We hear that the travellers met with cordial hospitality at the villages and towns along their route, and that their arrival created quite a sensation. In fact it was an historical event. Two friends of the Rochesters, William Fitzhugh and Charles Carroll, cast in their fortunes with them, and in 1802 bought together the three hundred acres at the Upper Falls, which were laid out for a settlement ten years later. In those times the prestige of a name went far towards establishing a reputation, and the one chosen by the people of the settlement was afterward proudly placed upon the municipal banner. Soon after the advent of Colonel Rochester and his friends, the scheme for making a water communication between the Lakes and the Sea began to be eagerly discussed, and there were not a few energetic representatives from "Rochesterville" who lent their efforts towards the carrying out of the plan. When the canal was completed there was the wildest enthusiasm in Rochester, which would perhaps have a greater benefit than any other place along the route: for with her big grain and coal interests, her future prosperity seemed assured.
The natural course of events followed. Improvement and embellishment began on all sides. New buildings and enterprises started up on solid foundations, and provision was made for those who might "drop out of the ranks," in the selection of beautiful Mount Hope, one of the loveliest cemeteries in point of natural charm in this country. It lies on a wooded slope between the lake and the city, and its pathways, shadowed by the great trees from the "forest primeval," are the playgrounds for the wild little creatures who make their homes there unmolested.
Back again into the town where the sound of the Falls is heard, and one thinks of the odd touch a simple character has added to the traditions of the place, and whose name, to a stranger, is so often associated with that of Rochester. This quaint figure is none other than "Sam Patch, the jumper," who met his fate by leaping into the Genesee at the "Falls," and who left as a legacy the warning maxim, "Be careful, or, like Sam Patch, you may jump once too often." History has chronicled Sam's last speech, delivered from the platform, just before his fatal leap; which, as a sample of rustic oratory, is amusing.
He said: "Napoleon was a great man and a great general. He conquered armies, and he conquered nations, but he couldn't jump the Genesee Falls. Wellington was a great man and a great soldier. He conquered armies, and he conquered nations, and he conquered Napoleon, but he couldn't jump the Genesee Falls. That was left for me to do, and I can do it, and will."
Rochester, the capital of Monroe County, New York, was first settled in 1810, and incorporated as a city in 1834. It is situated on both sides of the Genesee River, seven miles from Lake Ontario, two hundred and fifty miles from Albany and sixty-nine from Buffalo by railway. An aqueduct of stone carries the Erie Canal across the river, the cost of which amounted to over half a million dollars. The city is well laid out with wide and handsome streets, lined with shade trees.
VIEW OF ROCHESTER.
Within the city limits the Genesee undergoes a sudden descent of two hundred and sixty-eight feet, falling in three separate cataracts within a distance of two miles. The roar of these falls is heard continually all over the city, but no one is inconvenienced by it in the slightest degree. The cataracts are believed to have formed, at one time, a single fall, but the different degrees of hardness of the rocks have caused an unequal retrograde movement of the falls, until they have assumed their present position. At the Upper Falls, the river is precipitated perpendicularly ninety-six feet. It then flows between nearly perpendicular walls of rock, for about a mile and a quarter to the Middle Falls, where it has another descent of twenty-five feet. One hundred rods below, at the Lower Falls, it again descends eighty-four feet, which brings the stream to the level of Lake Ontario, into which it enters.
The immense water-power thus afforded in the centre of one of the finest wheat-growing regions in the world, with the facilities of transportation afforded by the Erie Canal, Lake Ontario, and the several railways, have given a vast impulse to the prosperity of Rochester and it has, in consequence, become one of the most important manufacturing cities in the East. At the period of my visit, there were eighteen flour mills in operation, grinding annually 2,500,000 bushels of wheat. The manufacturing interests are immense—ready-made clothing being the most extensive, and boots and shoes ranking next. Other leading manufactures are those of iron bridges, India-rubber goods, carriages, furniture, optical instruments, steam engines, glassware and agricultural machinery. Of flourishing industries may be mentioned breweries, tobacco factories, blast furnaces and fruit canning.