James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855), an English journalist, lecturer, reformer, and sometime Member of Parliament, was a tireless traveler and the author of books on observations and experiences in the Middle East, Europe, and America. He spent four years in the United States, producing a total of eight stout volumes on the Northern or Free States (3v., 1841), the Slaves States (2v., 1842), and the Eastern and Western States (3 v., 1842). The last-named work contains several pages on the Cumberland Valley, with special reference to Carlisle, Dickinson College, and a Methodist revival that astonished the author. The extracts reprinted here are from Volume One, pages 506-36. –The Editor
From Harrisburgh we paid a visit to Carlisle, in Cumberland County, to which we went by railroad, a distance of 18 miles west, and passing through the small town of Mechanicsburgh, about midway, reached Carlisle in two hours, the fare being a dollar each. We put up at the best hotel in the town, which we found to be a very bad one; the rooms dirty, the beds ill-furnished, and the fare coarse and disagreeable; though the house was kept by a Colonel Feree, and one of his waiters was a Major! Having several letters of introduction, however, we were soon surrounded by a number of agreeable persons, who were very obliging in their attentions, and evinced a disposition to do everything to make our stay agreeable. Among the number of these, was Commodore [Jesse D.] Elliott, of the United States Navy, who had commanded the American squadron in the Mediterranean, and visiting the coast of Syria and Palestine in the Constitution frigate, had made an excursion through the Holy Land; so that we had a topic of mutual interest, and our exchange of reminiscences was reciprocally agreeable.
The town of Carlisle was settled in 1750, by English and Scotch emigrants, of whom some were from Cumberland county, in England, and these gave the names to the country and town, which have been ever since retained. It is, therefore, older than Harrisburgh by about twenty years. It was then the most western settlement in all Pennsylvania, and the few inhabitants who first planted here were in continual dread of the Indians, scarcely ever sleeping without their arms by their side, and with sentinels and patroles by day and night to apprise them of any threatened danger. It has now attained to a population of about 6,000, and is gradually, though slowly, increasing.
Its plan is quite regular, its area a level plain; the streets are broad and straight, and cross each other at right angles. There is a fine open market-place, a good town-hall, a public building for general meetings, called the Hall of Equal Rights, and no less than 6 churches; 2 Presbyterian, 1 Episcopal, 1 Methodist, 1 Lutheran, and 1 German Reformed. The railroad from Philadelphia passes right through the centre of the town, and goes on farther west to Chambersburgh, a distance of about 40 miles, from whence the stage route commences, over the Alleghany mountains to Pittsburgh, and the western extremity of the State. The occupations of the people in and around the town are chiefly agricultural, the lands being remarkably fertile and of high value; though it is said that the passage of the railroad so far west, has already diminished the market price of land in this quarter, by the facilities thus created for going further west, where lands are cheaper. New settlers prefer going further on, and this obtaining more extensive tracts for the same sum that they could purchase here where land in the best situations was worth, 30 years ago, 200 dollars an acre, and can now be had for 60; while farther west, equally good lands are to be had for 20 dollars cleared, and for 5 dollars uncleared, and these the first settlers generally prefer.
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