CAPITAL, and most delectable to see, is the lake of Geneva, and that beautiful gem of a town which crowns its crystal wave, above a strip of emerald verdure, and gardens flowering in the sun of June! How sweet the day beams on those banks repose!' As we neared them, toward the going down of the sun, methought I was like the pilgrim of Bunyan, approaching the glorious regions of the land of Beulah, and that I could discern the spirits of the blessed walking in white' along its romantic terraces. It seemed a fairy city of the heart;' and for one short but delicious moment, I felt overcome with that enthusiasm engendered by the eye within the mind, and deserving that striking observation of Madame De Stäel, the superfluity of the soul,' thinking the while of PERCIVAL's noble lines to the Seneca waters:

'On thy fair bosom, silver lake,

The wild swan spreads his snowy sail,
And round his breast the ripples break,
As down he bears before the gale.'

WHO was that anonymous herald of mine, who recorded beneath my signature, as we proceeded toward the sunset, at every town where we paused to give breath to our cattle, the name of Ollapod, with many compliments in the Latin tongue? Whoever he was, I stretch forth to him the hand of fancy. Thou Grand Inconnu!-touch thy dextral digits in thought; consider thine own vehemently squeezed; and remain, if thou wilt, the kind Unknown-at once corporeal and yet spiritual; a creation insubstantial; an entity, yet intangible—'umbra, civis, nihil!

No OFFENCE to the turnpike company whose duty it is to superintend the roads betwixt Geneva and Canandaigua; but candor compels to say, they are a set of negligent varlets, deserving the anathemas of all who travel by land or by water,' especially those who abandon the cheating extras, and adopt the Telegraph. What right have these inviduals to keep the holes in the turnpike so deep, and yet so treacherous? One looks out with anxious eye to see what is going to come' in the way of thoroughfare- and lo! distance lends enchantment to the view. The gilded pool seems dry; the deceitful pudding of clay has a look of solidity-but anon! - sqush!-down drop the wheels in frontcreack! rings the tried and doubtful axle He' ep'!-d-nation!' saith the driver; 'Oh!' says the timid lady within; Ha! ha! that was a screamer!' ejaculates the western speculator, filled to the brim with animal spirits! An oncommon deep'ole!' says the English emigrant; 'I thank God! we are out!' says the politician; Uh, umph, whe-e-ze!' ejaculates the dozing and uncertain passenger, who has been travelling day and night for a week; and thus the time goes on, until the day is well nigh spent, and you see the farewell light of day playing over the sweet waters and Elysian bowers of Canandaigua.

RICH and bountiful Ontario! - called by politicians the 'infected dis

trict,' by poets the garden of the state the affluent parterre of every thing good for man, or nutritious for beast. The sheen of thy waters is yet in my eye; the breath of thy clover fields yet regaleth my nostrils; I seem, (here in this crowded home, with the liveried coaches rattling in my ear, and the city's voice booming about me,) I seem to be stealing flowers from the demesnes of some unknown Peri, or partaking the hospitality of friends and brethren. Beautiful country! - thou art the rus in urbe of my thought! In thy mansions I have been seated, with all those culinary appliances and varied wines which smack of the city, over hearths beneath which repose the bones of unnumbered Indians, with no circumstance to tell me of the country, save the hallowed stillness the distant wheat fields waving to the breeze of summer — the rural spire crowning the distant hill, or the bleating of sheep, huddling together from the heat of the day, in the shade! Precious hours! They throng back upon my memory with influences of peace; with the hum of bees, the voice of waving branches, the tones of childhood, the prattle of running waters, and with the glow of the lake, which seemed to expand as the twilight drew near,

That, smiling from the sweet south-west,
The sunbeams might rejoice its breast.

One of those still and peaceful lakes,
That in a shining cluster lie,

On which the south wind scarcely breaks
The image of the sky.

He who, having seen thee once, can easily forget thee, is fit for

treason.

TO THE unobservant eye, doubtless there is much in the Genessee region that may seem dull and tame. To the enthusiastic, the closeviewing, or the romantic, it is not so. The villages are thriving and neat-the country rich in every thing and 'the rising generation,' the children, are lovely specimens of juvenile humanity. We saw them, in almost every meadow we passed, up to their knees in strawberry-vines and clover, gathering the blossoms of the one and the fruits of the other. Pleasant beyond description, too, are the white dwellings in the towns, embowered in the honey-locust tree, or lifting their pale chimneys behind the tall and melancholy poplars which whisper around.

