America Volume IV Part 4

It is then led to the evaporating vats, all processes being used, solar as well as boiling. The land bordering the marshy sh.o.r.es of Onondaga Lake is framed around by rows of factories and heating furnaces, while out on the marshes are cl.u.s.ters of little brown houses, each covering a well and pump. From there the brine is led through conduits made of bored logs, called the "salt logs," to the evaporating vats and factories, some going long distances. Everything throughout the whole district is profusely saturated with salt.

Syracuse is one of the handsomest cities of the Empire State. The New York Central Railroad pa.s.ses through the centre of the business section, the locomotives and ordinary traffic sharing the main street in common, in front of the chief hotels and stores, for thus has the town grown up. Just northward, the Erie Ca.n.a.l also goes through the heart of the city, giving on moonlight nights scenes that are almost Venetian. The streets are broad, and ornamental squares are frequent, the chief residential highways--James, Genesee and University Streets--being bordered with imposing dwellings surrounded by extensive grounds. Magnificent trees line the streets and broad lawns stretch back to the dwellings, everything being open to public view, so that in these parts the town is practically a vast park. To the eastward rises University Hill, crowned by the buildings of Syracuse University, a Methodist foundation having eleven hundred students.

Holden Observatory adjoins the grand graystone main college building, and from this high hill there is a magnificent view over the city and the oval-shaped lake and its salt marsh border off to the northwest.

The southern view is enclosed by the Onondaga highlands, out of which Onondaga Creek comes through a deep and winding valley. Back among these dark blue distant hills still live in pastoral simplicity the remnants of the "Men of the Mountain,"--the Onondagas,--the ruling power of the famous Iroquois Confederation.

AUBURN, ITHACA AND CORNELL.

Westward from Syracuse the country is full of lakes. Otisco Lake,--the "Bitter-nut Hickory,"--is an oval four miles long, embosomed in hills.

To the northwest of Otisco is Skaneateles Lake--the "Long Water"--the most picturesque of all, set among most imposing hills, which, notwithstanding the lake is elevated eight hundred and sixty feet, still rise twelve hundred feet above its surface, giving the waters the deeply blue tinge of an Italian scene. This lovely lake is sixteen miles long, and in no place more than a mile and a half wide, its outlet having a fine cataract. To the westward is Owasco Lake--"the bridge on the water floating"--eleven miles long and a mile wide, walled in by rocky bluffs, yet having its sh.o.r.es diversified by meadows and farm land. About two miles northward, on its outlet, is the busy manufacturing city of Auburn, with thirty thousand people, which was the home of William H. Seward, Governor and Senator from New York, who was President Lincoln's Secretary of State during the Civil War. Its most extensive establishment is the Auburn Prison, covering about eighteen acres, enclosed by walls four feet thick and twelve to thirty-five feet high, there being imprisoned usually about twelve hundred convicts. The surface of the city is varied by hills, making handsome villa sites, and the Owasco Lake outlet flows down a series of rapids, falling one hundred and sixty feet, and utilized by no less than nine dams to turn the wheels of many mills. Captain Hardenburgh was the first settler here in 1793, the original name being "Hardenburgh's Corners." On Fort Hill, one of the highest elevations, the top of which is supposed to be an eminence originally raised by the ancient Mound-Builders, and was an Iroquois fortification, is the Cemetery where are interred the remains of William H. Seward, who died in 1872.

After crossing a rich grazing country, farther to the westward is Cayuga Lake--the name meaning "Where they take canoes out"--stretching from the level plain of Central New York southward into the highlands, making the watershed between the affluents of the St. Lawrence and the Susquehanna. Progressing southward along the long and narrow lake, the hills are found to grow steadily higher, and they reach an elevation of several hundred feet above its surface. The bordering rocky b.u.t.tresses rise up as columns and walls, with accurately-squared corners, their perpendicular stratification making the flagstone layers that have been loosened by the frost stand on edge and separately, seeming almost ready to topple over, while heaps of broken fragments are strewn at their bases, which, being pulverized by the action of frost and water into small particles, produce a smooth and narrow beach. At the head of the lake the deep valley is prolonged farther southward between even higher enclosing ridges, the Cayuga Inlet winding through it. Here, about a mile from the lake, is a flouris.h.i.+ng town of twelve thousand people, reproducing the name of the Ionian Island that was the fabled kingdom of Ulysses--Ithaca. It is the centre of a grazing region, producing cheese, b.u.t.ter and wool, and its water-power has given some manufacturing activity, but it is chiefly known to fame from the surrounding galaxy of waterfalls and the possession of Cornell University.

