Ferry Hill

“ The little hand-raised poplars about the ferry-house were shivering and tugging and straining their thin necks in the gale, the windows so loaded with dust that we could barely see if there were lights inside. We hooted and we howled,—the men did,—and the ferry-keeper came out and stared at us in blank amazement that we should be wanting supper and beds. As if we could have wanted anything else at that place except to cross the river, which we don't do. We go up on this side. We came down the hill merely to sleep at the ferry-house, the night being too bad for a road camp. ”

“ Where’s your paper and things, Roy?”
They all had a hand in the composition of that letter, and when finished and signed it ran as follows;
"Miss Harriet Emery,
⁠Ferry Hill School,
⁠Ferry Hill, N. Y.
My Dear Miss Emery: You are cordially invited to join us in a cruise up the Hudson River in the good ship Jolly Roger, which will call for you at Ferry Hill in about three weeks, the exact date to be decided on later. Please bring your doughnut recipe, and any one else you want to. Come prepared for a good time. ”

“ CAMP TOROHADIK Fox Island lies on the Ferry Hill side of the river some two hundred yards from shore and about a quarter of a mile above the school landing. It is fairly high, contains very nearly two acres, and is beautifully wooded. It is about one third as wide as it is long, and the shores, the inner shore especially, are full of tiny coves and promontories. There are two excellent beaches of white sand and nice round pebbles. Inner Beach, because of its more gradual slope, being the favorite bathing place. ”

“ At eight o'clock on Sunday evening, Captain Brown said: "Men, get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry." His horse and wagon were brought out before the door, and some pikes, a sledge-hammer and crowbar were placed in it. The Captain then put on his old Kansas cap, and said: "Come, boys!" when we marched out of the camp behind him, into the lane leading down the hill to the main road. As we formed the procession line, Owen Brown, Barclay Coppic, and Francis J. Merriam, sentinels left behind to protect the place as before stated, came forward and took leave of us ”

“ Just then we came to the top of the hill, and locked down on the Ferry and the Hope. The Firth of Forth (as is very well known) narrows at this point to the width of a good-sized river, which makes a convenient ferry going north, and turns the upper reach into a land-locked haven for all manner of ships. Right in the midst of the narrows lies an islet with some ruins; on the south shore they have built a pier for the service of the Ferry ”

“ When the top of the Ferry Hills was reached we saw the town, all as dead as if the holy Sabbath lay upon it, without one evidence of life. How beautiful is Dunfermline seen from the Ferry Hills, its grand old abbey towering over all, seeming to hallow the city and to lend a charm and dignity to the lowliest tenement. Nor is there in all broad Scotland, nor in many places elsewhere, that I know of, a more varied and delightful view than that obtained from the park upon a fine day. What Benares is to the Hindoo, Mecca to the Mohammedan, Jerusalem to the Christian, all that Dunfermline is to me. ”

“ Those were the days before coal-mines and blast-furnaces cut up the country, and before Spennymoor, away on the left, was converted from a moorland into a township; a sufficiently startling change.
Seen from down the road looking southwards, Ferryhill forms an impressive coronet to the long ridge of hill on which it stands; its rough, stone-built cottages—merely commonplace to a nearer view—taking an unwarranted importance from the p. 112bold serrated outlines they present against the sky, and looking like the bastioned outworks of some Giant Blunderbore’s ogreish stronghold. ”

“ After getting as wet as I wanted, I (John Smith,) returned to the foot of the stairway and got aboard the ferry-boat. This is only a kind of yawl that will accommodate twenty or twenty-five passengers, and is rowed across the turbulent stream by one strong man. It was crowded with visitors, of both sexes and all ages; and when we reached the middle of the stream, where the waves were rolling, and the boat rocked handsomely, a lady grew dizzy and pale, dropped her parasol in the water, fainted, and fell back in the boat, into the arms of a friend. ”

