This Avon flows sweetly with
nothing but whiskey and tobacco juice.
The next day's journey was much more interesting, for it showed
us the lake of Canandaigua. It is about eighteen miles long, but
narrow enough to bring the opposite shore, clothed with rich
foliage, near to the eye; the back-ground is a ridge of
mountains. Perhaps the state of the atmosphere lent an unusual
charm to the scene; one of those sudden thunderstorms, so rapid
in approach, and so sombre in colouring, that they change the
whole aspect of things in a moment, rose over the mountains and
passed across the lake while we looked upon it. Another feature
in the scene gave a living, but most sad interest to it. A
glaring wooden hotel, as fine as paint and porticos can make it,
overhangs the lake; beside it stands a shed for cattle. To this
shed, and close by the white man's mushroom palace, two Indians
had crept to seek a shelter from the storm. The one was an aged
man, whose venerable head in attitude and expression indicated
the profoundest melancholy: the other was a youth, and in his
deep-set eye there was a quiet sadness more touching still.
There they stood, the native rightful lords of the fair land,
looking out upon the lovely lake which yet bore the name their
fathers had given it, watching the threatening storm that brooded
there; a more fearful one had already burst over them.
Though I have mentioned the lake first, the little town of
Canandaigua precedes it, in returning from the West.
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