Our impatience induced us to prefer the
latter, not very wisely, I think, for every annoyance seemed to
increase upon us. The Oneida and the Genesee country are both
extremely beautiful, but had we not returned by another route we
should have known little about it. From the canal nothing is
seen to advantage, and very little is seen at all. My chief
amusement, I think, was derived from names. One town, consisting
of a whiskey store and a warehouse, is called Port Byron. At
Rome, the first name I saw over a store was Remus, doing infinite
honour, I thought, to the classic lore of his godfathers and
godmothers; but it would be endless to record all the drolleries
of this kind which we met with. We arrived at Rochester, a
distance of a hundred and forty miles, on the second morning
after leaving Utica, fully determined never to enter a canal boat
again, at least, not in America.
Rochester is one of the most famous of the cities built on the
Jack and Bean-stalk principle. There are many splendid edifices
in wood; and certainly more houses, warehouses, factories, and
steam-engines than ever were collected together in the same space
of time; but I was told by a fellow-traveller that the stumps of
the forest are still to be found firmly rooted in the cellars.
The fall of the Genesee is close to the town, and in the course
of a few months will, perhaps, be in the middle of it. It is a
noble sheet of water, of a hundred and sixty feet perpendicular
fall; but I looked at it through the window of a factory, and as
I did not like that, I was obligingly handed to the door-way of a
sawing-mill; in short, "the great water privilege" has been so
ingeniously taken advantage of, that no point can be found where
its voice and its movement are not mixed and confounded with
those of the "admirable machinery of this flourishing city.
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