A LUDICROUS incident occurred at Batavia. There is a creek in the neighborhood, which makes upward of considerable' noise, after nightfall. The English passenger, who reached the town before us, by leaving the stage and walking on foot, imagined it to be the Falls of Niagara, from which we were then between fifty and sixty miles. He went out and listened. My God!' said he, 'what oncommon roaring falls them is! They must ey-ther be verry 'igh, or else the winds is riz.' The mistake was not corrected, and the fellow retired to rest, with his stupid cranium firmly impressed with the belief that his long ears had caught the sound of the Great Cataract.

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TRAVELER! as thou wendest toward the West, if thou art within some fifteen miles of Batavia, and thinkest of pausing for the night, rescind the mental resolution, and post on to that town. There shalt thou experience a good bed, and delicious rest, with the murmur of the Tonnawanta breathing upon the night air thy quiet lullaby. Do this to the end that, rising in the morning, thou go to Richville, and there to breakfast, which is an hospitable town, and hath an hotel whose superior is not to be found, whether thou go to the south-west or northwest, or indeed to any point of the compass. Comfortable and expeditious BLODGET! The voluminousness of thy periphery indicateth the epicure; upon the pullets thou sacrificest, are the pin-feathers of youth; thy warm cakes are done deliciously brown; thy yellow butter, thy irreproachable eggs, thy unimpeachable coffee-my mnemonical palate remembers them all. Murder Creek, too, is in thy vicinity; and as it goes moaning onward under the rude bridge which spans it, the reflection of bright red mills upon its shore, as they give back the sunbeam, gives it murder's proper hue and damnéd spot.' The tradition is, that a poor crazy old man was killed here by the Indians, many years ago, in the early settlement of the country:

'May be be true, may be be no so —

We'll grant it is, and let it go so.'

At any rate (BLODGET, I thank thee for the sentence,) — if Richville hath the memory of death, it hath likewise, and in full profusion, the means of life.

It is anti-agreeable to post over a road which looks like a river, and where the course your conveyance is to take is indicated by stakes implanted in the solid part of that 'undiscovered country' over which you are rolling as it were in a ship. Such was our experience through a part of the Genessee region. But I caught one view from the window of our coach, which I shall not soon forget. Along the distant uplands of the Genessee, there lay a long plain of mist, with irregular indentations, like the bays of a lake; above them rose a gorgeous array of clouds, and between both, a wide stretch of verdure. The mist looked like an ocean; the fragments that sailed by themselves, or hung in motionless masses in the air, appeared like towers and temples. The effect was indescribably magnificent.

TEN miles to the east of Buffalo, I looked out from our conveyance, filled with anxious expectation. For the most part, the day had been a day of wind and storm; but the tempest had passed over the winds had back to their caves - and the sun looked forth from the west, gone with features of unutterable beauty. A vast curtain of clouds rolled up from the north and north-west, leaving the clarified sky so darkly and serenely blue, that it almost approached the purple. It was that part of the heavens which bent its unfathomable arch over the expanse of Erie and Niagara, on its resounding journey to the Ontario. Far as the eye could reach, on every hand, save the rising road toward the west, all the region round about was level as the floor of a city

saloon. But the radius embraced by the eye was small, from that very circumstance. The only evidence we had of our proximity to those great inland oceans, just mentioned, was traceable in the bending heads of those distant forest trees which were higher than the surrounding monarchs of the wild. These, with the orchard trees on both sides of the way, inclined to the east at an angle of three horizontal to one vertical foot. There were the symptoms of approach to Old Erie. There the constant winds from the west had howled their winter anthems, and wailed in praise of the strength and grandeur of Omnipotence. As I was saying, I looked forth from our vehicle; and becoming too much excited with expectation to remain within, a gentleman, who knew my impatience, counselled me to wait until we reached a slight eminence beyond, where he told me I should in all probability behold a sight worth seeing. This vague announcement sharpened my curiosity. At last, the trivial eminence was reached, and my friend bade me cast my glance to the north-west. I looked, and beheld, rising above the level distance, apparently thirty miles off, a spiral pillar of steamy mist, against the perfect sky, uplifting itself with slow and solemn movement, ending in a column of faint, and quivering, and beautiful crimson.

