tian gondola with a freight car amidships, turns toward the
shore while the men ship their poles, their red shirts gleaming
on the deck. The mellow, haunting strains of the keelboat's
horn float through the valley clearings and up to the listening
heights. There is a scurry of tiny figures on the little plain at
the mouth of the creek toward which the boat is turning;
nestled in the shadow of the bluff is a village, only a few cabins
and a blockhouse, now used as the village store, but a scant half
dozen years ago the haven of refuge for a hundred frightened
pioneers. A bale of goods is unloaded, a barrel or two of flour
or whiskey taken aboard, and a passenger shipped. The keel-
boat puts out from shore, the red shirts straining at the poles
while the steersman blows another round on the horn to "scare
away the devil and secure good luck."

Halfway up the hill on the opposite side of the river there is
a cave-like opening that has spewed forth its blackness like the
tail of an unsightly comet down to the water's edge. Standing
in the mouth of the cave watching the scene below is a silent,
gnome-like creature, surely a strange anomaly in these wilds.
The keelboat disappears behind a hill and the miner returns
to his torch and pick. Consciously or not, miner and keelboat-
men are the harbingers of a new age. The ancient forest that
has brooded over this wilderness from time immemorial, giving
shelter and sustenance to man and beast, is beginning to fall
before the woodsman's ax, and the soft, distant notes of the
boatman's horn are echoing like a requiem over the brave days
that are soon to pass.

There were definite indications in 1794 that western Penn-
sylvania was beginning to lose its character as a frontier com-
munity. The counties of Westmoreland, Fayette, Allegheny,
and Washington had been set apart. The Forbes Road had
been reopened, and occasional wagons and carriages were find-
ing their way over the mountains. Regular mail connections

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