Cayuga Lake, at its head, has a rugged verge, and in the glens and gorges descending four to five hundred feet from the hills to the lake and its prolonged southern valley, are some of nature's most beautiful sanctuaries. Fall Creek has eight cataracts within a mile, all of them charming. It comes tumbling down the Triphammer Fall into a basin, then over one cascade after another until it plunges down a foaming precipice and finally goes over the Ithaca Fall, one hundred and sixty feet high and about as wide. Alongside the lake, near the outlet of this brook, are remarkable formations,—Tower Rock, a perfect columnar structure forty feet high, and Castle Rock, a massive wall with a grand arched doorway opened through it—both strange freaks of nature. The ravine of Cascadilla Creek to the southward is also filled with cascades, and on an elevated plateau between the two gorges is Cornell University. The most noted waterfall of Cayuga is the Taghanic—the original Indian word meaning "Water enough." A stream flows in from the western hills a short distance north of Ithaca, and the fall is two hundred and fifteen feet high and some distance back in the ridge. Its interesting features are the great height, the very deep ravine and its sharply-defined outlines, and the splendid views; and its admirers regard it as a worthy rival of the much-praised Swiss Staubbach. The water breaks over a cleanly-cut table-rock, falls perpendicularly, and excepting in freshets, it changes into clouds of spray before reaching the bottom. The rocky enclosing walls rise four hundred feet high around it, being regularly squared as if laid by human hands, and this is the highest American waterfall east of the Rockies.
High above Ithaca, standing upon the brow of the ridge making its eastern border, are the imposing buildings of Cornell University, devoted to the free education of both sexes in all branches of knowledge, the spreading college campus elevated four hundred feet above the lake. Here are educated eighteen hundred students, who have about one hundred and eighty instructors. The College of Forestry, established in 1898, is the only one in the country. The University has munificent endowments, becoming constantly more valuable, as lands of steadily increasing worth are among the holdings, the aggregate being estimated at $8,000,000. At the edge of Ithaca is the mansion which was the home of Ezra Cornell the founder, who amassed a fortune mainly in telegraphy, he then being at the head of the Western Union Company. To his generosity was added the proceeds of the ample school lands of New York State, the gift of the Federal Government, which he selected with scrupulous care, and these gave the University its start. He died in 1874. Others gave supplementary gifts. John McGraw of Ithaca gave McGraw College, the central building on the campus, two hundred feet long, with a tower rising one hundred and twenty feet, containing the great University bell with full chimes, and having a view forty miles northward along the lake and almost half as far southward through the deep valley. This structure is flanked by the North and South University buildings, each one hundred and sixty-five feet long, all three substantially constructed of dark blue stone with light gray limestone trimmings. There are also the Sibley Building, and the magnificent Cascadilla Hall, nearly two hundred feet long, which is a residence for instructors and students. The Sage College for females and other handsome buildings adorn the campus, including an armory, for everything is taught, and a battery of mounted cannon guards the approach to the grounds.
HAVANA AND WATKINS GLENS.
Seneca Lake, the largest of the group, is a short distance west of Cayuga, and its prolonged southern valley is bordered by ridges rising even higher, through which the streams have carved remarkable gorges. Two of the larger torrents coming into the prolonged Seneca Valley have hewn out of the hillsides, one on either hand, romantic fissures of wide renown,—the Havana and Watkins Glens. The Havana Glen is three miles south of the lake and about a mile long, being cut out of the eastern wall of the valley. The ravine is steep, having quite a large stream. Its characteristic is that the water and frost have made great fissures and caverns, but so fashioned them that all the joints and corners are right-angles. The cascades are successions of ledges, the water apparently running down a staircase. If the stream runs over a waterfall, it comes from a level ledge as if running over a wall. If it rushes through a gorge, all the corners are square, the sides perpendicular and the bottom level. If a brigade of stonemasons had built the place it could hardly have been more accurately constructed. Several of the cascades are magnificent, the "Bridal Veil" and the "Curtain Falls" going down a maze of rocky ledges, their frothy waters making resplendent sheets of exquisite lacework. In one place the stream flows through a perfectly square grotto known as the "Council Chamber," entering this great hall by a right-angled bend from an adjoining square-cut grotto of similar character. Each is a perfect apartment, the water rushing from one to the other through an entry-like passage, from which it makes a square turn. The glen is quite steep, and its "Central Gorge" is a narrow fissure, clean-cut and deep, making a half-dozen right-angled bends, each lower than the other, the torrent rushing around the sharp corners and over the straight edges with wild swiftness and clouds of spray. The visitor mounts ladders and steps through the spray, and the glen can be followed a long distance upward past many cascades, its picturesqueness being enhanced by the huge tree-trunks the torrent occasionally brings down and lodges in the many angular bends.
Watkins Glen
Watkins Glen, carved out of the western wall of the valley just at the head of Seneca Lake, is constructed upon a grander scale, yet entirely different. The torrent has hewn it among similarly laminated rocks, but the erosive processes have made vast amphitheatres, their great size dwarfing the diminutive brook flowing like a thread at the bottom. The entrance, level with the floor of the valley, presents the same squared and angular features as Havana Glen, but inside it is a grand amphitheatre enclosed within perpendicular stone walls three hundred feet high, and is proportionately spacious. It is quickly seen, however, that within the grand hall the rocky layers, instead of being squared and angular, have been smoothed and rounded by the waters, the small but dashing stream flowing over the floor by graceful curves through circular pools and winding channels. This glen is built on a prodigious scale, being over three miles long, and its head rising eight hundred feet above the valley. A narrow cascade eighty feet high falls at the far end of the entrance amphitheatre, and climbing up, the visitor enters "Glen Alpha," the first of the vast chambers. There are successive glens and caverns as one proceeds onward and upward through the "Cavern Gorge" and "Glen Obscura," where a hotel and chalet are perched on the rocky ledges at four hundred feet elevation. Above is the "Sylvan Gorge," and then the fissure broadens out into its grandest section, the "Glen Cathedral," a magnificent nave, with walls rising nearly three hundred feet, the rocky layers giving it a level stone floor. It has the "Pulpit Rock" and "Baptismal Font," and climbing out one hundred and seventy feet upward alongside a cascade, the visitor then goes onward past more grottoes, falls and gorges for a long distance, until the "Glen Omega" is reached at the top. Here an airy railway bridge of one of the Vanderbilt roads spans it at two hundred feet height above the floor.
The shores of Seneca Lake, as one progresses northward, present various pretty little glens cut deeply into the bordering hills, and as these become lower there are vineyards and pastures displayed. Gradually the bluffs disappear, giving place to extensive farm lands as the level plain at the outlet is reached. Here, in imitation of a noble Swiss example, the town of Geneva has been built at the foot of the lake, its chief street extending along the western bank, with villas peeping out from the foliage. This is a prominent nursery town, florists and seedsmen being its chief merchants, and a large part of the adjacent country being devoted to seed-growing and propagation. Hobart College, a leading Episcopal foundation, is at Geneva. The outlet of the lake is the Seneca River, having an attractive waterfall, and after gathering the outflow of this group of Central New York lakes, it goes away northeastward to Oswego River.
CANISTEO AND CHEMUNG RIVERS.