We left Stroudsburg this morning—­one of the finest mornings of this autumnal season—­and soon climbed an eminence which looked down upon Cherry Hollow.  This place reminded me, with the exception of its forests, of the valleys in the Peak of Derbyshire, the same rounded summits, the same green, basin-like hollows.  But here, on the hill-sides, were tall groves of oak and chestnut, instead of the brown heath; and the large stone houses of the German householders were very unlike the Derbyshire cottages.  The valley is four miles in length, and its eastern extremity is washed by the Delaware.  Climbing out of this valley and passing for some miles through yellow woods and fields of springing corn, not Indian corn, we found ourselves at length travelling on the side of another long valley, which terminates at its southern extremity in the Wind Gap.

The Wind Gap is an opening in the same mountain ridge which is cloven by the Water Gap, but, unlike that, it extends only about half-way down to the base.  Through this opening, bordered on each side by large loose blocks of stone, the road passes.  After you have reached the open country beyond, you look back and see the ridge stretching away eastward towards the Water Gap, and in the other direction towards the southwest till it sinks out of sight, a rocky wall of uniform height, with this opening in the midst, which looks as if part of the mountain had here fallen into an abyss below.  Beyond the Wind Gap we came to the village of Windham, lying in the shelter of this mountain barrier, and here, about twelve o’clock, our driver stopped a moment at an inn to give water to his horses.  The bar-room was full of fresh-colored young men in military uniforms, talking Pennsylvania German rather rapidly and vociferously.  They surrounded a thick-set man, in a cap and shirt-sleeves, whom they called Tscho, or Joe, and insisted that he should give them a tune on his fiddle.

“Spiel, Tscho, spiel, spiel,” was shouted on every side, and at last Tscho took the floor with a fiddle and began to play.  About a dozen of the young men stood up on the floor, in couples, facing each other, and hammered out the tune with their feet, giving a tread or tap on the floor to correspond with every note of the instrument, and occasionally crossing from side to side.  I have never seen dancing more diligently performed.

When the player had drawn the final squeak from his violin, we got into our vehicle, and in somewhat more than an hour were entering the little village of Nazareth, pleasantly situated among fields the autumnal verdure of which indicated their fertility.  Nazareth is a Moravian village, of four or five hundred inhabitants, looking prodigiously like a little town of the old world, except that it is more neatly kept.  The houses are square and solid, of stone or brick, built immediately on the street; a pavement of broad flags runs under their windows, and between the flags and