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 ma.s.sive 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 s.e.xes 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 ama.s.sed 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 rus.h.i.+ng from one to the other through an entry-like pa.s.sage, 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 s.p.a.cious. 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 das.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.es 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 n.o.ble 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.

There are yet two other lakes westward of Seneca, Keuka and Canandaigua. This region was generally first peopled by the Puritans, but others also came in, and at the outlet of Keuka is the town of Penn Yan, so called from the Pennsylvanians and Yankees who settled it, their descendants being the shrewd and thrifty race known as the "New York Yankees." There are extensive vineyards on Keuka where are made some of the best American clarets and champagnes, the centre of that industry being Hammondsport, at the head of the lake. Beyond is Canandaigua Lake, the town of Canandaigua standing at its northern end upon a surface gently sloping towards its sh.o.r.es. The word means the "place chosen for a village." The heads of all these lakes are in the southern highlands, making the watershed, south of which the streams are gathered into the Canisteo River, meaning "the board on the water," which flows into the Chemung, the "big horn," and thence by the Susquehanna down through Pennsylvania to the Chesapeake. The Erie Railway, coming eastward by a wild and lonely route across the Allegheny ranges, goes down the pretty Canisteo Valley to Hornellsville, a purely railroad town of twelve thousand people, which has grown up around the shops and stations. Below, the valley broadens, and is picturesque between its high bordering ridges, the stream meandering in wayward fas.h.i.+on over the almost flat intervale.

It pa.s.ses Addison and the town with the unique name of Painted Post, so called from an Indian monument inscribed in colors, and as the Canisteo River broadens with the contribution of its swelling tributaries, it reaches the active manufacturing city of Corning, having ten thousand people, and here falls into the Chemung, which comes up northward out of the Allegheny ranges in Pennsylvania to meet it. The Chemung Valley is a broad and fertile section of flat and highly cultivated bottom lands, having in its heart the city of Elmira, with thirty-five thousand inhabitants and many industrial establishments, making it a busy railroad centre. Here is the Elmira Reformatory, the Elmira Female College, and the various "Water Cures,"

a species of remedial establishment flouris.h.i.+ng throughout Western New York, where there is apparently no limit to the efficacy or bountifulness of the water-supply. The broad Chemung flows through Elmira and beyond down its rich and wide-spreading valley, until at Athens it loses itself in the swelling waters of the Susquehanna.

THE VALLEY OF THE GENESEE.

Among the rugged mountains of Potter County, in the northern part of Pennsylvania, the highest land in the State, are the springs feeding the headwaters of three noted rivers, seeking the ocean in opposite directions. The Allegheny flows westward and afterwards southward to the Ohio; the west branch of the Susquehanna goes eastward to break through the entire Allegheny chain in seeking the Atlantic; and the smaller stream, the Genesee, flows northward through New York between two long Allegheny ridges, the chief affluent of Lake Ontario. The Genesee pa.s.ses through a valley of great beauty and gives water-power to many mills, a ca.n.a.l also being constructed to improve its navigation. After a romantic course of one hundred and fifty miles it empties into the lake at Charlotte, seven miles north of Rochester.

For much of the distance its course is through a magnificent gorge, with a succession of cataracts that are renowned in American scenery.

