about 30,000men, had taken up a position at aspur of the Cheviot hills, on the brookcalled Till, a burn only thirty miles

long. The English army, under theEarl of Surrey, with 32,000 men,marched to give him battle. For atime successes were won by bothsides, but military blunders by theScottish leaders cost that side dear,and when night fell their forces re-treated, leaving the English in posses-sion of the field. The flower of Scot-tish chivalry, nobility, gentry, andeven clergy, lay lifeless under thebright, but unheeding, stars. "Scarce-ly a family of eminence," says Scott,"but had an ancestor killed at Flood-en, and there is no province of Scot-land, even to this day, where the bat-tle is mentioned without a sensationof terror and horror." The Englishlost about 4,000 men, but they wereof inferior rank. First among theScottish dead was King James him-self, who was slain while fighting onfoot in the front rank among theclansmen. The Archbishop of St. An-drews and twelve earls were amongthe killed as well as many minornoblemen. Scott's poem of Marmionis founded on the events of this bat-tle and canto VI gives a vivid, as wellas accurate, history of the fight. TheTill was full of the dead and dying,and the soldiers passed and repassedit almost dryshod.

Has ever soldier's death on the fieldof battle been more graphically de-scribed than that of Marmion inScott's poem of the same name? Heara few lines:

"The war, that for a space did fail.Now trebly thundering swell'd the

gale,And—Stanley! was the cry;—A light on Marmion's visage spread,

And fired his glazing eye:With dying hand above his head,He shook the fragment of his blade,

And shouted 'Victory!''Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley,

on!'Were the last words of Marmion."

The Busentia.

What reader of Roman history doesnot remember the story of Alaric, theGoth, who thrice besieged Rome, andthe third time took and plundered it?Who does not remember the circum-stances of his burial? Dying suddenlyin the midst of his conquests, his bar-barian followers determined that hisRoman enemies should never obtainhis remains nor insult them. "By thelabor of a captive multitude, theyforcibly diverted the course of the Bu-sentinus, a small river. The royalsepulchre, adorned with the splendidspoils and trophies of Rome, was con-structed in the vacant bed; the waterswere then restored to their naturalchannel; and the secret spot wherethe remains of Alaric had been depos-ited, was forever concealed by the in-human massacre of the prisoners whohad been employed to do the work."

"But yet the mountain stream shallturn,

And lay the secret channel bare,And hollow for your sovereign's urn,

A resting place forever there:Then bid its everlasting springsFlow back upon the King of Kings;And never be the secret saidUntil the deep give up its dead."

Yet the Busentia, immortalized in thepages of history, is but an insignifi-cant stream, not more than half aslong or large as the Conestoga.

The Cam.

Everybody has heard of the Cam.Once at least each year the mostfamous boat races in the worldare rowed upon it, between ri-val crews connected with theUniversities of Cambridge and Ox-

9Gibbon's History of Rome; Vol. 3,Chapter 31.

',Edward Everett.

ford. Cambridge, England's greatuniversity town, lies upon its banks,and has taken its name from this his-toric stream. It is a sluggish stream,forty miles long. At Cambridge itis barely wide enough for an eight-cared boat to turn in it. Yet to Britishuniversity men it is the most endear-ed stream in all the world.

The Ayr.

Who has not heard of the Ayr, andwho does not love it for the sake ofhim

"Who an humble flower could makeImmortal as his song."¹¹

The Ayr is a small stream, onlythirty-three miles long, but poesy hasplaced it in the first class among thewater-courses of the world. Two milesaway Robert Burns was born, andhere he lived his life of toil and pov-erty and wrote the songs that haveplaced him in the first rank amongBritish poets. Where can you findanything that surpasses "The Cotter'sSaturday Night" in reverence, pathosand sweetness? Where is there any-thing that equals the rollicking hu-mor of "Tam O'Shanter?" AllowayKirk is but a short distance awayfrom the pretty river. "The Auld Brigof Doon" recalls Tam's escape fromthe eldritch revellers at the midnightdance. Near the Ayr is also the Burnsmonument, that tells the tale of thebrilliant, but unfortunate, poet.

"Such tombs as his are pilgrim shrines,Shrines to no code or creed confined,

The Delphian vales, the Palestines,The Meccas of the mind."¹²

Bonny Doon.

With this name early and late mem-orles will come back to most of you.

"Fitzgreen Halleck.

Who that has ever struck the keysof a piano or organ does not remem-ber the time when

"Ye banks and braes of bonny Doon"

was foremost among the tuneful songsof that youthful repertoire? For morethan a hundred years it has been afavorite, and so it will remain untilthe love of melody has died in thehuman heart. The Doon is but an in-significant stream, thirty miles long,including a lake through which itpasses, yet Burns has made it one ofthe world's classic water-courses.

