WITH the exception of the Genesee region, justly called by Clinton the finest wheat country in the world, the valley of the Mohawk is the most fertile part of the state of New York. Even when covered with forest, the sagacious eye of Washington detected its rare promise; and on his way to Fort Stanwix, with Lafayette, he noted many sections for purchase, the title deeds of which still bear his illustrious name. In June, the slopes along the river present acres of the darkest loam, dotted with luxuriant spears of maize, or thick with tender grain; fields of yellow daisies twinkle like innumerable flakes of gold in the sun; lofty and graceful elms rise, at intervals, from meadows of emerald; broad undulations, with here and there a clump of trees, give an English air to the landscape; orchards vary the succession of pasture lots; the Mohawk, for the most part, glides as peacefully and through as cultivated a land as the Dee or the Isis; but it is sometimes more picturesque, from a rocky bluff, a wooded bank, or the rush and whiteness of rapids which, in any region less famous for beautiful waterfalls, would be thought worthy the name of cataracts to be designated in the traveler's guide book.

One of these interruptions, to the otherwise placid current and uniform direction of the beautiful stream, which, all at once, transforms the view from a Cuyp to a Salvator picture, occurs at Little Falls-where the rail-track has been cut through an immense boulder of solid rock-memorable as having given birth to the first instance of canal navigation in the state, afterwards under the auspicious rule of Clinton, the source of her extraordinary growth and prosperity. To correct the impeded flow of the Mohawk at this point, a channel was excavated around the falls, which, in its miniature efficiency, seems to foretell the great Erie canal adjacent. As the traveler scans this artificial water-course, the offspring of such patient zeal, whose history is associated with long and bitter political strife and its completion with a national festival, his imagination expatiates in the vast subsequent triumph of the genius of communication thus initiated;

he remembers within how brief a period, canals which bind lake and river from one end of the continent to the other, interminable lines of railroads and endless threads of telegraph-wires, like so many arteries, veins and nerves, have joined the Atlantic and Pacific shores, and the Hudson and Mississippi, with the immense territory between, into one vital national body. Watching, from the whirling cars, the slow barge as it glides through fields of clover, grain, and fruit trees, by thriving villages, and under umbrageous hills, he contrasts the scene with more early days of pioneer and border transit, when the capricious road, the weary oar, the solitary horse or the lumbering stage were the only means of progress through a salubrious and productive, but lonely, country, now laid open to the hourly reception of news from the seaboard, produce of the far interior, and travelers from ocean mart and inland prairie. The Mohawk flats are inundated every year, and the substantial dwellings of the farmers evidence large and certain crops; the groups of wooden buildings, with school and courthouse, church, tavern, hay-scales, and "variety-store," the mills and factories, the piles of lumber, herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep, give the animation of human enterprise and cheerful industry to the broad valley. Gently rising hills inclose the river, and, as far as the eye can reach, spreads her green and unduating panorama, amid which rural comfort seems to nestle and fertile beauty to repose. Nor is the scene merely typical of natural resources; with all its freshness there are names and places that awaken local and personal reminiscences not without significance. A few miles back from the river, at one point, stands the old stone mansion, so long garrisoned by Sir William Johnson and his Indian braves, whose daring exploits and savage grace were the theme of border story, and caused West to compare the Apollo Belvidere to one of their warriors, and the writers in the Spectator to designate the elegant rowdies of London by the name of their tribe; hence I allied the border chieftain with his wild followers to engage in the defense of a solitary fort or dismay the regular troops of Europe

by an ambush; here was the scene of Brant's career, the formidable ally in the French, and the dreaded foe in the revolutionary war. Not far inland. at another point, is the town of Steuben and the grave of the gallant Baron, whose military tactics, acquired under the great Frederic, were of such essential service in the discipline of the raw continentals. To that spot, then a wilderness, he proudly retired, after the war, and lived contentedly in a log-hut, desiring no visitors but the German peasants he had caused to emigrate, who tilled the soil, and such of his old brother officers as accident or inclination brought to the secluded farm. There he passed the last years of his life and was buried in a spot previously selected by himself. A curious accident has transmitted the name of the brave and childless soldier. When the roll of his regiment was called, on one occasion, he heard the name of Benedict Arnold responded to. Forward two paces," exclaimed the indignant Baron; where did you get that name?" Honestly, sir; I was born in Connecticut, and it's no fault of mine." "It will be," replied Steuben, "if you bear it longer; henceforth take mine and answer to Steuben." The man obeyed, and a numerous posterity, as well as the town where many of them reside, have made the honorable appellative a household word in the region where the punctilious veteran breathed his last.