Where it first attacks the highlands of New York to break out of them, it plunges deeper and deeper down a series of grand cataracts at Portage. Here the Erie Railway, coming from the westward, has boldly thrown a stupendous bridge across the tremendous chasm and almost over the top of the highest cataract. The river makes a gorge in the yielding rocks, sinking from two hundred and fifty to six hundred feet deep, and here are the Portage Falls, one cataract after another making the stream-bed lower, the walls of the wild ravine rising almost perpendicularly. The railway, crossing at the most favorable place, has built one of the highest bridges in the country, elevated two hundred and thirty-five feet above the river, resting upon lightly-framed steel trusses. From the car windows the river can be seen far below in what seems a narrow fissure, the current boiling along and then tumbling down the cataract, the edge of which crosses the river diagonally almost beneath the bridge. The waters pour into a chasm seeming almost bottomless as the spray obscures it. The ravine extends northward, and in the distance the waters go over a second fall and then a third, the chasm finally curving around to the right, making a bend, closing the view more than a mile away, with an enormous wall of bare rock. The three cataracts fall respectively seventy, one hundred and ten and one hundred and fifty feet--called the Upper, Middle and Lower Portage Falls--and for several miles below, the river flows through the deeper ravine amid equally magnificent surroundings.

This descent brings the Genesee River down from the higher plateau to what is known as the "Genesee Level," for at the end of the defile, fifteen miles below Portage, it flows out of the highlands over pleasant lands and with gentler current. Here on the "Genesee Flats"

is the village of Mount Morris, and near it has been placed, alongside the ravine, the rude log cabin, which was originally on the higher land above Portage, the Indian "Council House of Cascadea," where the Iroquois chiefs often met. At the removal in 1872, the services were conducted in the Senecas language, several Indians attending, and the identical "pipe of peace" given by Was.h.i.+ngton to Red Jacket was pa.s.sed around. Nearby the river emerges through a t.i.tanic gateway in the rocks to the pastoral region stretching far to the northward, while far over on the eastern verge is the village of Geneseo, sloping up the ascent. Its Indian name, meaning the "beautiful valley," is also given the river. After meandering placidly for miles across these flats, the Genesee River reaches the "Flour City of the West,"

Rochester, the storage and distributing mart for this fertile valley, getting its original start and t.i.tle from the prolific wheat crops.

And here the Genesee plunges down another waterfall which gives power to the Rochester mills.

When De Witt Clinton, in 1810, exploring the route for the Erie Ca.n.a.l, crossed the river here, there was not a house. The place was afterwards the "Hundred Acre Tract," planned in 1812 for a settlement by three adventurous frontiersmen, and the town was named for one of them, Nathaniel Rochester. After a few years, the spreading fame of the fertility of the Genesee Valley attracted a large population, and it became known as the garden spot of the then "West," so that out of this grew the flour-mills which have continued to be Rochester's chief industry. The Genesee River flows through with swift current, the Erie Ca.n.a.l being carried over on a ma.s.sive stone aqueduct and the New York Central Railroad upon a wide bridge, and about a hundred yards beyond, the river plunges down the great Rochester Fall. The ledge over which it tumbles is a perpendicular wall, straight and regular in formation, and almost without fragments of rock at the foot, so that the fall is a clear one. The sh.o.r.es below are lined with huge stone mills and breweries, to which races on each bank conduct the water from a dam above the railroad bridge. This Rochester Fall, down which Sam Patch jumped to his death, is ninety-six feet high. Below it, the river flows through a somewhat wider channel, gradually bending to the left, and then it goes down a second cataract of twenty-five feet height, and finally, at some distance, over a third and broken fall of eighty-four feet. As at Portage, this second succession of triple cataracts sinks the river bed deeper and deeper into the gorge, so that the enclosing walls are in some places over three hundred feet high. This gorge is all within the limits of the city, the falls and rapids having a total descent of two hundred and sixty feet. This immense water-power, with the traffic facilities of ca.n.a.l and railway, have made the city, so that there is a population of a hundred and forty thousand around the Genesee Falls, and manufactures of flour, beer, clothing, leather and other articles, valued at $75,000,000 annually. In the neighboring region there is also extensive seed-growing, the Rochester nurseries occupying miles of the level surface. Rochester University has two hundred students and valuable geological collections. The city has been a headquarters for the Spiritualists and advocates of Women's Rights. The Genesee emerges from the rocky gorge below Rochester, and flows in more tranquil course northward through a ravine carved deeply into the table-land, to Lake Ontario, at the little port of Charlotte.