The Scamander and Simois.

F'or the last in this long series ofremarkable rivers, the most memor-able of all has been reserved. Twostreams, small in length and volume,have a history about which an entirelibrary has been written. Who hasnot heard

"The tale of Troy divine?"

Who has not read how the Trojanprince, Paris, eloped with Helen, thewife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, andthe most beautiful woman in theworld?

"Oh, thou art fairer taan the eveningair

Clad in the beauty of a thousandstars."

Her's is indeed the most illustriousname in the world's long history offemale beauty.

"Her's was the face that launch'dthousand ships

And burnt the topless towers ofIlium."

To avenge that wrong, punish theoffender and recover his wife, Mene-laus summoned all the kings ofGreece to aid him, and the result wasthat more than a thousand ships bore

100,000 Greeks to Asia Minor, whereTroy, the capital of aged Priam'skingdom, was located. That country,bordering on the Ægean Sea and theHellespont, and about 500 miles incircumference, became for ten longyears the battleground of the mostrenowned war of which history andliterature have a record.

Greek mythology largely centersaround that spot. Mount Ida, theOlympus of the ancient world—thehome of the Grecian gods—was with-in that kingdom. The gods them-selves took part in the contest. Ju-piter, Venus and Apollo and othersfought for the Trojans, while Juno,Minerva, Neptune and many moreranged themselves with the Greeks.Mars, true to his instincts, fought onboth sides, sometimes for the Tro-jans and then again for the Greeks.

Through the plain on which Troywas located flowed two streams, theScamander and its tributary, the Si-mois. Troy was situated near thejunction of these rivers, "Where Sil-ver Simois and Scamander flow," andthe war was waged along their banks.Of that long and bloody strife Homerhas told in immortal verse. The Iliadwill live in literature while mankindsurvives. The story of the deeds of"cloud-compelling Jupiter," "swift-footed Achilles," "white-armed An-dromache," "much-counselling Ulys-ses," "large-eyed Juno, ' and, greatestof all, "crest-tossing Hector," willnever die. A very large library hasbeen written about Homer and hisepic. The first book printed in theEnglish language by the first andmost celebrated English printer, Wil-liam Caxton, in 1474, was the storyof Troy.

The Iliad contains numberless allu-sions to the Scamander. It is calledthe "fair flowing," "eddying," "rapid

flowing," "deep eddying river," "oldXanthus roars," "the flashing billowsbeat the whitening shores," "roars theresounding surge," and many similarones. One would be led to think fromall this that the Scamander was anAmazon or a Mississippi. But whatis it in reality? No section of theOld World has been more carefullysurveyed by competent explorers, andwe are at no loss to know all aboutthis river, as it is to-day, if not at thetime of the Trojan war. Mr. RobertWood, who in 1750 made a minutesurvey of the river and the plainthrough which it flows, says: "Spring-ing from the rock, it divides itselfimmediately into a shallow basin,seven or eight feet in diameter; fromthence dripping in small quantitydown a romantic, woody cliff. Fromthis source to its present mouth theScamander may be about twenty-three mlles long in a straight line,butmore if we take the windings of theriver. At the time when we saw thisriver we found it confined to a smallpart of its channel. We pitched ourtent in its dry, gravelly bed, close tothe stream, which was then so smallthat a less army than that of Xerxesmight have drank it dry." "

Dr. Schliemann, to whom the worldowes more than to all the other ex-plorers of the Troad combined,is veryexplicit on the condition of the Sca-mander. He calls it "a small brook,"and says that in the spring of 1882the water in the Simois was only afew inches deep, and by March wasentirely dry. Even the course of theScamander in the plain of Troy hadno running water in the beginning ofJuly, and thenceforward consisted ofonly a series of pools of stagnant

"Robert Wood's "'Essay on theOriginal Genius of Homer and on theAncient and Present State of theTroad," p. 280.

water, which diminished as the sea-son advanced. In a note he adds:"It happens on an average once everythree years, in August and September,that the Scamander has no runningwater; it also happens, perhaps asoften, that the Simois dries up com-pletely in August and September. Theinhabitants who dwell in the villageof Yeni Shehor, who have to fetchtheir whole supply of water from theScamander, are badly off when theriver dries, for they have then to sinkwells in the river bed, and to dig theshafts deeper and deeper, in propor-tion as the river becomes drier anddrier." "

