Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1886-11-25
A NIGHT ON GIRrY's ISLAND.
This Island Is situated in the Maumet
River, about five miles above
NapOleOn.l
BY PEroSQUErT.

citation of the truth expressed in the couplet
We possess too great disposition to initiate
are infused with too much of the sentiment
''its English, you know" and have imbibed
a sort of contempt for our own immediate
surrounding beauties, conveniences, COM
forts and lu1uries. This sentiment, if it is
not an abuse of the word, is too general with
the American-it extends through all classes
of our people. The professional, the capital
list, the mechanic, the laborer and the man of
all business, are under its influence. The
sentiment is perhaps inherited-a sort of
having left a finished country, land that had
grown to seed, and where no avenues for ener-
gy were open to anything but capital, bade
farewell to all ancestral ties and braved the
oceans wave in search of new fields where ad-
vancement should not be hampered by the
exactions of capital, and the hope of indie
pendent individuality cut off by the central
izing principle of primogeniture. We, too,
oblivious and blind to the advantages sur
rounding US, think that we also must seek
elsewhere to find the Eldorado and the Utopia
roam to other parts to find watering places
and pleasure resorts, productive farms, pic
turesque scenery, delightful homes and easy
comforts.
Few localities surpass in beauty, in fertility
and in the means of acquiring comfortable,
productive and even luxuriant homes, the
Valley of the Maumee. While we are with
out the ruins of feudal system and bar
barrie age, we are not without historic inter-
est, and we have our own legends, our tradi-
tions and our superstitions.
A jolly company of five we were, who en-
barked ON the little steamer "Dorr" for a
few days fishing excursion on the Maumee.
Skipping the mineral, invigorating. health
restoring Springs at the village of Texas and
the magnificent scenery so broadly fringing
the river at that place, we will take our start
ing point at
PATRIoK's BEND,
where. ascending, the river turns from a
Western course to a Southwestern one. It
was sunset time, and before US was picture
which might we'll tempt the pencil of master
artist or the pen of Scott or an Irving. The
river, wide, smooth and silvery only as gild-
ed by the reflected gold of the lowering sun,
might have been mistaken for one of the mir
rors of Ptopemy but for its frame of high,
rough, tree-embossed banks and the islands
mated clouds which, to one unconscious of
the time, made it uncertain whether the sun
was bidding good night to day or was Just
hailing in the morn. There lay Duff's Island,
stretched along the southern shore, where still
remain the ruins of the rude cabin where the
bold bucanier concealed the fruits of his river
piracy; on the North, and slightly Westward,
lay the Holly Isle, where the dreaded Duff
had wooed, and won, and wed his peerless
bride. 1t was the delightful season of In
dian Summer which presents the American
landscape in its loveliest; and Squaw Winter,
with her light frosts, had tinged the profuse
foliage with all the tints combinable from
colors multiplied by the soft rays ofthe sink
ing sun reflected and re-refected in and from
the watery glass
''Who can paint
Like Nsture7 Can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
Or can 1t mix them with that matchless skill,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows?"
Of the traditions, superstitions and ghosts
which still haunt these islands, nothing now.
We pass the town (Napoleon), its massive
bridges, its mills, its factories and its stately
buildings. We
ASCEND THE STREAM.
What view is presented from the South!
Farm after farm; large, neat, comfortable
houses; fields and graineries filed with the
products Of an abundant harvest: orchards
bowed under the load of fruit; herds of cat
tie, sheep and swine-ease, comfort, abund-
ance! Every farm reminds us of the home
of Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow. The sun
has gone to sleep in his bed of Western clouds,
but the moon rides high, profigate of her
borrowed light, while the fixed stars twinkle
as though jeering at her stately style, as rude
urchins do at the dude who parades in costly
apparel at the expense of his tailor
1.-THE silver light, with quivering glanc,,
Plays on the waters still e1panse,"
mellowing the glare of day and softening the
night into those pleasing gloomings which
make us needless of the day and thoughtless
of the night, which Danish the stern realities
of life and transport us to the realm Of
ideality-
''The gay romance Of life.
Where things that are and things that seem
Blend In fantastic strife.''
For the last three miles we have beer
| travelling in due South direction, and herr
we are at Girty's Point where the course o
the river turns due West, and the dark objec
which looks like great black cloud looming
up from the West is
G1RrY's ISLAND,
the rendezvous of the infamous renegade VIII
contributed to the barbarism of the Savag
the refined cruelties of British civilization
Simon Girty and his fellow renegades, Nc
Kee and Elliott, were the hired murderers o
the blood-stained tyrant of the earth and he'll
commissions in the English army. Th
service of these monsters consisted mainl
in melting hostilities between the savage
and the peaceful Christian Moravian Indian
who had settlements at Guadenhulten, Schoc
brun and Salem on the Muskingum an
Tuscarawas rivers, and to organize and cor
duct plundering and numbering raids on th
pioneers and frontiersmen. Girty, the mos
merciless of the three, the fiend incarnate
and who was master of ceremonies at tn
| Ihnrninn of Colonel Crawford in 1888. and th