LOCKPORT, CHAUTAUQUA AND ERIE.

Westward from Rochester the country is underlaid by red sandstones, and at Medina quarries are plentiful, this reproduction of the Arabian "City of the Prophet" being an extensive supplier of these dark-red Medina sandstones, as the geologists call them. Beyond, at Lockport, the higher terrace is reached, and here the Erie Ca.n.a.l is raised by an imposing series of five double locks from the Genesee level up to the Lake Erie level. Through these locks and by means of a subsidiary ca.n.a.l an immense water-power is obtained which is utilized by the Lockport mills. The much lower Genesee level is marked by the base of a bluff, stretching through the town and across the adjacent region, evidently the bank of an ancient lake.

In western New York a high ridge crosses the country south of Lake Erie, and to the southward of its most elevated portion there stretches the elongated Chautauqua Lake, almost bisected by two jutting points at its centre. This charming lake is eighteen miles long, three or four miles wide, and elevated seven hundred and thirty feet above Lake Erie, its outlet draining southward into a tributary of the Allegheny River. Its elevation above tide is nearly thirteen hundred feet. The low hills enclosing it are popular summer resorts, and on the western bank in the season are drawn enormous crowds to the Chautauqua a.s.sembly, which has established the "Summer School of Philosophy" for education. There are often twenty to thirty thousand people here at one time, and the plan has been so successful that it has various imitators elsewhere, the "Chautauqua idea" being varying instruction with recreation. The Indians named this lake, from the mists arising, Chautauqua, or "the foggy place." Beyond this popular resort the land falls away, and crossing the New York western boundary into the "Pennsylvania Triangle," a jutting corner thrust up to Lake Erie, a fine harbor is found at Erie, known in earlier history by its French name of Presque Isle. This triangle of the Keystone State, giving about forty miles of coast-line on the lake, has a history.

The early surveyors discovered that, owing to misdescriptions in various English grants, this large triangular tract was, from a legal standpoint, "nowhere." It was north of Pennsylvania, west of New York and east of the Connecticut Western Reserve, which became part of Ohio. Pennsylvania finally bought it, paying the United States Government, in 1792, $150,640 for it, and also getting the Indian t.i.tle for 1200. It was a good purchase, for Erie harbor is the best on the lake. Erie has about fifty thousand people, and is in a picturesque situation, owing to the beauty of the bay and the outlying island, which was formerly a peninsula. There is additional protection by a breakwater, making an extensive basin with s.p.a.cious docks that have a large trade. The French were the early settlers, building their "Fort de la Presque Isle" in 1749, which was one of the chain of outposts they projected between the St. Lawrence and the Ohio. It was here that Commodore Perry hastily built the rude fleet with which he gained the noted victory over the Anglo-Canadian fleet on Lake Erie in 1813, and back here he afterwards in triumph towed his prizes. The remains of his flags.h.i.+p lie in the harbor. Perry's guns were the heaviest in that memorable contest for control of the lake, and therefore he won. In Lake Side Cemetery is buried Captain Charles Vernon Gridley, who commanded Admiral Dewey's flags.h.i.+p, the "Olympia,"

at the battle of Manila Bay in 1898.

THE CITY OF BUFFALO.

Dunkirk, in New York, northeast of Erie, is another harbor on the lake, and a terminal of the Erie Railway, the land hereabout being the monotonous level plain of western New York. Rounding the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of its outlet stream, the Niagara River, is Buffalo, the chief port of the lake and the metropolis of western New York. It is surrounded for miles upon the level land with railway terminals and car-yards, amid which factories, breweries, coal-pockets, cattle-pens and grain elevators are distributed. This great city, which has grown to four hundred thousand population, takes it name from the American bison, who roamed in large herds over the lands adjacent to Lake Erie as late as 1720, and thus gave the name to Buffalo Creek. The city covers a broad surface at the foot of Lake Erie, and is coeval with the nineteenth century, having been founded in 1801; but in the earlier years it was only a military post, and did not a.s.sume a commercial standing or begin to grow much until after the opening of the Erie Ca.n.a.l. The neighboring post of Niagara, a short distance down that river, was of more importance in the early days of the frontier, for it was on Niagara River, in 1669, that the Sieur de La Salle, who described the frozen stream as "like a plain paved with polished marble," built and in the following summer launched the "Griffin," the first rude vessel that explored the Upper Lakes.