As throwing some light on the ques-tion of calling very small streamsrivers in Europe, I may state thatthere are upwards of 300 so-calledrivers in England and Wales, and yetthose two countrles, taken together,are just about as large as Florida orMichigan. To scare up 300 or morerivers in either of the two Statesnamed would require that everywater-course as large as the LititzSpring, wlth which you are all famil-iar, should be called a river, and thatsuch is really the case I will state thatold Izaak Walton, in his famous book,tells us that the "Dove," which flow-ed by his door, and which has alreadybeen described, could be covered atits source by his hat, and flows ninegallons of water per minute! Thinkof that statement! Why, there is nofarmhouse spring in all Lancastercounty, or hydrant in the city, withany self-respect, that cannot do bet-ter than that. Yet one of the manyeditors of old Izaak Walton's bookhas written an entire page of the mostfulsome stuff you ever read aboutthat little stream miscalled a river.

¹14Schliemann's Trofa, Chap. 1; pp.15-16.

There are many more comparisonsand contrasts like the foregoing whichmight be presented. My original listincluded an additional score. Suchstreams, for example, as the Senlac, asmall tributary of the Derwent, inYorkshire, where, on September 25,1.066, Harold, the last of the Saxonkings of Britain, and one of the ablestthat ever sat on the English throne,met and defeated his traitor brother,Tostig, and his Norwegian ally, Har-old Haardraade, only to be himselfdefeated and killed three weeks laterby William, the Norman, at the battleof Hastings.

On the Suran, a little stream inSwitzerland, an affluent of the Aar,where, on July 9, 1386, the historicalbattle of Sempach, which gave Swit-zerland her independence, was wonby 1,400 Switzers against 4,000 Aus-trians. The Swiss leader, the famousArnold of Winkelried, was slain onthe field of battle.

"Make way for Liberty, he cried;Make way for Liberty, and died."

Switzerland has celebrated that vic-tory annually down to the presenttime.

Or the Alma, the little Crimeanstream on which the battle of thatname was fought on September 20,1854, between the allied English andFrench forces and the Russians underMenschikoff, when many of the Brit-ish soldiers fought waist deep in therlver's channel.

Pennsylvania is one of the bestwatered States on the American con-tinent. There are perhaps a thou-sand streams within her borderswhich, in any European country,would be called rivers, while not evena baker's dozen of them are spoken ofas rivers here at home. The Conestoga,Codorus, Brandywine, Conewago, Con-

owingo, Conemaugh, Conecocheague,Loyal Hanna, Sinamahoning, Shenan-go, Tunkhannock and Mahoning areas truly rivers as are the Susquehan-na, Delaware, West Branch, Schuyl-kill, Allegheny, Monogahela, Lehigh,Juniata and Ohio.

Our Conestoga has borne its pres-ent misnomer long enough. Let nomember of this society ever againspeak or write about it as a creek.Call it what it deserves to be calledand what it really is—the Conestogariver. In one of our local newspapersit has been so called for years, large-ly through my personal efforts.

But, after all, perhaps better re-sults could hardly be expected, whenone of our county histories, issuedunder the sanction of a prominent in-stitution of learning, calls the beauti-ful Conestoga, that flows placidly byits stately halls, a creek. It is timeto sit down heavily on such an ignor-ant and unjust geographical nomen-clature, and I trust the members ofthis society will do so as often as theopportunity presents itself. Call ourminor streams brooks, burns, rills,creeks, runs, branches, springs andrivulets, the names that belong tothem, but don't forget to give ourrivers their proper titles also.

I began with a quotation from Scot-land's greatest poet—I will close withan extract from a living Scottish poet,which does for our river what I havebeen pleading for, full and exact jus-tice:

"Not Turner's noted crook of Lune,Nor Byron's wide and winding Rhine,Nor Burns' banks of Bonny DoonNor boasted Tweed, nor lauded Tyne,Not Delaware nor Brandywine,Nor Spey, nor Tay, nor Don nor Dee,Nor Shakespeare's Avon, still more

fine.E'er seemed so beautiful to me—

As tranquil Conestoga!" 15

15James D. Law.

file:///Volumes/LCHS%3BLCHSFS01/OCR%20Journal%20Project/PDF%20Biblio%20Info/Pwebrecon.cgi.txt

Author: Diffenderffer, Frank Ried, 1833-1921.

Title: A plea for the Conestoga River / by F. R. Diffenderffer, Litt.D.

Primary Material: Book

Subject(s): Rivers--Europe. Conestoga River (Pa.)

Publisher: Lancaster, Pa. : Lancaster County Historical Society, 1912

Description: 5-33 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.

Series: Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society ; v. 16, no. 1

Call Number: 974.9 L245 v.16Location: LCHSJL -- Journal Article (reading room)

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