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THE

Anal.

POETRY AND HISTORY

OF

WYOMING:

CONTAINING

CAMPBELL'S GERTRUDE,

AND THE

HISTORY OF WYOMING,

FROM ITS DISCOVERY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE PRESENT

CENTURY.

este

BY WILLIAM L. STONE,

AUTHOR OF THE LIFE OF BRANT,'' LIFE AND TIMES OF RED
JACKET,' &c. &c.

SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED.

NEW YORK:

MARK H. NEWMAN.

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In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York,

in the year 1844.

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THE "Happy Valley" to which the illustrious author of Rasselas introduces his reader in the opening of that charming fiction, was not much more secluded from the world than is the Valley of Wyoming. Situated in the interior of the country, remote from the great thorough-fares of travel, either for business, or in the idle chase of pleasure, and walled on every hand by mountains lofty and wild, and over which long and rugged roads must be travelled to reach it, Wyoming is rarely visited, except from stern necessity. And yet the imagination of Johnson has not pictured so lovely a spot in the vale of Amhara as Wyoming.

Much has been said and sung of the beauty of Wyoming; yet but comparatively little is actually known to the public of its history. That a horrible massacre was once perpetrated there, and that the fearful tragedy has been commemorated in the undying numbers of Campbell, every body knows. But beyond this, it is believed that even what is called the reading public is but inadequately informed; and there are thousands, doubtless, who would be surprised on being told that, independently of the event from which the poet has woven his thrilling tale of Gertrude, Wyoming has been the theatre of more historical action, and is invested with more historical interest, than any other inland district of the United States of equal extent. The revolutionary occurrence, supplying the Muse's theme in the beautiful tale just referred to, forms but a single incident in a course of fifty years of various and arduous conflict between belligerent parties of the same race and nation, each contending for the exclusive possession of that fair valley, and for the expulsion of the rival claim

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