3d. I was compelled to break off my notes yesterday suddenly. A storm came on which drove us forward with great swiftness, and put us in some peril. We made the land about three o'clock, after much exertion and very considerable wetting. After the storm had passed over, a calm succeeded, when we again put out, and kept the lake till eight o'clock. We had a very bad encampment--loose rough stones to lie on, and scarcely wood enough to make a fire. To finish our misery, it soon began to rain, but ceased before ten. At four o'clock this morning we arose, the weather being quite cold. At an early hour, after getting afloat, we reached and passed a noted landing for canoes and boats, called Choishwa (Smooth-rock.) This shelter, is formed by a ledge of rock running into the lake. On the inner, or perpendicular face, hundreds of names are cut or scratched upon the rock. This cacoethes scribendi is the pest of every local curiosity or public watering-place. Even here, in the wilderness, it is developed.
Wise men ne'er cut their names on doors or rock-heads,
But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads;
Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty,
Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty,
Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains,
O'er wainscots, borrowed books, or window panes.
At one o'clock the wind became decidedly fair, and the men, relieved from their paddles, are nearly all asleep, in the bottom of the canoe. While the wind drives us forward beautifully I embrace the time to resume my narrative of early journeyings, dropt yesterday.
In the year 1808, my father removed from Albany to Oneida County. I remained at the old homestead in Guilderland, in charge of his affairs, until the following year, when I also came to the west. The next spring I was offered handsome inducements to go to the Genesee country, by a manufacturing company, who contemplated the saving of a heavy land transportation from Albany on the article of window-glass, if the rude materials employed in it could be found in that area of country. I visited it with that view; found its native resources ample, and was still more delighted with the flourishing appearance of this part of the Western country than I had been with Utica and its environs. Auburn, Geneva, Canandaigua, and other incipient towns, seemed to me the germs of a land "flowing with milk and honey."
In 1811, I went on a second trip to Philadelphia, and executed the object of it with a success equal to my initial visit. On this trip I had letters to some gentlemen at Philadelphia, who received me in a most clever spirit, and I visited the Academy of Arts, Peale's Museum, the Water Works, Navy Yard, &c. I here received my first definite ideas of painting and sculpture. I returned with new stores of information and new ideas of the world, but I had lost little or nothing of my primitive simplicity of feeling or rustic notions of human perfection. And, as I began to see something of the iniquities of men, I clung more firmly to my native opinions.
My personal knowledge of my native State, and of the States of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was now superior to that of most men with whom I was in the habit of conversing, and I subsequently made several little journeys and excursions that furthered me in the knowledge.
As yet, I knew nothing by personal observation of New England. In the early part of 1813, having completed my nineteenth year, I went to Middlebury, in Vermont, on the banks of Otter Creek, where, I understand, my great-grandfather, who was an Englishman, to have died. Soon after I accompanied Mr. Ep. Jones, a man of decided enterprise, but some eccentricities of character, on an extensive tour through the New England States. We set out from Lake Dunmore, in Salisbury, in a chaise, and proceeding over the Green Mountains across the State of Vermont, to Bellows' Falls, on the Connecticut River, there struck the State of New Hampshire, and went across it, and a part of Massachusetts, to Boston. Thence, after a few days' stop, we continued our route to Hartford, the seat of government of Connecticut, and thence south to the valley of the Hudson at Rhinebeck. Here we crossed the Hudson to Kingston (the Esopus of Indian days), and proceeded inland, somewhat circuitously, to the Catskill Mountains; after visiting which, we returned to the river, came up its valley to Albany, and returned, by way of Salem, to Salisbury. All this was done with one horse, a compact small-boned animal, who was a good oats-eater, and of whom we took the very best care. I made this distich on him:--
Feed me well with oats and hay,
And I'll carry you forty miles a-day.
This long and circuitous tour gave me a general idea of this portion of the Union, and enabled me to institute many comparisons between the manners and customs and advantages of New York and New England.
I am again compelled to lay my pencil aside by the quantity of water thrown into the canoe by the paddles of the men, who have been roused up by the increasing waves.