Valley Forge

“ It is at Cropton that the moors first come into sight. The scenery has been uninteresting since we left the Forge Valley, [128] and it is with all the more delight that we suddenly, at a turn of the road, find the landscape filled with colour and warmth and beauty, with hills green in the foreground and gloriously crimson against the sky. The road curves and twists and curves again, as though hunting for Lastingham among the little valleys. It seems to be altogether lost, and then suddenly we find it. ”

“ THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY
He lay where he could see her working at the forge. As she worked she sang:
“When God was making the world, (Swift is the wind and white is the fire) The feet of his people danced the stars; There was laughter and swinging bells, And clanging iron and breaking breath, The hammers of heaven making the hills, The vales on the anvil of God. (Wild is the fire and low is the wind.) ”

“ The vicissitudes of our own Revolution are tame, the sufferings even of the winter at Valley Forge sink into insignificance, compared with the events of 1864 and 1865, in this tragedy of dolor and endurance. Whole towns were swept out of existence. The population, flying through night and storm, sought asylum in unbroken forests, filled with wild beasts and noxious reptiles, or amid the rocks and caves of desert places. ”

“ At no time in the course of the war had the condition of the army been more distressing. The life at Valley Forge was a daily struggle with cold and hunger; the log and mud huts in which the troops lived were an imperfect protection against the rigor of the winter, made doubly severe by the want of proper clothing and nutritious food. The frequent failure of supplies had familiarized the minds of the men with the idea of mutiny, and brought the officers to feel that if not almost justifiable, it was at least inevitable. ”

“ For resolute indeed must have been the man who could thus defy the winter’s cold, and resolute also must have been his troops to submit to the hardships which they had to encounter on Valley Forge. Hundreds of them, it is said, had not a blanket to cover them in the night season, while the winds blew, and the storm beat, and the snows drifted over and around their huts. There they lay, naked and shivering on the bare ground, none murmuring at their lot. ”

“ Washington had chosen Valley Forge as his winter quarters because from there he could watch the enemy, keep the British to their own picket lines, and cut off supplies going into Philadelphia. Otherwise, however, the place had little to recommend it. The farmhouses in the neighborhood could hold only a few of the two thousand men who were on the sick-list, whose shoeless feet were torn and frozen from marching and who were ill from hunger and exposure. ”

“ Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread arbitrament of battle. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prisonship. ”

“ Out of its ideal loneliness there were but two known ways, and both were worth a man’s best effort. Down the river one might drive a band of cattle, bring in a loaded pack train, single file against the wall. That was a twelve days’ trip. Up through the defiles at the west a man on foot might make it out, provided he knew each inch of the Secret Way that scaled False Ridge.
It was spring, the time of greening ranges and the coming of new calves. Soft winds dipped and wantoned with Lost Valley, in the Cañon Country shy flowers, waxen, heavy-headed on thin stems, clung to the rugged walls. ”

“ Some of them, a whole clan of that numerous tribe, took up their abode in the Valley of the Broken Stones. They found the columns and a great ruined temple back in the trees, and in that temple there was no shrine or altar, but the mouth of a shaft that vanished deep into the black earth, and in which there were no steps such as a human being would make and use. They built their village in the valley, and in the night, under the moon, horror came upon them and left only broken walls and bits of slime-smeared flesh. ”

“ In the Cañon Country the snow had disappeared from most of the high points. Red, black, yellow, the great face of the encircling Wall stood in everlasting majesty, looking down upon the level cup of Lost Valley. The unspeakable upheaval of peaks and crags, of cañons and splits and unfathomable depths, was almost a sealed book to the denizens of the Valley. There were those who knew False Ridge.
There were those who said they knew more. Many a man had adventured therein, and few had returned to tell of their adventures. ”

“ After leaving the Fort we generally kept on the ridge between the Canadian and the North Fork, crossing sometimes the tributary brooks of the one and sometimes those of the others. Having travelled in this manner for about eighty miles, we entered one of the most charming prairie vales that I have ever beheld, and which in the plenitude of our enthusiasm, we named 'Spring Valley,' on account of the numerous spring-fed rills and gurgling rivulets that greeted the sight in every direction ”

“ But even at the bottom, in the boiling clouds of spray, there is no confusion, while the rainbow light makes all divine, adding glorious beauty and peace to glorious power. This noble fall has far the richest, as well as the most powerful, voice of all the falls of the Valley, its tones varying from the sharp hiss and rustle of the wind in the glossy leaves of the live-oak and the soft, sifting, hushing tones of the pines, to the loudest rush and roar of storm winds and thunder among the crags of the summit peaks. ”

“ CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS THARON OF LOST VALLEY
1 CHAPTER I THE GUN MAN’S HERITAGE
Lost Valley lay like a sparkling jewel, fashioned in perfection, cast in the breast of the illimitable mountain country––and forever after forgotten of God.
A tiny world, arrogantly unconscious of any other, it lived its own life, went its own ways, had its own conceptions of law––and they were based upon primeval instincts.
Cattle by the thousand head ran on its level ranges, riders jogged along its trail-less expanses, their broad hats pulled over their eyes, their six-guns at their hips. ”

“ But it had occurred to him, finally, that he should warn the rest of the tribe, and returning, on his way to the camp on the plateau, he had seen me entering the valley.
So spoke Grom, while I sat and brooded darkly, my chin on my mighty fist. I cannot frame in modern words the clan feeling that in those days was a living vital part of every man and woman. In a world where talon and fang were lifted on every hand, and the hands of all men raised against an individual, except those of his own clan, tribal instinct was more than the phrase it is today. ”

