After an absence of a few days, during which there had raged a perpetual
storm, I came back to the Clifton Hotel, to find my beautiful Falls
quite spoiled and discoloured. Instead of the soft aquamarine hue,
relieved with purest white, a dull dirty brown now imbued the waters.
This is owing to the shallowness of Lake Erie, where every storm turns
up the muddy bed from the bottom, and discolours the whole river. The
spray, instead of hovering in light clouds round and above the
cataracts, was beaten down, and rolled in volumes round their base; then
by the gusty winds driven along the surface of the river hither and
thither, covering everything in the neighbourhood with a small rain. I
sat down to draw, and in a moment the paper was wet through. It is as if
all had been metamorphosed during my absence--and I feel very
disconsolate.
The whole of this district between the two great lakes is superlatively
beautiful, and was the first settled district in Upper Canada; it is now
the best cultivated. The population is larger in proportion to its
extent than that of any other district. In Niagara, and in the
neighbouring district of Gore, many fruits come to perfection, which are
not found to thrive in other parts of the province, and cargoes of
fruit are sent yearly to the cities of Lower Canada, where the climate
is much more severe and the winter longer than with us.
On the other side the country is far less beautiful, and they say less
fertile, but rich in activity and in population; and there are within
the same space at least half a dozen flourishing towns. Our speculating
energetic Yankee neighbours, not satisfied with their Manchester, their
manufactories, and their furnaces, and their mill "privileges," have
opened a railroad from Lewiston to Buffalo, thus connecting Lake Erie
with the Erie Canal. On our side, we have the Welland Canal, a
magnificent work, of which the province is justly proud; it unites Lake
Erie with Lake Ontario.
Yet from the Falls all along the shores of the Lake Erie to the Grand
River and far beyond it, the only place we have approaching to a town is
Chippewa, just above the rapids, as yet a small village, but lying
immediately in the road from the Western States to the Falls. From
Buffalo to this place the Americans run a steam-boat daily; they have
also planned a suspension bridge across the Niagara river, between
Lewiston and Queenston. Another village, Dunnville, on the Grand River,
is likely to be the commercial depot of that part of the province; it is
situated where the Welland Canal joins Lake Erie.
As the weather continued damp and gloomy, without hope of change, a
sudden whim seized me to go to Buffalo for a day or two; so I crossed
the turbulent ferry to Manchester, and thence an engine, snorting,
shrieking like fifty tortured animals, conveyed us to Tonawando[6], once
a little village of Seneca Indians, now rising into a town of some size
and importance; and there to my great delight I encountered once more my
new friends, Mr. and Mrs. MacMurray, who were on their return from
Toronto to the Sault-Sainte-Marie. We proceeded on to Buffalo together,
and during the rest of the day had some pleasant opportunities of
improving our acquaintance.
Buffalo, as all travel-books will tell you, is a very fine young city,
about ten years old, and containing already about twenty thousand
inhabitants. There is here the largest and most splendid hotel I have
ever seen, except at Frankfort. Long rows of magnificent houses--not of
painted wood, but of brick and stone--are rising on every side.
The season is unusually dull and dead, and I hear nothing but complaints
around me; but compared to our Canadian shore, all here is bustle,
animation, activity. In the port I counted about fifty vessels, sloops,
schooners and steam-boats; the crowds of people buying, selling,
talking, bawling; the Indians lounging by in their blankets, the men
looking so dark, and indifferent, and lazy; the women so busy,
care-worn, and eager; and the numbers of sturdy children, squalling,
frisking among the feet of busy sailors,--formed altogether a strange
and amusing scene.
On board the Michigan steamer, then lying ready for her voyage up the
lakes to Chicago, I found all the arrangements magnificent to a degree I
could not have anticipated. This is one of three great steam-boats
navigating the Upper Lakes, which are from five to seven hundred tons
burthen, and there are nearly forty smaller ones coasting Lake Erie,
between Buffalo and Detroit, besides schooners.
[Footnote 6: Near this place lived and died the chief Red-jacket, one of
the last and greatest specimens of the Indian patriot and warrior.]
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