THE WYOMING VALLEY.
We cannot fairly introduce this interesting coal-field to our readers without giving a brief resume of the eventful and romantic history of the Wyoming Valley.
When the white man first visited this paradise of the Indian hunter, the Delawares held sway over the region, though under subjection to the more powerful Iroquois. Had it not been for the petty wars which constantly imbrued the hatchet of the aborigines, and made warriors of those children of the forest, Wyoming might have been almost an Eden to the red men.
No river ever abounded with finer fish than those which stocked the Susquehanna, and no forest ever afforded the hunter finer game than the mountains of Wyoming ; while the "great plains" returned abundant harvests to the labor of the squaws.
But this fruitful and delightful vale was ever a coveted possession. First the wild Indian disputed the prize in a hundred battles, and sub sequently the white men, in spite of king or council, struggled long and desperately with each other for this gem among the mountains of the " West."
The Nanticokes have left their fame engravers on the rocks of their country, as imperishable as the land itself, and the Shawnees have their monument in the mountain which bears their name, while the noble Dela wares—the Leni-Lenape—leave their legends with stream and vale and hill. But still farther, in the remote past, the existence of the red man's traditional history, Wyoming was peopled by superior races, who left behind them mounds and walls and the relics of a civilization which the savages never possessed. The same race existed here which have left their mysterious story in the unriddled mounds of the West,—a people more civilized and conversant with the arts and mechanical skill than on r painted ancestors of Britain, or many of the semi-civilized nations of to day.