We were slow in getting off this morning. But the dense fog had been loath to lift; and at first the stove smoked badly, until we discovered and removed the source of trouble. This stove is an ingenious contrivance of the Doctor's--a box of sheet-iron, of slight weight, so arranged as to be folded into an incredibly small space; a vast improvement for cooking purposes over an open camp-fire, which Pilgrim's crew know, from long experience in far distant fields, to be a vexation to eyes and soul.
Coaling hamlets more or less deserted were frequent this morning--unpainted, windowless, ragged wrecks. At the inhabited mining villages, either close to the strand or well up on hillside ledges, idle men were everywhere about. Women and boys and girls were stockingless and shoeless, and often dirty to a degree. But, when conversed with, we found them independent, respectful, and self-respecting folk. Occasionally I would, for the mere sake of meeting these workaday brothers of ours, with canteen slung on shoulder, climb the steep flight of stairs cut in the clay bank, and on reaching the terrace inquire for drinking water, talking familiarly with the folk who came to meet me at the well-curb.
There are old-fashioned Dutch ovens in nearly every yard, a few chickens, and often a shed for the cow, that is off on her daily climb over the neighboring hills. Through the black pall of shale, a few vegetables struggle feebly to the light; in the corners of the palings, are hollyhocks and four-o'clocks; and, on window-sills, rows of battered tin cans, resplendent in blue and yellow labels, are the homes of verbenas and geraniums, in sickly bloom. Now and then, a back door in the dreary block is distinguished by an arbored trellis bearing a grape-vine, and furnishing for the weary housewife a shady kitchen, _al fresco_. As a rule, however, there is little attempt to better the homeless shelter furnished by the corporation.
We restocked with provisions at Monongahela City, a smart, newish town, and at Elizabeth, old and dingy. It was at Elizabeth, then Elizabethtown, that travelers from the Eastern States, over the old Philadelphia Road, chiefly took boat for the Ohio--the Virginians still clinging to Redstone, as the terminus of the Braddock Road. Elizabethtown, in flatboat days, was the seat of a considerable boat-building industry, its yards in time turning out steamboats for the New Orleans trade, and even sea-going sailing craft; but, to-day, coal barges are the principal output of her decaying shipyards.