Afterwards one or two trading cabins appeared on Buffalo Creek, and then there was constructed a stockade fort. For thirty years the hunters and traders fought the savages and captured wild beasts, and then, after an interval of peace, the War of 1812 came with new ravages, during which the little settlement around the stockade at Buffalo was burnt by the British, who held the fort at the entrance to Niagara River. When the Erie Ca.n.a.l was opened, the expansion of the settlement became rapid, and its eligible position at the point where the lake commerce had to connect with the ca.n.a.l and the railways leading to the Atlantic seaboard has since given full scope to business enterprise and made it a large and wealthy city.

The Buffalo suburbs are gridironed by railroads, and their terminals spread along the water-front and the sinuosities of Buffalo Creek. The grain elevators, as in all the lake cities, are a prominent feature, and they stand like huge monsters, forty of them, with high heads and long trunks along the creek and ca.n.a.l basins as if waiting for their prey. The fleets of vessels come over the lakes laden with grain from the West; tugs take them to one of these monsters, and down out of the long neck is plunged a trunk deep into the vessel's hold, which sucks up all the grain. It is stored and weighed and sent on its journey eastward. If this is by ca.n.a.l, the barge waits on the other side, and the grain runs down into it through another trunk; if by railway, the cars are run under or alongside the elevator and quickly filled. Then the lake vessels are laden with coal for the return voyage. While an American gives these elevators scant attention, being used to them, not so the foreigner, who regards them with the greatest curiosity.

Thus wrote Anthony Trollope about them: "An elevator is as ugly a monster as has yet been produced. In uncouthness of form it outdoes those obsolete old brutes who used to roam about the semi-aqueous world and live a most uncomfortable life, with their great hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws. Rivers of corn and wheat run through these monsters night and day. And all this wheat which pa.s.ses through Buffalo comes loose in bulk; nothing is known of sacks or bags. To any spectator in Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of course; but this should be explained, as we in England are not accustomed to see wheat travelling in this open, unguarded and plebeian manner. Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels always in its private carriage."

The extensive commerce of Buffalo is varied by iron manufacturing, breweries, distilleries, oil refineries and other industries, but the elevators, coal chutes and railroad and ca.n.a.l business seem to overshadow everything else. The city has wide tree-lined streets, and is most handsome with its many fine buildings. There is an extensive system of attractive parks connected by boulevards; broad streets lined with well-built residences, and in the newer parts the level surface is filled with ornamental homes, some most expensively constructed and elaborately adorned. The well-kept lawns and gardens are fully open to view, and Delaware Avenue, thus bordered, is one of the most attractive streets. On the Main Street, among many impressive structures, is the huge Ellicott Square Building, said to be the largest office-building in the world, housing a business community approximating five thousand persons. There are also two public Libraries and many handsome churches.

The locality of greatest interest in Buffalo is probably the little Prospect Park out at the edge of Lake Erie, where its waters flow into Niagara River. The basins and harbor making the beginning of the Erie Ca.n.a.l, which we have traced all across New York State, are down at the edge of the lake, and a steep bluff, rising about sixty feet, makes the verge of the Park, and continues around along the bank of the river. Here it is crowned by an esplanade surrounding the remains of old Fort Porter, a dilapidated relic of bygone days of frontier conflicts. A couple of superannuated cannon point their muzzles across the water towards Canada, but otherwise the locality is peaceful. A small military force is kept here, probably to watch the British Fort Erie over on the opposite river bank, a few hundred yards off, but the worst conflicts now are bouts at playing ball. The protecting harbor breakwater is out in front, and seen down the Niagara River are the light trusses of the International Railway Bridge, spanning its swift current, and the Erie Ca.n.a.l alongside the bank. Into the narrow river sweeps the drainage of the Great Lakes, an enormous ma.s.s of water, and in the centre the city has placed a large crib, tapping the clear current for its water-supply. The powerful torrent flows steadily northward out of Lake Erie, with a speed of six or seven miles an hour, to make the Niagara cataract, twenty miles away, and show its tremendous force in the Niagara gorge. In the words of Goethe:

"Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose."

