At Trenton The Canal Passes Through The City
And Here It Was Necessary To Carry The Boat
Around Two Locks.
At noon the canoe ended
her voyage of forty-two miles by reaching the
last lock, on the Delaware
River, at Bordentown,
New Jersey, where friendly arms received the
Maria Theresa and placed her on the trestles
which had supported her sister craft, the Mayeta,
in the shop of the builder, Mr. J. S. Lamson,
situated under the high cliffs along the crests of
which an ex-king of Spain, in times gone by,
was wont to walk and sadly ponder on his exile
from la belle France.
The Rev. John H. Barkeley, proprietor as well
as principal of the Bordentown Female
Seminary, took me to his ancient mansion, where
Thomas Paine, of old Revolutionary war times,
had lodged. Not the least attraction in the
home of my friend was the group of fifty young
ladies, who were kind enough to gather upon a
high bluff when I left the town, and wave
graceful farewell to the paper canoe as she
entered the tidal current of the river Delaware en
route for the Quaker city.
During my short stay in Bordentown Mr.
Isaac Gabel kindly acted as my guide and we
explored the Bonaparte Park, which is on the
outskirts of the town. The grounds are
beautifully laid out. Some of the old houses of the
ex-king's friends and attendants still remain in a
fair state of preservation. The elegant residence
of Joseph Bonaparte, or the Count de
Surveilliers, which was always open to American
visitors of all classes, was torn down by Mr. Hairy
Beckon, an Englishman in the diplomatic
service of the British government, who purchased
this property some years after the Count returned
to Europe, and erected a more elaborate
mansion near the old site. The old citizens of
Bordentown hold in grateful remembrance the
favors showered upon them by Joseph Bonaparte
and his family, who seem to have lived a
democratic life in the grand old park. The Count
returned to France in 1838, and never visited
the United States again. New Jersey had
welcomed the exiled monarch, and had given him
certain legal privileges in property rights which
New York had refused him; so he settled upon
the lovely shores of the fair Delaware, and
lavished his wealth upon the people of the state
that had so kindly received him. The citizens
of neighboring states becoming somewhat
jealous of the good luck that had befallen New
Jersey in her capture of the Spanish king, applied
to the state the cognomen of "New Spain,"
and called the inhabitants thereof "Spaniards."
The Delaware River, the Makeriskitton of the
savage, upon whose noble waters my paper
canoe was now to carry me southward, has its
sources in the western declivity of the Catskill
Mountains, in the state of New York. It is fed
by two tributary streams, the Oquago (or
Coquago) and the Popacton, which unite their
waters at the boundary line of Pennsylvania, at
the northeast end of the state, from which it
flows southward seventy miles, separating the
Empire and Keystone states.
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