purpose of clearing it, the country would not have produced that malignant disorder; but it appears to me now sufficiently healthy. A mile before you reach Daly's, you cross a wooden bridge thrown over a very deep hollow in which a small stream runs, that joins the lower falls. About fifty yards after you have passed this bridge, there is to the right, a path, not very plain indeed, but to be discovered by looking attentively. This path leads to a part of the bank, where young and active persons may descend for the purpose of viewing the lower falls. The two upper falls can be sufficiently seen from the road. As this descent is rather rough and difficult, I chose to go on to M'Dermot's or Daly's, where there is usually a boat kept. I gave a man half a dollar to row me from thence a mile up to the lower falls of Genesee. These falls are fifty-seven feet perpendicular; the whole river is here again precipitated. I calculated the breadth of the river here at about fifty rods wide: the general width of the river for some miles above the rapids seems about sixteen rod from bank to bank, when the river is moderately full. The dimensions above given would make the total fall of the river one hundred and seventy-three feet; add about thirty or forty feet for the three miles of rapids which are by no means so precipitous as at Niagara, and the total amount of fall will be about the same at both places. This strengthens the conjecture, that the stratum at Niagara falls is the same as at the falls of Genesee. I know of nothing to oppose to this, except that the Table Rock is perfect limestone, which abounds also in that part of the country; whereas I saw no symptom of this stone through the whole course of the Genesee, from Hartford to its mouth. It is probable, however, that the bed of the Genesee may be limestone, if it be true that lead ore is found there in various places. I saw no specimen of it.

After the falls of Niagara, these are decidedly the grandest, as well as the most beautiful thing of the kind I have seen, heard or read of. The excavated amphitheatre, allows the eye to take in a circumference of nearly half a mile, though the falls themselves are not more than the breadth I have assigned to the river. But the variegated colour of the strata, red and white, now contrasted, now softened into each other, intermixed with the green foliage of the cedar above, below, and interspersed here and there in the midst of

the rock, afford a contrast of object and of tint, so warm and cheerful, so rich and glowing, that I know of nothing to be compared with it. The eye takes in this delightful scene at the same

time with the immense cascade that terminates the view. A view so intermingling the beautiful with the sublime, that it will well bear the contemplation of an amateur even after the falls of Niagara.

The strata near the falls opposite the station for viewing them, below the cedars on the surface, seemed to me as follow. 1. A gray loamy soil (warm tint) about six feet. 1. Whitish siliceo-argillaceous schistus in laminæ of from nine to eighteen inches. This seems to occupy about twelve feet. 3. Reddish siliceo-argillaceous stone, approaching to a reddle, but not so soft. Of the softer kinds of this stone the inhabitants in the neighbourhood make a kind of red paint. This stratum appears to occupy about sixteen feet. 4. White argillaceous shale about eight feet. 5. Loose gravelly soil to the bottom, about thirty feet. This guess-work measurement allows about fifteen feet for the height of the bank to the surface of the river, but I think it is hardly so much.

The cedars are in masses, at the top and at the bottom, and here and there beautifully growing out of the middle strata, suspended by their roots. There were half a dozen men and boys catching fish close to the falls. They had caught, in about two hours before I came there, three sturgeon, a few large pike, and about twenty perch-bass, a fish weighing generally about three quarters of a pound, and, in external appearance, very like a rock fish of the same size. The sturgeon are without scales. The largest was gutted and cleaned and its head cut off. I lifted it in that state, and agreed to the common conjecture that it weighed about sixty pounds. This was sold in my presence for six shillings, York money. They catch also in the spring, very commonly, catfish from ten to twenty-five pounds weight,* which are esteemed as the best fish these waters furnish. They have here also a white fish, so called, but of its qualities I had no means of judging. The pickerell, the salmon-trout, the perch-bass, the pike and the catfish, I know by experience to be very good.

(To be concluded in our next.)

I have been told on good authority, of a catfish of ninety'pounds weight caught in the Alleghany, and brought to Pittsburg market.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

MR. OLDSCHOOL,

The following oration on fortitude was delivered several years ago at Princeton College, and is attributed to the pen of an accomplished scholar in Maryland. It may exhibit too great an exuberance of fancy to please the fastidious; but it is certainly indicative of talents and reflects the irradiations of genius. The sentiments in this piece are just, and the examples adduced in illustration of the subject, striking. The language is animated and the descriptions vivid; but, perhaps, it would have been better had the writer relied more on his own powers and imitated less the style of others. This is the rock on which thousands are wrecked, who aspire after oratorical fame. What is sublime in the original often degenerates into bombast in an imitator. The writer of the subsequent piece evidently had his eye directed towards the eloquent Curran. But still the speech has much merit; it excites an interest in the reader as he peruses it; fixes his attention and imparts a degree of enthusiasm that bereaves him of languor or fatigue. INCA.

AN ORATION ON FORTITUDE.

