honor, nor New-York the convenience, of having the seat of government in her neighbourhood; but the young western counties are such stout and imperious children, that it will soon be found necessary to consult their interests.

The importance of Utica will soon be increased by the opening of the great canal, destined here to join the Mohawk. We swerved the next day from our direct route for the purpose of looking at this work, now in considerable progress, and which, in its consequences, is truly grand, affording a water high-way from the heart of this great continent to the ocean; commencing at Lake Erie, it finds a level, with but little circuit, to the Mohawk ; at the Lesser Falls are some considerable locks; others will be required at the mouth of the river, where the Hudson opens his broad way to the Atlantic. It is thought that four or five years will now fully complete this work. The most troublesome opposition it has encountered, is in the vast Onondaga swamp, and not a few of the workmen have fallen a sacrifice to its pestilential atmosphere.

Leaving Utica, the country begins to assume a rough appearance; stumps and girdled trees encumbering the inclosures; log-houses scattered here and there; the cultivation rarely extending more than half a mile, nor usually so much, on either hand; when the forest, whose face is usually ren

dered hideous to the eye of the traveller by a skirting line of girdled trees, half standing, half falling, stretches its vast, unbroken shade over plain, and hill, and dale; disappearing only with the horizon. Frequently, however, gaining a rising ground (and the face of the country is always more or less undulating), you can distinguish gaps, sometimes long and broad, in the deep verdure, which tell that the axe and the plough are waging war with the wilderness. Owing to some disputed claims in the tenure of the lands, cultivation has made less progress here than it has farther west, as we found on approaching the Sknenéatalas, Cayuga, Seneka, Onondaga, and Canadaigua lakes. Having passed the flourishing town of Auburn, we found the country much more open; well-finished houses, and thriving villages, appearing continually. The fifth day from that of our departure from Albany brought us to this village, where our kind fellowtravellers insisted on becoming our hosts. The villages at the head of the different lakes I have enumerated above, are all thriving, cheerful, and generally beautiful; but Canadaigua, I think, bears away the palm. The land has been disposed of in lots of forty acres each, one being the breadth, running in lines diverging on either hand from the main road. The houses are all delicately painted; their windows with green Venetian blinds, peeping gaily through fine young trees,

or standing forward more exposed on their little lawns, green and fresh as those of England. Smiling gardens, orchards laden with fruit quinces, apples, plums, peaches, &c. and fields, rich in golden grain, stretch behind each of these lovely villas; the church with its white steeple rising in the midst, overlooking this land of enchantment.

The increase of population, the encroachment of cultivation on the wilderness, the birth of settlements, and their growth into towns, surpasses belief, till one has been an eye-witness of the miracle, or conversed on the spot with those who have been so. It is wonderfully cheering to find yourself in a country which tells only of improvement. What other land is there that points not the imagination back to better days, contrasting present decay with departed strength, or that, even in its struggles to hold a forward career, is not checked at every step by some physical or political hinderance?

I think it was one of the sons of Constantine, I am sure that it was one of his successors, who, returning from a visit to Rome, said, that he had learned one thing there," that men died in that queen of cities as they did elsewhere." It might require more, perhaps, to remind a stranger of the mortality of his species in these states, than it did in old Rome. All here wears so much the gloss of novelty—all around you breathes so much of

the life and energy of youth, that a wanderer from the antique habitations of time-worn Europe might look around, and deem that man here held a new charter of existence; that time had folded his wings, and the sister thrown away the shears.

TAKING a kind farewell of our hospitable friends in Canadaigua, we struck into the forest, and by a cross road, helter skelter over stumps and logs, rattled in a clumsy conveyance to this thriving settlement on the banks of the Genessee. The road, though rough, was not wholly without its interest; at first, opening prospects of hills and valleys, where sometimes the white walls of a young settlement glanced in the sun, relieving the boundless" continuity of shade;" and then bordered occasionally with corn-fields and young orchards of peach and apple, groaning beneath their weight of riches. The withered trees of the forest stood indeed among them; but though these should mar beauty, they give a character to the scene that speaks to the heart, if not to the eye.

welcome

We were received with a warm by Mr. and Mrs. Wadsworth, a name you are