What do you think that is?' said my friend.

Quite unable to answer the question, I confessed my ignorance in the phraseology of Polonius: By the mass, I cannot tell.'

That,' he said, is the spray from the Niagara!

I felt my blood rush quicker, and tingle through my veins, at the mere mention of the name. I mounted on the outside with the driver, and surveyed every object near and far with the intense delight and quick sense of novelty which I have cherished from my youth.

4

How high is the sun?'- I inquired of the postillion, after the seeming lapse of a few moments, as the great orb appeared rapidly nearing the horizon -and what is the distance from Buffalo ?'

The sun is two hours up yet, Sir, and I expect we are a mild and a half from the city-jest about' - answered Whip.

It was not without a laugh at his idea of calling Buffalo a city, that I buttoned the over-coat which the freshening wind from Erie, yet unseen, had rendered requisite, and abandoned myself to the intoxication of my expectant thoughts. Shortly, we began to ascend a rise of ground; higher sweeps of landscape rolled upward from afar; smokes, as from distant steam-boats, arose heavenward; bright domes appeared; and all at once beautiful sight! -the city,' with its spires, and squares, and streets, lay at my feet; a magnificent thoroughfare, Old Main, as the Buffalonians call it, stretched for miles before my eye; palaces were around me; the thick spars of innumerable ships streamed their colors on the breeze; water craft were hastening to the Canadas, lying greenly and beautiful across the bay; and beyond all, Lake Erie stretched its tremblingly blue expanse toward the West, with shadows of golden clouds trailing over its bosom, and ships melting afar off into nothingness, toward the chamber of the evening sun! Reader, Buffalo is a

wonder and a marvel. Approach it as I did, in summer, and on Sunday. To its various portals, as did the strangers to old Rome,

THE whole of the Genessee country is but a tame, yet it is a beautiful, prelude to those splendid pictures in that magnificent scenery of the West, of which Buffalo forms the opening view.

Tell me,' said I to my Jehu, 'what is the population of this 'city,' which we are approaching?'

It is nigh to twenty thousand, friend! ejaculated the dispenser of impulses to the cattle before him, with an evident feeling of pleasure that he was showing wonders; and what's more, stranger, we shall soon be at the Eagle. Jest let me ask you, 'Square, did you ever see any think like that 'are?'

I turned to the direction of his whip, to the south-west, where a bay of Erie bent into the woodlands, stretching for miles.

'What is that?' I inquired.

'Why, it's Buffalo! You see the streets of the outskirts, marked out in the edges of the woods, several miles off; you see the white buildings among the green trees, where the stumps is n't yet grubbed up; and where they do say, that sheep and deer is enclosed in the cellars of houses, built to nearly the second story and yet they say - and I believe it that there is n't a house in all Buffalo, fur and nigh, outskirts and in-skirts, that has n't more tenants than can be disposed of.' I continued to gaze in the direction he had pointed; and truly the sight was beyond the blazon of tongue or pen. It seemed to my eye as if more than half of the city of Buffalo had been but yesterday redeemed from the wilderness. A town of brick, large, stately, and imposing in itself, was encompassed on all sides by extending tenements of white, sufficient in number to form a dozen country villages; in the middle of the town were country seats, surrounded with parks, through which the deer bounded, as in those early days—not long ago when the shores of Erie were forests, and the lake was crossed only by the adventurous canoe of the daring Indian; when if a young Pale Face came to tempt them, he was admonished by the Red Skins to forbear: Son of the stranger! wouldst thou take O'er yon blue hills thy lonely way,

VOL. VIII.

To reach the still and shining lake,

Along whose banks the west winds play?

Let no vain dreams thy heart beguile

Oh, seek not thou the Fountain Isle !

Bright, bright, in many a rocky urn,
The waters of our deserts lie
Yet at their source, the lip shall burn,
Parched with the fever's agony;
From the blue mountains to the main,
Our thousand floods may roll in vain.

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