“ Martin Valliant had the whole valley spread before him, all wet and washed with the morning’s dew, the sunlight slanting down on it with the calm beauty of a summer morning. Smoke rose straight and blue from the camp fires; the mere shone like glass; the tower, with its lichen-stained walls, was the color of gold. But if the woods and the valley breathed peace, man plotted war, and all the green hill beyond the water was astir with men running to arms. ”

“ In due course of time Howard recalled that there was a man named Roberts, a teamster in Sanchia's Town; and that on the Desert Valley ranch there were mules which should be sold; and that, though there was a golden paradise here in Bear Valley, there remained a workaday world outside the charmed confines where time was of the essence. He made Helen understand that if he were to make good in his acquisition of the cattle range he must be down there among his men and his herds during every working hour of the day, but that the nights were his own. ”

“ Our men were not little-hearted, nor did our women lament the death of warriors over-much, for they were there to bear more warriors to the Folk.
‘But the seasons passed, and the Folk multiplied in Shadowy Vale, and livelihood seemed like to fail them, and needs must they seek wider lands. So by ways which thou wilt one day wot of, we came into a valley that lieth north-west of Shadowy Vale: a land like thine of Burgdale, or better; wide it was, plenteous of grass and trees, well watered, full of all things that man can desire.
‘Were there men before us in this Dale? sayest thou. ”

“ Night and day, and through wind and storm, she had travelled the hills, healing the sick.
“O Lawd... hyeh's another who meddles with thy servant and profanes thy day.”
The Courtship of Allaphair
Preaching at the open-air meeting-house was just over and the citizens of Happy Valley were pouring out of the benched enclosure within living walls of rhododendron. Men, women, children, babes in arms mounted horse or mule or strolled in family groups homeward up or down the dusty road. Youths and maids paired off, dallying behind. Emerged last one rich, dark, buxom girl alone. ”

“ But it was the glitter of the bayonets in the valley that caused the hearts of the Virginians to beat most fiercely. Banners and guidons, clusters of white tents, and dark swarms of men marked where the foot of the invading stranger trod their soil. The Virginians loved the great valley. Enclosed between the blue mountains it was the richest and most beautiful part of all their state. It hurt them terribly to see the overwhelming forces of the North occupying its towns and villages and encamped in its fields. ”

“ It has always struck me that there is something highly poetical about a forge. I am not singular in this opinion: various individuals have assured me that they can never pass by one, even in the midst of a crowded town, without experiencing sensations which they can scarcely define, but which are highly pleasurable. I have a decided penchant for forges, especially rural ones, placed in some quaint, quiet spot—a dingle, for example, which is a poetical place, or at a meeting of four roads, which is still more so ”

“ Command now that all the women and the old men, taking with them such cattle and food as are in the town, depart at once into the Valley of Death and collect in the open space that lies beyond the Tree of Doom, near the spring of water that is there. The valley is narrow and the cliffs are steep, and it may chance that by the help of Heaven we shall be able to hold it till the army returns to relieve us, to seek which messengers must be sent at once with these tidings. ”

“ I never associate Vulcan and his Cyclops with the idea of a forge. These gentry would be the very last people in the world to flit across my mind whilst gazing at the forge from the bottom of the dark lane. The truth is, they are highly unpoetical fellows, as well they may be, connected as they are with the Grecian mythology. At the p. 267very mention of their names the forge burns dull and dim, as if snowballs had been suddenly flung into it; the only remedy is to ply the bellows, an operation which I now hasten to perform.
I am in the dingle making a horse-shoe. ”

“ This Valley is on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas, and is a narrow gorge about 10 miles long and half a mile in width, enclosed within gigantic granite precipices like monstrous walls, which rise, almost unbroken and perpendicular, to a height of from 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the green, quiet vale beneath. Its most remarkable features are its perpendicular walls, and their great height, as compared with the narrow width of the Valley. In the spring and early summer it is one vast flower garden, and plants, shrubs, and flowers, of every hue, cover the ground as with a carpet. ”

“ John Forgey is numbered among the pioneer settlers of Asotin county who have contributed in marked measure to its material development and upbuilding and also to its progress and improvement along social, political and moral lines. He was born near Albany, Linn county, Oregon, August 9, 1865, a son of George and Martha (Shear) Forgey. The father, a native of Indiana, came to the west with an uncle when eleven years of age and settled in the Willamette valley, where he followed farming. He and his wife are now living with a daughter, Mrs. ”

“ It was such a compound of dismay and grief that it made Harry shiver. The Virginians were leaving their beloved and beautiful valley, leaving it all to the invader, leaving the pretty little places, Winchester and Staunton and Harrisonburg and Strasburg and Front Royal, and all the towns and villages in which their families and relatives lived. Every one of the Virginians had blood kin everywhere through the valley. ”

“ For answer the marquise leaned from her saddle toward him and he kissed her again.
Later, by just five months and one week, the doctor mounted his horse for Happy Valley. He had to go up Pigeon, and riding by the little schoolhouse, he stopped at the door and from his horse pushed it open. The Christmas tree stood just as he had left it on Christmas Day, only, like the evergreens on the wall and over the windows, it too was brown, withered, and dry. Gently he closed the door and rode on. And on the clock-stroke of two in Happy Valley there was a wedding that blessed first June afternoon. ”

“ We had reached the summit of the hill, overlooking Blue Rock Valley, and I saw that I was standing beneath a clump of trees where I had often sat. I was in the midst of a ring of armed men, and I saw that two or three men were very busy with piles of wood, while others were fingering a rope. Then there was a stir in the crowd, and a man was pushed forward. His hands and feet were tightly bound with cord, and though his face was unutterably villainous I pitied him for the agony that worked his features and twisted his lips. ”