Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/156

 128 Sloan's Architectural Review and Builders' Journal. [August, is Gorgas's brick counting-house, one story high, with far-projecting eaves ; and a few rods west stands the Vandu- sens' counting-house, also one story in height. Between Gorgas's office and the outer rough enclosure up-springs the flourishing young oifshoot of the Great Elm, straight, tall, and symmet- rically developed, with the sprays of its over-arching, down-sweeping branches almost resting upon, and projecting well beyond, the top of the obelisk. Directly alongside this outer enclosure, on the west, or down Beach street, grows a healthy and handsome young button- wood, whose branches and sprays inter- lock with those of the elm. The build- ings, on the same side of the street, east and west of Gorgas's and Vandu- sens' offices are large and several stories high. The cord-wood piles in Gorgas's yard almost touch the obelisk enclosure, and, resting against it, in Vandusens' yard, are piles of ship-timber. The outer palings, besides being tall, are pretty close together, and the dull brown of their exterior harmonizes with, and sinks into, the commingled subdued yel- lows and browns of the wood and ship yards. What contrast the dull white marble, of the memorial monolith, would make with all this, is quite dissipated by the glimmering white palings just around it ; and the uncertainty is increased by the shades and shadows of the two trees. Altogether, the quietness of hue and tone is such, that an unaccustomed glance along Beach street, in either di- rection, would probably fail to find the stone, which, in its public seclusion, it requires a scrutinizing eye to detect. The surest method for the stranger, starting from the heart of the city, is to take the Eighth and Diamond street cars to Eighth and Girard avenue, pro- cure a pass, for down the avenue to the Delaware, and tell the conductor to stop at the Penn Treaty Monument, in Beach street below Palmer. The car of the same line will pick up the visitor at the same spot, and, by means of a Fourth street pass, convey him back again to the centre of the city. The river front and the line of Beach street, on and immediately about the Treaty-ground — inside the limits of the plot, whose purchase we recommend for public use — include a range of heavy business, the managers of which — from the ease, celerity, and certainty of their mechanical facilities for doing heavy and difficult work, and the skill and adroitness of their mechanics and mech- anicians — would certainly be considered as great medicine or mystery-men by any straggling braves of the dwindling remnant of the Lenni-Lenape, who, from the distant banks of the Arkansas, or the Canadian, should visit the shores of the Lenap-Hittuck ; or by any of the shades of the tribe of Tamanend, of the Nation of the Woman, who could leave the spirit-land and revisit their ancient hunting-ground. And symbolizing the Treaty vicinage of the present day, by characterizing its possessors in their most complimentary st} r le, both em- bodied and disembodied souls would verily and veritably say, " This is the place of the eels." THE TRUE MERIT OF THE FOUNDER In the cogent reasoning and ele- gant reflections of Du Ponceau and Fisher : " It is not upon this [the " great treaty], that depends the fame " of our illustrious founder; nor is it on " his having purchased his lands of the " Indians, instead of taking them b} r "force. Others before him had made "treaties of friendship and of alliance, " with the original possessors of the "American soil; others had obtained " their lands from them by fair purchase : " in Pennsylvania, the Swedes, the " Dutch, and the English, who governed " the country during the space of eigh- " teen years under the Duke of York, "had pursued the same peaceable sys- " tern. It is, therefore, not only unjust "but it is extremely injudicious to en-