WESTERN NEW YORK.
Fairfield, N. Y., Oct. 1.
Within the last week I have made an excursion into the central part of Western New York. I never fail, while travelling through this region, to be impressed with the conviction, that this is the garden of America! The soil itself has in every field you pass, and upon every hill-side and vale to which you turn your eye, ten thousand witnesses to attest its astonishing fertility. And then there are treasures beneath the soil more valuable than silver or gold, in the vast beds of lime and plaster, and the exhaustless saline springs, scattered at different points over this region. Here, also, you have beautiful scenery in ten thousand varied forms: and if you wish to view nature in one of her more awful moods, you have only to draw near and listen to the tremendous roar of Niagara, and see the collected waters of an hundred lakes, dashed headlong in one great, furious tide, down the vast precipice, to the deep, rocky channel below.
I am sure the traveller who passes along the old post-road from Utica to Buffalo, and sees the hundred beautiful villages, the noble forests, the majestic trees, the rich foliage, the luxuriant orchards, the luscious fruits, the crops of yellow wheat, the fields of waving corn, the vast enclosures of dark, fertile soil, the peaceful lakes and silvery streams that everywhere meet the eye, will exclaim, The garden of America! And then when he sees all this beautiful region intersected by canals and bound together by turnpikes, railroads, and lake and steam navigation, he will feel that Western New York possesses advantages of a most singular and superior character!
Last year in some few sketches of a tour to the West, a brief description was given of Geneva. This sweet village, take it all in all, I must regard as the gem of Western New York. I cannot conceive of a more lovely place for residence than this beautiful village on the banks of Seneca lake.
It was towards the close of the day that I reached this place, a spot with which so many sweet and sacred recollections were connected in my mind. My destination for the night was a few miles beyond it in the country. The road along which I passed lay through a scene full of sylvan beauty, disclosing every half mile to the eye of the traveller through the opening of the trees a beautiful view of a portion of the lake, that now slept in the sweet evening calm, tranquil as a sea of glass. The house of our friends was at length reached—and there were such greetings and gladness of heart, as they only feel who have been long and far separated from each other, with but little hope that they should ever again meet this side of eternity.