170 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



wet, and hungry. This road was formerly nothing but 

 an Indian foot-path and was made as usable as it is 

 not until Sullivan's expedition which was sent out 

 from Wyoming against the Indians in 1779. 



Wyoming, the settlement of this name, (the chief 

 place of which is really Wilksbury), lies in an ex- 

 traordinarily fertile valley west of the Blue Mountains 



a> 



and on the Eastern branch of the Susquehannah, 

 leisurely winding through. Some 20 years ago a few 

 New Englanders came hither, followed shortly after 

 by people from anywhere, so that in a brief space 90 

 families had come in who would or could not live else- 

 where. Fear of the law drove some of them and the 

 goodness of the land tempted others to settle in this 

 remote wilderness, cut off from the inhabited parts by 

 rugged and pathless mountains, but their numbers 

 rapidly increasing the country was soon changed to a 

 region of beautiful open fields. Then, the colony hav- 

 ing begun to take on importance disputes arose over 

 land-titles between the states of Connecticut and Pen- 

 sylvania. Connecticut claimed that this tract of land 

 was included in its charter, by the terms of which 

 (about the middle of the last century), the state was 

 granted a region bounded to the south by a line pro- 

 ceeding from the Atlantic ocean continually west to 

 the Pacific sea. At that time there was little known 

 of the geography of the interior, and some other 

 charters were given in England to the states of New 

 York, Jersey, and Pensylvania, by which was appor- 

 tioned a large part of the territory falling to Connecti- 

 cut, the boundary lines following given streams the 

 course of which was very uncertain as well. Connec- 

 ticut begins its old line at the Byram river, carries it 