SUCH is the versatility of fortune, such the instability of human happiness, that even those who are at one period surrounded with all the splendid glitter of prosperity; whose situation presents to them the pleasing prospect of a durable happiness, are often by some casual occurrence, some unanticipated event, precipitated from this envied pinnacle of felicity and plunged into the abysses of adversity. When apparently secure from the attacks of fortune, dazzled by the meridian splendour of their affluence, they view not the little cloud, that emerges above their horizon and imperceptibly collecting vigour as it arises, soon obscures the brilliancy of their prospects, and unexpectedly discharges its baneful contents upon their heads. To counteract this inconstancy of fortune, to enjoy present happiness unadulterated by dread anticipations of the future, to arm the mind against the arrows of affliction, no virtue is of more utility than fortitude. Founded upon integrity it liberates us from the base constraint of fear, gives to the judgment the due exercise of its powers, and as it is of superior importance, so also is it essential in the practice of its sister virtues. The man of fortitude unappalled by those terrors which alarm the timorous, unshaken in the hour of danger, views with indifference the frowns

of fate or the machinations of his enemies: true to those principles of honour which regulate, no enticements can allure, no threats deter him from their pursuit. Fraught with a noble magnanimity he freely suffers to advance the interests of his country; but when tyranny menaces, when the arm of injustice is suspended over his head, his soul, fortified against fear and consious of its own innate worth shrinks not from the impending danger, but firm and immovable as the rock, boldly stems the torrent of oppression.

Such were those illustrious personages whom the page of history presents to our view, whose actions ennobled the countries that produced them, whilst their virtue and magnanimity added dignity to humanity.

If we penetrate into antiquity, if we traverse the illustrious ages of Greece and Rome, though our admiration may be excited by those brilliant geniusses, whose works have diffused a lustre upon science, yet we cannot withhold the tribute of applause from their respective worthies, whose deeds while they contribute to their glory and reputation were but the unsullied emanations of their virtuous hearts. Among those distinguished personages we behold heroes and statsemen, who have preferred death to the ruin of their country, and philosophers with a noble resolution smiling on the confines of eternity. We have beheld a Regulus rising su perior to the blandishments of affection or solicitations of friendship, boldly tearing himself from the circle of his relations, and rather than violate the sanctity of his promise, daring with inimitable fortitude the refinements of Punic tortures. We have seen the venerable sage of Athens philosphising amid the horrors of a dungeon, and endeavouring to impart that constancy of mind to his commiserating friends, which was so conspicuously exhibited in himself. When the pestilential breath of detraction had withered that wreath which his wisdom and patriotism had entwined amidst the silvery ornaments of age, when malice had suspended the decrees of justice and pronounced the fatal sentence of his death, whilst grasping the poisonous cup that was to seal his destiny, he poured forth a prayer for the felicity of his country and the happiness of his enemies, his soul, engaged in celestial contemplation, burst its corporeal chains and lanched forth into the eternal world, there to realize its theories while in the body.

But passing over from those illustrious sages, the sacred monuments of human virtue, and which are commemorated by the heroic fortitude of a Cato, a Socrates and a Scævola; modern times present to our consideration many conspicuous examples of magnanimity, and evince that the human mind has not degenerated from its original excellence, but retains its pristine vigour through the lapse of time. I pass over the unfortunate Charles of England, who, dragged to the block from the elevation of royalty, by a tribunal of his rebellious subjects, boldly submitted to his fate. I omit the unhappy queen of Scots, who nobly suffered beneath the cruel sentence of an envious and ambitious sister. I descend to that memorable epocha of Gallic misery, when the purest intentions were perverted to the most horrid purposes. When a simple limitation of individual tyranny, gave rise to universal anarchy; when France rent to her centre by civil discord groaned under the lash of infuriated demagogues, whilst reeking with the blood of their innocent victims.-Here I involuntarily pause. The mind contemplates the present and the past and shrinks with horror from the comparison. It beholds a nation once smiling under the auspices of the arts and sciences, now yielding to the genius of universal desolation, a people once celebrated for their polished habits, now raging with ungovernable fury; where'er the eye revolves it rests on desolation, the altars of the creator are levelled with the dust, the holy temples of religion, where once the pious heart held converse with its God, are now polluted by the destroying engine of despots, and where once the ravishing pæans of the choristers swelled in solemn majesty to the Most High; now numerous victims march to death with a noble fortitude evincive of the purity of their souls. Among these the unfortunate Antoinette most excites our approbation; torn from the splendid summit of a throne, where she had once attracted the plaudits of an admiring multitude, she is now thrust into a narrow dungeon and escapes only to execution; I behold the lofty gates of the Conciergerie open to their illustrious captive; she comes forth attended by the ruffian guard of the republic; a placid serenity sits upon her countenance and manifests that all is calm within her breast; she ascends the scaffold with a steady step; she views the horrid instrument of execution and smiles at the inge