Pennsylvania

September 22, 1832

At daybreak on 22 September, we found ourselves in the hamlet of Mexico, where we only changed horses or watered them. This region is wild, and we already note that we are approaching the Allegheny Mountains. The inn is rather good; the individual houses mark the beginning of a street. To the left there is a wooded valley, beyond which rises a long, high forest wall that forms the southwestern bank of the Juniata.

Bodmer's unfinished sketch of the prison at Pittsburgh, made during his brief stay in that city in September, 1832, furnished the basis for the aquatint designated as Vignette VI in the atlas that later accompanied the publication of Prince Maximilian's travels.

The Prison in Pittsburgh

Maximilian and Dreidoppel left Bethlehem on September 17 on the Easton stage for Reading, where they arrived at noon that same day. Resuming their journey westward on September 18, they reached Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River that evening and put up at a tavern for the night. They spent two days at Harrisburg while Maximilian, admitting to "an exhausted, ailing state of health," sought the advice of a local physician. Bodmer's view of the Susquehanna near Harrisburg was executed when he followed this same route with Dr. Saynisch a week later.

Susquehanna Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with Railroad

On September ro, Maximilian began the supervision of the packing of five large cases of natural history specimens at Bethlehem for shipment abroad. The next day Bodmer arrived from Mauch Chunk with additional studies of that area, including a watercolor describing the location in the Mahoning Valley of the former Moravian settlement of Gnadenhutten. Maximilian had earlier visited this site, referring to it in his journal on August 31 as having been settled by a group of religious brethren from Herrenhut in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Gnadenhutten