Morning journal and courier., 1888-05-01

A
 W.-The Delaware Water Gap-Scran-
 ton ana It's Collieries-WIIkesba
 Mauch Chunk, Etc.-The PhiIadel.
 phfan.
 PHILADELPHIA, April 30. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 To the individual whose literary work dur ing the winter has been exhausting that he requires few days off, the Wyoming valley is not to be recommended as an ob- iective point; nor is the Delaware, Lacka- wanna and Western railroad to be highly commended as means for getting there When party leaves New York in an express train by one of the so called grand trnnk lines at p. m., he supposes, and has right to suppose, that the hour and it's general use are to be recognized; that in some way or paramount duty of railroad company is quite ignored by the D. L. and w.; so that if the passenger has not made private pro- vision he will be left without 8 bite or a nip from D. m. to 6 p. m.-from Hoboken to Scranton. Not dining room car, not even that awful abomination, 8 restaurant car. Not stop anywhere long enough to snatch a piece of pie or gulp glass of beer; though many good sized stop could be advantage ously squeezed from the trains slowness. If hunger sharpen criticism, the company has only itself to blame in the matter. The D. L. and ". was created for the purpose of carrying Scranton coal to the lakes at one end of it's route and to tide water at the oth- CT. The objects and ends of it's existence are the running, the carrying and the selling of coal. I am forced to the conclusion that the among the conditions of the farming are, 1st: That the farming company shall buy all it's coal of the D.. l.. and w. ,and 2d: That a large and fixed amount of coal must be purchased and consumed each day. How otherwise account for the fact that though out of doors the thermometer must have been in the seventies, each car had it's stove warming away as if mid-winter cyclone were playing about. Even the old lady who is catching her death" if & window be opened half an inch twenty feet off joined in the general re- monstrance. But you might as we'll have remonstrated with the stoves themselves. Be- sides, the porters don't run the stoves. At each station black imps jump on board with scuttles of coal, empty them into the stoves and jump off again like a shot before the premeditated kicks can reach them. The supposition must be correct Or it may be the company's intention to so aceustom to superheating every individual it gets within it's grasp that ever afterward he will require twice the amount of coal and thus increase the market. Whatever be the reason the thermometer was bobbing about 85 degrees all the way.
 The D. L. & w makes great ado about the Delaware water gap. It is a very ordin- ary gap as American gaps go. There is an abundance of fine scenery along the Housa- tonic and even the little Shepaug can show 8 gap or two quite as attractive. The spot where the two Shspaugs come together and round Mt. Tom with paternal pride blesses the union of the waters is far and away more beautiful than the pretentious gap of this man roasting railroad company. And the gap is the only thing there is along the line. Before reaching the gap you are travelling through very ordinary New Jersey scenery, and more ordinary than New Jerseys ordi- nary is hard to find. After the gap you enter upon one of the most desolate, dreary, mis- erable, repelling tracts of country in the known world. Up, up you go without any sense of elevation. The rocks are not even jagged, but are monotonous masses of tame extent and uninteresting color. A few un- attractive scrub oaks try to grow but can't. There is no vegetation, no houses, no beings, human or wild, not even. bird. It seems as if the Alleghanies had left all their beauty and variety elsewhere and had nothing here to show but dull and dismal mass. Slowly and wearily you go up; slowly and aimlessly you go down and enter Scranton vaeuously as if for hours you had been looking at nothing at all Scranton itself is apparently full of energy and go. Its hotels are Of the regula- ioice and which uncommercial travellers shun In fact. travelling for pleasure in this coun- try is in it's infancy. But few places under stand the uncommercisl traveller, are pre- pared for him or want him. He had better find out where those few places are and not journey beyond, or his demands for baths, clean towels, napkins, bed linen that ia above reproach, under-done beef, etc., etc., will get him into trouble. The one thing in Scran- ton that strikes the ignorant is the vast number of collieries in and about the city, For statistics and details go to guide book, but one thing you won't find in the book, that is, that for every ton of coal a surface and must be disposed of. This question must be serious, for already vast entertainments of rubbish, twenty, fifty, even hundred feet high, are extending out like the arms of a mammoth octopus with each. colliery as center. Deadly is the rubbish Vegetation dies before it; nothing can live on it; 1t overtcps trees; invades houses; al- ters streets; fills up valleys; dams up water courses and shuts iQ roads between walls of darkness. It is as terrible as would be streams of volcanic ashes, or of dry lava. Already the beauty that once sur rounded Scranton has disappeared, buried beneath mountains of coal refuse If the process continues-and what is to stop ita 1 the whole Wyoming valley will in time be as were Pampeii and Hercu- 1 laneum when Vesuvius had done it's worst. and as is to-day the country about Newcasr tie and Glasgow. 60 visit these places; talk with the people; see hew feeble mind and l soul may become though muscles remain