“The boom sweeping around before the wind, hit me a deuce of a ‘belt’ on the head and knocked my hat off into the water.”—Smith on the Genesee. Page 120.
I had seen persons “tack” before, and make pretty good time against a head-wind. It looked simple and easy; but with me it went rather awkwardly. I couldn’t make any “time” up stream at all, but found after each “tack” that I had drifted further and further down. I had better have cast anchor and waited for a port or starboard wind, so far as making “time” was concerned.
At last, much disgusted with a sail boat, I lowered my sail and took her in with the oars, vowing never to try a sail boat again: another vow I kept for nearly a year.
I then hired a light row boat and went up to the “Lower Falls”—that is, a cataract of some seventy or eighty feet, about a mile and a half below the principal Falls of Genesee. I had some stiff rowing to get up, too, for the current was very swift near the Falls. But didn’t I come back, though, when I started to return! I only used my oars to keep the boat straight, and the current carried me down as the wind bears a feather before it.
The next day was Sunday, and learning that a small steam pleasure boat was to make a trip that afternoon from the landing, to a little harbor on the lake shore, some eight or ten miles from the mouth of the river, I went down and embarked for the voyage.
The boat started early in the afternoon, crowded with pleasure-seekers. It was the slowest boat and about the lightest draft steamboat I ever had the honor to travel on. We were three or four hours reaching our destination: and on entering the harbor, she plowed through the shallowest water I ever saw navigated. The water in the lake was low at that time, and we passed over some places where the rushes grew up so thick that at a little distance the water could not be seen at all. It looked a little more like navigating a meadow than any thing I ever saw. At intervals, when we could see the water ahead of us, it did not appear to be a foot deep. And, O, the way our boat stirred the mud up! I pity the fish that lost their way in our wake: they must have been a long time finding it again.
The voyage was a little tedious, in consequence of the slow “time” we made, but not unpleasant. It was nine o’clock that evening when we returned to the landing in the Genesee river, and a two-horse spring wagon waited there for all who preferred a ten-cent ride up the long hill to a free walk. I preferred the ride and got in. But I wished myself out again before we reached the upper end of the perilous road, for I never enjoyed the luxury of a more dangerous ride. It was extremely dark—so dark that you couldn’t have seen a candle, if it had not been lighted—and the wagon was crowded. As we moved up the road there was a high perpendicular bank on our right hand, and on our left was the brink of a steep precipice, whose height became greater and greater as we advanced; and I could not help contemplating the fearful consequences of a possible accident, such as the balking of the horses, the breaking of the traces, or the giving way of the earth at the brink of the declivity beneath the weight of the wheels. It was, in truth, a perilous ride, and before we reached the top of the tall shore half the passengers had got scared and jumped off: but I had paid for my ride, and was determined to have it at the risk of my neck. So I stayed in.
We reached the head of the narrow road without accident, and half-an-hour later I was in my bed, reposing after the pleasures and perils of the day.
CHAPTER XVII.
Niagara Falls.
ON the following Wednesday morning I took the accommodation train for Niagara Falls. When I say “accommodation train,” do not fancy that we went jogging along at the rate of six or eight miles an hour. That is not the style of the New York Central. The accommodation trains make twenty miles an hour, including numerous stoppages, which is better time than is made by the express trains of some roads I have traveled on.