“ Link Ferris was a fighter. Not by nature, nor by choice, but to keep alive.
His battleground covered an area of forty acres—broken, scrubby, uncertain side-hill acres, at that. In brief, a worked-out farm among the mountain slopes of the North Jersey hinterland; six miles from the nearest railroad.
The farm was Ferris's, by right of sole heritage from his father, a Civil-War veteran, who had taken up the wilderness land in 1865 and who, for thirty years thereafter, had wrought to make it pay. At best the elder Ferris had wrenched only a meager living from the light and rock-infested soil. ”

“ Exactly what I expected to happen as the ferry rocket approached SV-1, I don't now recall. I had decided that I couldn't carry a squad with me. If Gascoigne was really far gone, he wouldn't allow a group of men to disembark; one man, on the other hand, he might pass. ”

“ By marching it along the road to Ferryden he would give the impression that some attempt was to be made to cross the strait nearer to the coast, and to land it between Dial Hill and the sea. Behind Ferryden village a rough track turned sharply southward up the bank, and this they were to take; they would be completely hidden from Inchbrayock once they had got over the crest of the land, and they were to double back with all speed along the mainland under shelter of the ridge, and to go for about a mile parallel with the Basin. ”

“ I was born in the village of Harpers Ferry on the banks of the fair Shenandoah River, where lofty mountains rise and overhang with rugged cliffs that seem about to fall into the deep valley below; and where, in order to get into the town at all, the trains pass through a dark tunnel in the mountains, and leaping with shrill whistle across the long span of a great steel bridge, slow down and stop at a quaint, stone station, so closely surrounded by tall mountains on all sides that a traveller might think himself at the very end of the world. ”

“ Angry thoughts were milling in the boy’s mind as they neared the group of quakermasts. Turning his head slightly, Roy saw that they had reached a section of the country known as Harver’s Gully. The light in the east was stronger now, and Roy could make out the Rocky Run River a few miles to the north. Further up the stream was the X Bar X, but if one followed the course of Rocky Run, winding as it did, it would require a ride of some three or four hours to reach the Manley ranch. ”

“ The junction of the two rivers is immediately beneath the spectator’s feet; and his delighted eye resting first upon the beautiful and thriving village of Harper’s Ferry, wanders over the wide and woody plains, extending to the Alleghany mountains. President Jefferson, who has given the name to a beautiful rock immediately above the village, has left a powerful description of the scenery of Harper’s Ferry, which we shall give to our readers.
“The passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge, is, perhaps, one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land ”

“ Wander where you will in this valley the Blue Ridge mountains are always in sight wearing those misty blue veils on their graceful forest crowned ridges.
Harper's Ferry was not only of great strategic importance as a gateway for the armies but it will ever be associated with the memory of John Brown, that impulsive but noble soul for whom Freedom was a passion. What matter though he was hanged, the nation shall ever honor his memory. There is a monument marking the site of the old John Brown fort near the railroad station which may he seen from the high-way intersecting the valley. ”

“ Ferris suggested.
"Yes—five-six years. Time of the big overflow he had two rafts and his shanty-boat loaded of people. He was sure a useful riveh-rat those days! Take those riveh people, and they know how to keep on top the water and live. Good-natured fellow, that Andrest—real friendly."
Ferris left the posse to its trailing and rode on to the plantation. He found old Clinchell pacing up and down on the veranda, his hands twitching, his face working, his eyes rolling. ”

“ New forms spring into being. Villages and towns spring up as if by magic, along whose streets throngs of men are passing. And thus, as "coming events cast their shadows before," does the mind wander from the real to the probable. An hour and a half of this sort of revery, and we had come to the Fort Ripley ferry, over which we were to go for the mail. That ferry (and I have seen others on the river like it) is a marvellous invention. It is a flat-boat which is quickly propelled either way across the river by means of the resistance which it offers to the current. ”

