Wilson, Coal Valley, Lostock, Glassport,
Dravosburg, and a dozen others not recorded on our map, which bears
date of 1882. The sun was setting behind the rim of the river
basin, when we reached the broad mouth of the Youghiogheny (pr.
Yock-i-o-gai'-ny), which is implanted with a cluster of iron-mill
towns, of which McKeesport is the center. So far as we could see down
the Monongahela, the air was thick with the smoke of glowing chimneys,
and the pulsating whang of steel-making plants and rolling-mills made
the air tremble. The view up the "Yough" was more inviting; so, with
oars and paddle firmly set, we turned off our course and lustily
pulled against the strong current of the tributary. A score or two of
house-boats lay tied to the McKeesport shore or were bolstered high
upon the beach; a fleet of Yough steamers had their noses to the
wharf; a half-dozen fishermen were setting nets; and, high over all,
with lofty spans of iron cobweb, several railway and wagon bridges
spanned the gliding stream.

It was a mile and a half up the Yough before we reached the open
country; and then only the rapidly-gathering dusk drove us ashore, for
on near approach the prospect was not pleasing. Finally settling into
this damp, shallow pocket in the shelving bank, we find broad-girthed
elms and maples screening us from all save the river front, the high
bank in the rear fringed with blue violets which emit a delicious
odor, backed by a field of waving corn stretching off toward
heavily-wooded hills. Our supper cooked and eaten by lantern-light,
we vote ourselves as, after all, serenely content out here in the
starlight--at peace with the world, and very close to Nature's heart.

There come to us, on the cool evening breeze, faint echoes of the
never-ceasing clang of McKeesport iron mills, down on the Monongahela
shore. But it is not of these we talk, lounging in the welcome warmth
of the camp-fire; it is of the age of romance, a hundred and forty odd
years ago, when Major Washington and Christopher Gist, with famished
horses, floundered in the ice hereabout, upon their famous midwinter
trip to Fort Le Boeuf; when the "Forks of the Yough" became the
extreme outpost of Western advance, with all the accompanying horrors
of frontier war; and later, when McKeesport for a time rivaled
Redstone and Elizabethtown as a center for boat-building and a point
of departure for the Ohio.

* * * * *

Pittsburg, Sunday, May 6th