NIAGARA.

The Indians who first looked upon the world's greatest cataract gave the best idea of it in their appropriate name, "The Thunder of Waters." There is no setting provided for it in the charms of natural scenery; it has no outside attractions. All its beauty and sublimity are within the rocky walls of its stupendous chasm. The approaches from every direction are dull and tedious, the surrounding country being flat. The forests are spa.r.s.e and there are few fine trees, these being confined to the verge of the abyss, and being generally of recent planting. The Niagara River flows northward from Lake Erie through a plain. The Lake Erie level is five hundred and sixty-four feet above the sea, and in its tortuous course of about thirty-six miles to Lake Ontario, the Niagara River descends three hundred and thirty-three feet, leaving the level of Ontario still two hundred and thirty-one feet above the sea. More than half of all the fresh water on the entire globe--the whole enormous volume from the vast lake region of North America, draining a territory equalling the entire continent of Europe, pours through this contracted channel out of Lake Erie. There is a swift current for a couple of miles, but afterwards the speed is gentler as the channel broadens, and Grand Island divides it. Then it reunites into a wider stream, flowing sluggishly westward, small islands dotting the surface. About fifteen miles from Lake Erie the river narrows and the rapids begin. They flow with great speed for a mile above the falls, in this distance descending fifty-two feet, Goat Island dividing their channel at the brink of the cataract, where the river makes a bend from the west back to the north. This island separates the waters, although nine-tenths go over the Canadian fall, which the abrupt bend curves into horseshoe form. This fall is about one hundred and fifty-eight feet high, the height of the smaller fall on the American side being one hundred and sixty-four feet. The two cataracts spread out to forty-seven hundred and fifty feet breadth, the steep wooded bank of Goat Island, separating them, occupying about one-fourth the distance. The American fall is about eleven hundred feet wide and the Canadian fall twice that width, the actual line of the descending waters on the latter being much larger than the breadth of the river because of its curving form. Recent changes, caused by falling rock in the apex of this fall, have, however, made it a more symmetrical horseshoe than had been the case for years. The Niagara River, just below the cataract, contracts to about one thousand feet, widening to twelve hundred and fifty feet beneath the new single-arch steel bridge recently constructed a short distance farther down. For seven miles the gorge is carved out, the river banks on both sides rising to the top level of the falls, and the bottom sinking deeper and deeper as the lower rapids descend towards Lewiston, and in some places contracting to very narrow limits. Two miles below the cataract the river is compressed within eight hundred feet, and a mile farther down, at the outlet of the Whirlpool, where a sharp right-angled turn is made, the enormous current is contracted within a s.p.a.ce of less than two hundred and fifty feet. In the seven miles distance, these lower rapids descend about one hundred and four feet, and then with placid current the Niagara River flows a few miles farther northward to Lake Ontario.

The view of Niagara is impressive alike upon sight and hearing, and this impressiveness grows upon the visitor. From the bridge just below the American fall, and from the Canadian side, the whole grand scene is in full display, and quickly convinces that no description can exaggerate Niagara. The Indians first told of the falls, and they are indicated on Champlain's map of 1632. In 1648 the Jesuit missionary Rugueneau wrote of them as a "cataract of frightful height." The first white man who saw them was Father Louis Hennepin, the Franciscan, in 1678, who described them as "a vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonis.h.i.+ng manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. The waters which fall from this horrible precipice do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous noise more terrible than that of thunder, for when the wind blows out of the south their dismal roaring may be heard more than fifteen leagues off." Upon Charles d.i.c.kens the first and enduring effect, instant and lasting, of the tremendous spectacle, was: "Peace--peace of mind, tranquility, calm recollections of the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness." The falls had a sanative influence upon Professor Tyndall, for, "quickened by the emotions there aroused," he says, "the blood sped exultingly through the arteries, abolis.h.i.+ng introspection, clearing the heart of all bitterness, and enabling one to think with tolerance, if not with tenderness, upon the most relentless and unreasonable foe." After Anthony Trollope had looked upon the cataract he wrote: "Of all the sights on this earth of ours, I know no other one thing so beautiful, so glorious and so powerful. That fall is more graceful than Giotto's Tower, more n.o.ble than the Apollo. The peaks of the Alps are not so astounding in their solitude. The valleys of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica are less green. The finished glaze of life in Paris is less invariable; and the full tide of trade around the Bank of England is not so inexorably powerful."

GEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF NIAGARA.

The estimate is that nine hundred millions of cubic feet of water pour over Niagara every hour, and great as this ma.s.s is, there is a belief that half the water pa.s.sing into Lake Erie from the upper lakes does not go over the falls, but finds its way into Ontario through a subterranean channel. Nothing demonstrates this theory, but it is advanced to account for the difference between the amount of water acc.u.mulated in the upper lakes and that going over the falls. The actual current is sufficiently enormous, however, and steadily wearing away the rocks over which it descends, it has during the past ages excavated the gorge of the lower rapids. The land surface, which is low at Lake Erie, scarcely rising above the level of its waters, gradually becomes more elevated towards the north, till near Lewiston it is about forty feet above Erie. The Niagara River thus flows in the direction of the ascent of this moderately inclined plane. Beyond this the surface makes a sudden descent towards Lake Ontario of about two hundred and fifty feet down to a plateau, upon which stands Lewiston on the American side and Queenston on the Canadian side of the river.

There thus is formed a bold terrace looking out upon Ontario, from which that lake is seven miles away, and from the foot of the terrace the surface descends gently one hundred and twenty feet farther to the lake sh.o.r.e. The gorge through which the river flows is three hundred and sixty-six feet deep at this terrace. There is no doubt the first location of the great cataract was on the face of the terrace near Lewiston, and it has gradually retired by the eating away, year after year, of the rocky ledges over which the waters pour. This, however, has not been done in a hurry, for the geologists studying the subject estimate that it has required nearly thirty-seven thousand years to bring the falls from Lewiston back to their present location. In fact, from the stratification, Professor Aga.s.siz expressed the opinion that at one time there were three distinct cataracts in Niagara River.

During the brief time observations have been made, great fragments of rocks have been repeatedly carried down by the current pouring over Niagara, the frosts a.s.sisting disintegration. This caused not only a recession but decided changes in appearance. Since 1842 the New York State geologists, who then made a careful and accurate topographical map, have been closely watching these changes, and the average rate of recession is estimated at slightly over two feet annually. In Father Hennepin's sketch of 1678 there was a striking feature, since entirely disappeared, a third fall on the Canadian side facing the line of the main cataract, and caused by a large rock turning the diverted fall in this direction, this rock falling, however, in the eighteenth century.

The rate at which recessions occur is not uniform. No change may be apparent for several years, and the soft underlying strata being gradually worn away, great ma.s.ses of the upper and harder formations then tumble down, causing in a brief period marked changes. At the present location of the cataract, sheets of hard limestone cover the surface of the country, and from the top of the falls to eighty or ninety feet depth. Shaly layers are under these. All the strata slope gently downward against the river current at the rate of about twenty-five feet to the mile. Above the falls, in the rapids, the limestone strata are piled upon each other, until about fifty feet more are added to the formation, when they all disappear under the outcropping edges of the next series above, composed of marls and shales. Through these piles of strata the cataract has worked its way back, receding probably most rapidly in cases where, as at present, the lower portion of the cutting was composed of soft beds of rock, which being hollowed out and removed by frost and water, let down the harder strata above. The effect of continual recession must be to diminish the height of the falls, both by raising the river level at their base and by the sloping of the surmounting limestone strata to a lower level. A recession of two miles farther, the geologists say, will cut away both the hard and the soft layers, and then the cataract will become almost stationary on the lower sandstone formation, with its height reduced to about eighty feet. This diminution in the Niagara attractions might be startling were it not estimated that it can hardly be accomplished for some twelve thousand years.

APPEARANCE OF NIAGARA.