mother
Nature, after having perfected the gigantic cataract originally begun at
Lewistown, was so tickled and delighted with her production, that she
resolved to make a pathway for the children of men to come and see her
prodigy--accordingly she went to work and made this beautiful turnpike
of from eight to twelve rods wide, of hard gravel and sand, through a
low country of swamp and clay--and said to the children of men, "Travel,
behold and wonder!" But, to speak seriously upon the subject. I should
say that when the falls were at Lewistown, this remarkable natural
turnpike was the shore and beach of Ontario, as the whole of the land
lying between it and the lake is low and swampy. Its direction is in
form of a curve, and parallel to the lake shore. Its elevation above the
land on either side is from ten to thirty feet, and is perfectly hard,
and free from stones and ruts.

This indeed seems to be the country of the _greats_ and the _grands_.
Here we have the Grand Clinton Canal, the Great Western Turnpike, the
Great and Grand Falls of Niagara, the Great Lakes, the scites of the
Great Battles, the Great Ridge Road, and many others that I have not
seen.

After leaving Lewistown for some miles, for the first time in my life I
saw some _woodland_--all that I had heretofore seen, when compared to
this, was brushwood. In the first place, there were thousands of trees
of all sizes down and rotting, while those that were standing, were many
of them 100 feet high, and from 6 to 8 feet in diameter, with
occasionally a sapling of 3 feet in diameter by 80 feet high! Taking the
whole of this road, it presents pretty nearly what I had supposed this
country to be generally, as it was for the most part in possession of
the pioneers, chequered with stumps, log cabins, and towering girdled
trees, with fine wheat growing in the middle. It was matter of surprise
to me how any person could winter in some of their rude dwellings and
wretched hovels. The villages on this road are Hartland, Oak Orchard,
Gaines, and Clarkson, all thriving little places.

_Rochester._--I arose early, as usual, and found a delightful morning.
After breakfast I spent several hours in rambling through and about this
town of rapid growth. There is no great beauty about it, and at this
time I consider it a dirty place. All the streets are filled with mud
and rubbish. Building is the order of the day, but there are few houses
in the place which can be called han