hed and passed a noted landing for canoes and boats, called
_Choishwa_ (Smooth-rock.) This shelter, is formed by a ledge of rock
running into the lake. On the inner, or perpendicular face, hundreds of
names are cut or scratched upon the rock. This _cacoethes scribendi_ is
the pest of every local curiosity or public watering-place. Even here,
in the wilderness, it is developed.

Wise men ne'er cut their names on doors or rock-heads,
But leave the task to scribblers and to blockheads;
Pert, trifling folks, who, bent on being witty,
Scrawl on each post some fag-end of a ditty,
Spinning, with spider's web, their shallow brains,
O'er wainscots, borrowed books, or window panes.

At one o'clock the wind became decidedly fair, and the men, relieved
from their paddles, are nearly all asleep, in the bottom of the canoe.
While the wind drives us forward beautifully I embrace the time to
resume my narrative of early journeyings, dropt yesterday.

In the year 1808, my father removed from Albany to Oneida County. I
remained at the old homestead in Guilderland, in charge of his affairs,
until the following year, when I also came to the west. The next spring
I was offered handsome inducements to go to the Genesee country, by a
manufacturing company, who contemplated the saving of a heavy land
transportation from Albany on the article of window-glass, if the rude
materials employed in it could be found in that area of country. I
visited it with that view; found its native resources ample, and was
still more delighted with the flourishing appearance of this part of the
Western country than I had been with Utica and its environs. Auburn,
Geneva, Canandaigua, and other incipient towns, seemed to me the germs
of a land "flowing with milk and honey."

In 1811, I went on a second trip to Philadelphia, and executed the
object of it with a success equal to my initial visit. On this trip I
had letters to some gentlemen at Philadelphia, who received me in a most
clever spirit, and I visited the Academy of Arts, Peale's Museum, the
Water Works, Navy Yard, &c. I here received my first definite ideas of
painting and sculpture. I returned with new stores of information and
new ideas of the world, but I had lost little or nothing of my primitive
simplicity of feeling or rustic notions of human perfection. And, as I
began to see something of the iniquities of men, I clung more firmly to
my native opinions.

My person