4 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



The Schuylkill is here commonly not so deep but 

 one may ride through ; hence, and from some Swedish 

 families who settled the region, comes the name 

 Swedes-Ford. The descendants of those Swedes still 

 live upon the scattered farms of their ancestors. They 

 have a church of their own in the neighborhood, and 

 the pastor of the Swedish congregation at Philadelphia 

 holds service there once in three weeks, but in the 

 English language. These Swedes were never numer- 

 ous here ; separated from their countrymen and going 

 about and marrying with the English and Germans, 

 they have almost lost the use of their mother-tongue, 

 many of them hardly knowing how to express them- 

 selves in it, and using the English speech altogether. 

 This would now be the case with most of the Germans 

 in America, were it not for their vastly greater num- 

 bers, constantly replenished from Europe, having 

 helped to keep up the language. 



Between Swedes-Ford and Valley-Forge there are to 

 be seen many pits for burning lime ; but on the surface 

 along that road only common quartz and sandstone. 

 The height, at the foot of which lies Valley-Forge, was 

 overstrewn with a quantity of hard, slatey, sand-stones, 

 in which here and there appeared little blackish points 

 of what seemed to be shorl. The opposite hill consisted 

 almost entirely of a brown rotten iron-ore mixed with 

 mica. This otherwise very insignificant hollow be- 

 came known to the world from General Washington's 

 keeping his winter-quarters there in 1778. The works 

 and buildings at the forge were burned down during 

 the war. The ore which was smelted and worked here 

 comes from a valley near-by. 



The hills, over which the road lay from here, still 



