Voyage Of The Paper Canoe, By N. H. Bishop

























































































































 - 

At Trenton the canal passes through the city
and here it was necessary to carry the boat
around two locks - Page 44
Voyage Of The Paper Canoe, By N. H. Bishop - Page 44 of 163 - First - Home

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At Trenton The Canal Passes Through The City And Here It Was Necessary To Carry The Boat Around Two Locks.

At noon the canoe ended her voyage of forty-two miles by reaching the last lock, on the Delaware

River, at Bordentown, New Jersey, where friendly arms received the Maria Theresa and placed her on the trestles which had supported her sister craft, the Mayeta, in the shop of the builder, Mr. J. S. Lamson, situated under the high cliffs along the crests of which an ex-king of Spain, in times gone by, was wont to walk and sadly ponder on his exile from la belle France.

The Rev. John H. Barkeley, proprietor as well as principal of the Bordentown Female Seminary, took me to his ancient mansion, where Thomas Paine, of old Revolutionary war times, had lodged. Not the least attraction in the home of my friend was the group of fifty young ladies, who were kind enough to gather upon a high bluff when I left the town, and wave graceful farewell to the paper canoe as she entered the tidal current of the river Delaware en route for the Quaker city.

During my short stay in Bordentown Mr. Isaac Gabel kindly acted as my guide and we explored the Bonaparte Park, which is on the outskirts of the town. The grounds are beautifully laid out. Some of the old houses of the ex-king's friends and attendants still remain in a fair state of preservation. The elegant residence of Joseph Bonaparte, or the Count de Surveilliers, which was always open to American visitors of all classes, was torn down by Mr. Hairy Beckon, an Englishman in the diplomatic service of the British government, who purchased this property some years after the Count returned to Europe, and erected a more elaborate mansion near the old site. The old citizens of Bordentown hold in grateful remembrance the favors showered upon them by Joseph Bonaparte and his family, who seem to have lived a democratic life in the grand old park. The Count returned to France in 1838, and never visited the United States again. New Jersey had welcomed the exiled monarch, and had given him certain legal privileges in property rights which New York had refused him; so he settled upon the lovely shores of the fair Delaware, and lavished his wealth upon the people of the state that had so kindly received him. The citizens of neighboring states becoming somewhat jealous of the good luck that had befallen New Jersey in her capture of the Spanish king, applied to the state the cognomen of "New Spain," and called the inhabitants thereof "Spaniards."

The Delaware River, the Makeriskitton of the savage, upon whose noble waters my paper canoe was now to carry me southward, has its sources in the western declivity of the Catskill Mountains, in the state of New York. It is fed by two tributary streams, the Oquago (or Coquago) and the Popacton, which unite their waters at the boundary line of Pennsylvania, at the northeast end of the state, from which it flows southward seventy miles, separating the Empire and Keystone states.

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