Returning to Washington in February of 1897, I joined the Venezuela Commission in presenting its report to the President and Secretary of State, and so ended my duties under the administration of Mr. Cleveland. Of my connection with the political campaign of 1896 I have spoken elsewhere. In May of 1897, having been appointed by President McKinley ambassador to Berlin, I sailed for Europe, and my journeys since that time have consisted mainly of excursions to interesting historical localities in Germany, with several short vacations in the principal towns of northern Italy, upon the Riviera, and in America.
PART VII
MISCELLANEOUS RECOLLECTIONS
CHAPTER LVI
THE CARDIFF GIANT: A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF HUMAN FOLLY—1869-1870
The traveler from New York to Niagara by the northern route is generally disappointed in the second half of his journey. During the earlier hours of the day, moving rapidly up the valleys, first of the Hudson and next of the Mohawk, he passes through a succession of landscapes striking or pleasing, and of places interesting from their relations to the French and Revolutionary wars. But, arriving at the middle point of his journey,—the head waters of the Mohawk,—a disenchantment begins. Thenceforward he passes through a country tame, monotonous, and with cities and villages as uninteresting in their appearance as in their names; the latter being taken, apparently without rhyme or reason, from the classical dictionary or the school geography.
And yet, during all that second half of his excursion, he is passing almost within musket-shot of one of the most beautiful regions of the Northern States,—the lake country of central and western New York.
It is made up of a succession of valleys running from south to north, and lying generally side by side, each with a beauty of its own. Some, like the Oneida and the Genesee, are broad expanses under thorough cultivation; others, like the Cayuga and Seneca, show sheets of water long and wide, their shores sometimes indented with glens and gorges, and sometimes rising with pleasant slopes to the wooded hills; in others still, as the Cazenovia, Skaneateles, Owasco, Keuka, and Canandaigua, smaller lakes are set, like gems, among vineyards and groves; and in others shimmering streams go winding through corn-fields and orchards fringed by the forest.
Of this last sort is the Onondaga valley. It lies just at the center of the State, and, although it has at its northern entrance the most thriving city between New York and Buffalo, it preserves a remarkable character of peaceful beauty.
It is also interesting historically. Here was the seat—the "long house"—of the Onondagas, the central tribe of the Iroquois; here, from time immemorial, were held the councils which decided on a warlike or peaceful policy for their great confederation; hither, in the seventeenth century, came the Jesuits, and among them some who stand high on the roll of martyrs; hither, toward the end of the eighteenth century, came Chateaubriand, who has given in his memoirs his melancholy musings on the shores of Onondaga Lake, and his conversation with the chief sachem of the Onondaga tribe; hither, in the early years of this century, came the companion of Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de Beaumont, who has given in his letters the thoughts aroused within him in this region, made sacred to him by the sorrows of refugees from the French Revolution.