We left Albany at 12:30 P.M. in an immigrant train for Buffalo. At Schenectady, about twenty miles from Albany, we were detained two or three hours, waiting for the passenger train to pass us. The fare by the immigrant train was considerably less but we soon discovered that it was a slow and tedious experience of travel, it being very slow. It was nearly night when we left Schenectady and proceeded slowly on our way. The night was cold and stormy—disagreeable in the extreme.
Some five or six inches of snow fell during the night, and there being no fires in the cars, or no place to lie down and nothing to eat, it was a very long, tedious night.
The night passed slowly away, and we arrived safely at Rochester at about 10 o’clock on the 19th; when, after refreshing ourselves with a good dinner, we crossed the Genesee River and took a view of the falls bearing the same name.
Near the middle of the channel is a high projecting point of rocks, where the celebrated Sam Patch is said to have taken his last jump in presence of a large multitude of spectators; and it was said that he was never afterward seen. His motto was: “Some things may be done as well as others.”
Rochester has very excellent water power, and can boast of some of the best flouring mills in the world.
Left Rochester at one o’clock, by the express train, for Buffalo, at which place we arrived at five o’clock P.M., and put up at Bennett’s Temperance Hotel, where we found a very fine hotel and good accommodations.
Friday, April 20.
There being no steamers going west from Buffalo today, we were compelled to await another day for a passage.
A railroad had been built and opened from Buffalo to Niagara Falls, a distance of twenty-two miles. The larger number of the company took this trip and went to the celebrated Falls, as a pleasant manner of passing the few hours that we were compelled to wait. We left Buffalo at two o’clock and rode twenty-two miles over a very rough and uneven railroad, and arrived at the Falls at about three o’clock.
On my arrival at the cataract, I descended the lofty flight of stone steps numbering 290—crossed the river in a yawl boat to the Canada side—a short distance below the Falls; went under the sheet of water at Table Rock, where I found a very damp atmosphere caused by the rising spray—so very damp that I soon became completely saturated.