“ The rowers again plied their oars, and the light skiff flew up the river. All at once the boat-hook, which I was holding at right angles to the boat, hit against a rock, and bounced out of my hands. The shock over set me completely. A cracking of broken branches was heard. The skiff suddenly stopped.
"What's this?" cried the pilot, who had run to the bow, and was fumbling with his hands among a tangled mass of lianas and branches. "Demonic! the rascals have pitched a dead tree into the river higher up, and the current has carried it down here. We can advance no farther. ”

“ Towton Field itself lies along the Tadcaster route to York. In every direction blood has been shed, for White Rose or Red, for King or Parliament; but Ferrybridge is anything but romantic to the eye, however greatly its associations may appeal to the well-stored mind. Coal-mining and quarrying industries overlie these things. The place-name explains the situation of the townlet sufficiently well, and refers to the first building of a bridge over the old-time ferry by which wayfarers crossed the Aire to Brotherton, on the opposite bank. ”

“ No young poet need wish for a finer subject to try his hand on than this beautiful half holy old legend of the Ferryman’s Daughter, who, day after day, winter and summer, was seen with her quaint old-fashioned Saxon boat, ready to row passengers from the Borough to the City, and back again to the landing-place, where the Ferry-house had stood centuries before a bridge united the two shores. ”

“ The truck containing the five men—Teddy, Roy, Bug Eye, Pop, and Casey, the driver, reached the river in half an hour. Carefully the canoe was lifted from the platform and carried to the water’s edge.
“Now!” Roy grunted, and they swung it into the stream. Eagerly they bent over, watching the bottom with anxious eyes. For a moment they waited.
“Not a drop!” Teddy exulted. “You did a good job, Pop. Nary a leak. Hope she stays that way, and I guess she will. It’s a good boat. All right, Jim. Let’s get the rest of the stuff out. Then you can mosey back. ”

“ Besides, whatever may occur in the future, Harper's Ferry has in the past attained a fame of which even Fate itself cannot deprive it and, as long as poetry, romance and a love of the sublime and beautiful in Nature find a home in the human heart, tourists from all the continents and the isles of the sea will visit it, and the day will never come when there will be no enthusiastic lover of freedom to doff his hat at the shrine of John Brown. He was, anyway, a man of honest convictions who fought desperately and died fearlessly for the faith that was in him, and what hero has done more? ”

“ Tourists who come to historic Harper's Ferry never fail to gather all the stories they can, not only of the town itself, but of the surrounding country, and it is partly for their benefit and partly to honor the spirits that treated him so cleverly, that the author gives the following legend. There are but few, indeed, in northern Virginia, who have not heard the tale a thousand times, with endless variations, all accounts, however, agreeing as to the main facts. ”

“ North, between the fugitives and the older native quarters of Castarona, were the gigantic systems of airlocks, and below that, the sprawling tangles of dockland.
Ferris led his companions in a tortuous route that covered miles of angled and uneven rooftops. Realizing that his ident-cards must have come through, he knew that police and security officials must be turning the city inside out in a wild scramble to locate and deal with him. Speed was essential, and more than his personal safety depended upon the outcome of the wild chase over the jagged skylines. ”

“ Those ponies ain’t the kind to wander around, once they’re tied up. They’ve been stolen an’ nothin’ less!” he thundered.
“What happened? Is something the matter?” Nell asked, as she and Ethel faced Mr. Manley.
“You bet there’s something the matter!” the cattleman roared. “There’s a whole lot the matter! My hoss has been taken right from under my nose—stolen from Eagles in broad daylight! What kind of a town is this, anyway? Hey you!” He strode over to a cowboy who was leaning against the door jamb at Rimor’s. Roy and Teddy realized that he was the man they had noticed when they reached town. ”

“ Like the sentimental Sterne, he loves philosophical digressions which, perhaps, the reader may pardon. Besides, the occurrence took place near enough to Harper's Ferry to give it some little claim on the chronicles of that neighborhood. In the confederate army during the civil war was the scion of a [Pg 138] very respectable house in the lower valley of Virginia. Like other young men, no doubt, he felt that in him was the making of a hero but, in his first battle, he discovered that he had missed his vocation. ”