[27 July] On the morning of the twenty-seventh I met by chance a German doctor from New York, who was staying at this inn because of his wife’s indisposition. He was the son of a pharmacist, Saynisch from Dierdorf near Neuwied, and had been in America for some time. A fine, very friendly man who was uncommonly delighted to get to know me by my real name. He had a good knowledge of natural history, had already sent many natural history specimens to Germany, and at the present time owned many different kinds of interesting objects. To begin with, he took me to the local minister, Mr. Seidel, a lively, pleasant, very well-educated man who lives in an attractive, pleasant house beside opposite the school for girls. His library, with selected works in natural history—Wilson, Catesby, and other very valuable ones—takes up considerable space in several rooms. An interesting mineralogical and a nice little shell collection are also interesting.

Mr. Seidel was so kind as to show me the girls’ school first of all: an impressive, spacious, well-ventilated, cool, and bright building, where fifty to sixty children of the female sex are educated. One hundred could be accepted, but there are not this many here now.

In each room there is a pianoforte (ten in all). The tables are constructed practically: the table top is divided in the center and can be folded up in two parts to serve as a desk.

If the two parts are laid down, the surface is flat. Inside the table, below, a number of compartments have been made. The dining hall is roomy and bright, as is the prayer room, where a small organ where instruction is also given. In [the] kitchen and washroom, everything is neat and practical. Cooking is done with steam. A dark, shady garden, where some pretty plants were blooming, adjoins this building. Hummingbirds swarm around the beautiful flowers of Bignonia radicans, especially. Below in the shade amidst Platanus and poplars, a cool brook flows along this shady pleasure ground; it bears the name Monocacy Creek.

From here we viewed the church, large, inviting, and bright, arranged inside exactly like the one in Neuwied. It had, for instance, one room with an old library, another one with portraits of the congregation’s pastors; on the second floor there was a hall with an organ and stove for winter entertainments. The church organ is said to be very good; it was built in New York. Very good concerts are given here, especially during the winter. Last evening I heard several bugles being played very nicely in the inn. Not far from the church are the sisters’ home, where only a few old sisters live, and a home for widows. A home for brethren does not exist. The cemetery is pleasant and neat; the gravestones are all of one size, rather small and rectangular, and made of marble; all of them lie flat on the grave. Mr. von Schweinitz, whose instructive company I had been looking forward to, was not here; he had undertaken an excursion with a German botanist. He is said to own a very large herbarium. Here in Bethlehem, as in all colonies of the Brethren, one finds artisans, trades, and stores of all kinds, and the people of the neighborhood can find everything here. On the streets and in the neighborhood, one usually hears German spoken, but the sermon one Sunday will be in German, on the next one in English; sometimes it is delivered in both languages on the same day. The institute for girls is conducted entirely in English; German is not used there at all as the medium of instruction.

In the afternoon I visited Dr. Saynisch in the lower inn, where he has been living for a considerable length of time. I became acquainted with his wife, a Swiss woman from St. Gall, and found some very good works on natural history as well as various kinds of natural history specimens, several of which I received as a gift. Later Pastor Seidel arrived, and we then took a walk up along the eastern bank of the Lecha—the English say “Lehigh” (“Lihey”).M23Here Monocacy Creek divides the two counties, so that several houses of Bethlehem are in Lehigh and the main section in Northhampton; the former is called South Bethlehem.[Page 1:50]We went directly across the canal that leads from Mauch Chunk, past Bethlehem, to Easton about fifty miles away. The anthracite coal from Mauch Chunk, which we see lying here, is transported on the canal. The coal is very hard and shiny and is of excellent quality. In the high mountains around Mauch Chunk, there are very significant deposits. The canal cost large sums of money, and people do not believe that it will pay for itself. Beyond the land bridge, there is another one leading over the Lecha, and we turned to the right on the bank where Pastor Seidel has transformed a path that leads here into a pleasant promenade.

A tall forest of oak, walnut trees Platanus, sassafras, and other trees covers the moderately high mountain face, but in the shade beneath these trees, rhododendron and Kalmia thicker than an arm, often in thickets ten to fifteen feet high, form a laurel-like understory. This underwood is very picturesque. Rhododendron maximum, with its white and pale reddish flowers, was still blooming; the Kalmia had finished blooming everywhere. The beautiful blue Pontederia, which I found in the Delaware, bloomed in several places in the river. The path, along which benches and tables had been set up, led to a place where a small brook empties into the river. The brook, however, was now dried up. This place is very picturesque, and from here down to the river, one finds black and yellow Lydian stone (touchstone) as scree, or fragments, from which the Indians once made arrowheads. At the roots of a nearby tree, we found an entire pile of them, which Dr. Saynisch gave to me as a gift.

We returned over the ridge of the mountain and found the recently returned young botanist, who is traveling here for German scholars. He had gone on a tour with Mr. von Schweinitz and had brought back nice plants. Mr. Moser (that is his name) has been traveling here for several months now and is highly skilled at collecting plants. Today he had some beautiful species of Nymphea, nice Cyperus, Filices, etc. We went home for a short while, and then the Reverend Seidel came and took me to Mr. von Schweinitz’s home. He had once visited me in Neuwied, and at that time he was already working on a large study of North American fungi. This work has now been expanded to 3,000 species. Mr. von Schweinitz is the first superintendent and clergyman of the colony at Bethlehem and a distinguished, very zealous botanist besides. It is a shame that he now has difficulty walking. He has been ailing for some time. He owns a very complete herbarium of his own country as well as of many other countries. He knows the area around his home perfectly. I stayed at his place until after nine o’clock and then returned to the inn.