“The jack-pudding presently came up to us, and an Indian boy came with him and kindled our fire, that we might see his glittering eyes and antic postures, as he hobbled round the fire. Sometimes he would turn the buffalo’s hair on one side, that we might take a better view of his ill-favoured phiz. When he had tired himself, (which was some time after he had well tired us,) the boy that attended him struck two or three smart blows on the floor, at which the hobgoblin seemed surprised; and, on repeating them, he jumped fairly out of doors and disappeared.
“I suppose this was to divert us, and get some tobacco; for, as he danced about, he would hold out his hand to receive this gratification, for which, as often as he received it, he would return an awkward compliment. After this farce, we endeavoured to compose ourselves to sleep, but towards morning were again disturbed by a drunken squaw coming into the cabin, frequently complimenting us and singing.”
We doubt if any traveller’s journal on the Mauch Chunk rail-road can show as diverting a page. There are no incidents now-a-days short of a boiler bursting.
GENESSEE FALLS, ROCHESTER.
In the three thousand miles between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, there may be said to be three water-steps formed by the different levels of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and Lake Superior. Niagara and the Genessee river fall over the middle step, the edge of which is formed by the brow of a bed of limestone, computed to be four hundred and ten feet above the level of Lake Ontario. Saint Lawrence may thus be said to take but three leaps from the Rocky Mountains to the ocean—an agility which, one would suppose, might have saved the holy martyr from his gridiron.
The ledge over which these two celebrated falls are precipitated, comes out of Canada from an immense distance, and keeps its course along the shore of Lake Ontario, in a direction nearly due east. At the Genessee Falls, as at Niagara, the descent to the lake is between the walls of a tremendous ravine, the grandeur of which seems to have had no terror for the souls of manufacturers. The thriving village of Rochester stands round the lip of the fall; and if you talk to the inhabitants of the beauty of the cascade, they stop your mouth, and strike calculation dumb, with the number of sledge-hammers, nail-cutters, mill-stones, and cotton-jennies, it carries; the product per diem; the corresponding increase of population, et cetera et cetera—the only instance in the known world of a cataract turned, without the loss of a drop, through the pockets of speculators.
The Genessee river rises in the Alleghany Mountains, and it is not for want of poetical names on its banks that it is not a poetical river. Its source is ten miles below Nunda, between the head waters of the Owago and the Cawanisque rivers; and it runs one hundred and fifty miles, receiving tribute from the Canassaraga and Angelica creeks, and the Canesus and Honcoye outlets. It has a great reputation for fertility; and along its valley lies the celebrated farm of Mr. Wadsworth, the agriculturist, who holds in this country the place occupied in England by Mr. Coke of Holkham—now Earl of Leicester.