WILKES-BARRE, valley of, usually called the valley of Wyoming, is amongst the natural scenes in the United States that richly deserve a visit. The Susquehanna river may be said to rush into and break through the Appalachian system of mountains. Passing the first great chain at To wanda, the large volume of water in its rocky bed rolls through several other chains in quick suc cession, at length reaches Wyoming valley at the mouth of Lackawannoc river, by a very striking mountain gorge, inflecting at right angles, and turning from S.E. to S.W.; the stream with very gentle partial windings flows down the Wyoming valley nine miles, passes Wilkes-barre and King ston, and six miles farther leaves the valley by another mountain pass. The bed of Susquehanna merely touches the western river of this vale, which is indeed extended up the Lackawannoc, and to the southwestward, some miles below where it is abandoned by the river. The valley is distinct, therefore, 25 miles above and seven or eight below the borough of Wilkes-barre, exceeding 30 miles in length, but with a width that does not at the utmost exceed a mean of two and a-half miles. Enclosed between mountains every where steep and rugged, in many places precipitous, and in some rising into naked summits, spreads alluvial flats of exuberant fertility. Here, as along the Susque
hanna generally, there are two stages of bottoms. The lower, and of course most recent, are much the most productive, and least admixed with rounded pebble, but are still subject to casual submersion. The higher stages, on one of which stands Wilkes barre, are, in the existing order of things, above all floods, but both have been evidently once under water. This conclusion is almost irresistible to any observer in the vicinity of \Vilkes-barre. In brief, it may be asserted that many of our citi zens who admire natural scenery, know the wealth of the Alps in objects of taste infinitely better than they do regions at their door. The Wyoming is only one of the innumerable pictures along the Appalachian system where arc combined every feature, from the stern to the most soft and se ducing. Again, in the vicinity of Wilkesbarrc and Kingston, the mineral curiosities are not the least attractive. The formation is transition or !caning; the inclination S.E. Embedded in slate from one to twenty or more feet in thickness lie masses of anthracite coal, which appear more and more vast as they are better explored.