A young squaw-one of the miserable remnants of a once large and powerful tribe, who figure so prominently in the annals of the old French war, the massacre at Schenectady, and the writings of ethnologists-entered the cars about ten miles from what is called the Oneida reservation: for, even in this populous region, a few acres of their once boundless domain are preserved for the débris of the race to dwindle away before the rapid encroachments of civilization. This Indian girl was a fine specimen of her deteriorated tribe; her coarse but abundant black hair, high cheek bones, heavily moulded jaw, and her forehead bore the aboriginal stamp; a most lustrous eye of the deepest jet alone gave animation to her massive features; a gravity all but morose brooded over her countenance, and a latent subtlety and animal fire seemed to gleam under

her dark skin and in her furtive but sharp glances. She wore an immense black beaver hat, and several ells of fine blue cloth served as a mantle. She offered her embroidered moccasins and purses for sale with a mute and proud air, and then passed to the platform and left this flying installment of pale faces at the first station. The incident excites a curious sensation in the traveler unfamiliar with such a casual bringing together of the two extremes of life and history-the child of the wilderness and the triumph of modern science, the descendant of a vanquished and fading people and one of those daily caravans that sweep over the site of the primeval forest, a century ago marked by the savage trail, and silent, but for the hunter's rifle and the panther's

scream.

Not less bewildering is the contrast between names and places in this region. To-day I have passed through Verona and Rome; and the scene conjured to the mind's eye by the conductor's vociferous announcement formed a singular accompaniment to the actual prospect. Instead of the ancient and vast amphitheatre where I lingered years ago in the feeble twilight of an Italian spring day, a canal barge freighted with lumber scented the air with that odor of fresh cut pine and hemlock which conveys so vividly the idea of the new and the temporary; destined probably to be transformed, by a few days' labor, into a frame dwelling, compared with which the venerable and stately palaces of Palladio seem to belong to another globe as well as a distant age; and instead of Juliet's mossy sarcophagus, the newly-chiseled headstones in a grave-yard, whose dates scarcely reach back further than an ordinary life-time! A flock of dirty geese cackled on the green at Rome, as if to remind us that their fellows saved the ancient capitol; but the mean range of wooden buildings and the dingy tavern dispelled such retrospective illusions. The only noble object in view was a magnificent elm, and the distant woods looked fresh and beautiful. Nature thus links herself with reminiscences in this new land more genially than its human symbols; she is always venerable and coincides with the imagination in all its vagaries. A motley group of German emigrants waiting for the train hinted the great phenomenon of the

country and the times: the refuge this continent affords the famished peasants of Europe-the law of emigration and blending of races on a fresh and limitless arena, where space and laws permit the most free of social, economical and political experiments. This adoption of classical appellations for American towns, however, is a serious absurdity: it wounds the sense of the appropriate, and introduces a pedantic conceit amid her freshest associations of nature and enterprise. Some of these names were adopted by pioneers, surveyors, and commissioners, and others, as in the case of Utica, decided by lot. The bad taste and incongruous ideas in which they originated is less excusable from the fact, that the Indian names of river, valley, lake and mountain in western New York were remarkable for their significance and beauty. How much more musical and appropriate would be the name of Mohawk and Ontario than Rome and Verona! In some instances the local names have been retained. Oneida and Seneca preserve the watch-words of the forest kings, and have an historical and traditional interest dear to poet and annalist; while Geneva has nothing but its lake to recall Switzerland, and Syracuse is a reproach to the memory of Archimedes-by her neglect of the latest and best scientific processes for the evaporation of her salt.*

At Utica is located an asylum for the insane, of great celebrity; its extent and arrangements are impressive. Built of Trenton limestone, and the front adorned with massive pillars, there is but one feature in the external view of the grounds and edifice which diminishes the satisfaction of the spectator,

and that is so easily remedied that one is astonished at its existence. The gateway is awry, and many an inmate, with a large organ of order, must feel cerebral irritation, when, gazing from under the noble portico, his eye takes in this deformity. On the parlor wall is a remarkable specimen of card-work, a trophy of the patient ingenuity which so often coexists with mental aberration. In several of the wards, the absence of that mephitic exhalation which belongs to similar institutions elsewhere, was explained by a recent improvement in ventilation: an enormous fan, moved by steam, drives a current of fresh air constantly through passages in the walls; they likewise serve to convey the pipes for furnaceheat; and thus it is found easy, not only to regulate the temperature, but to increase, to any degree, the atmospheric supply-an obvious benefit, both on the score of health and cheerfulness, is the result. The garden, laundry, and chapel are equally indicative of superior comforts. This establishment is eminently curative in its aim and discipline, and it is highly creditable to the humanity of the state; yet the intensely painful associations which surround lunacy, under the most favorable circumstances, weighed upon mind and sense, as we threaded the corridors and looked into the rooms. Here stood a confirmed hypochondriac, the incarnation of woe; there chattered a wildeyed and voluble maniac, whose animal spirits seemed excited by the effervescence of his brain; now came dancing in a newly-arrived lunatic, held by two keepers; now a German harangue, and again a medley in English, half political and half reli

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