AT NIAGARA AND ALONG LAKE ERIE.
At Canandaigua I had a short interview with Doctor A. G. Coleman. He
is short and rather thick set, with gray hair and full beard. His
conversation was very entertaining; his bicycling experience in Denver
and California naturally interesting me very much.
The artificial hatching of trout at Mumford, New York, is a sight
that is well worth a journey, even from a long distance. The ground
occupied is small, only two or three acres, and the building in which
the hatching is done is only the size of an ordinary barn, but there is
an immense amount of interest concentrated in this small area. There
are a dozen or fifteen small ponds, perhaps ten feet square, boarded
up on the sides, in which are the various kinds of trout from a year
to twelve or fifteen years of age. Brook salmon, California brook,
and German trout are the principal kinds raised here. I laid down on
a plank that crosses one of the ponds, where the water comes pouring
into it, and put my hand down into the water. Probably five hundred
of these speckled beauties, the common brook trout, varying from one
to two pounds in weight, were struggling to get through the wooden
grates into the water above, and they wriggled and twisted through my
fingers and bit the flesh as if they resented the interference, but
otherwise paid no attention to it. Many would even allow me to take
them out and hold them for a few seconds. The water was actually solid
with fish, for there were over 3,000 of them in this one pond. Lying
on the grass beside another pond in which were some fine specimens of
salmon trout, there were within a foot of my hand trout varying from
a foot to two feet and a half or three feet in length and weighing
from five to eighteen pounds, all lying perfectly still on the bottom,
too lazy to stir. Then I went into the building where Jim--everybody
knows Jim after one visit--told me how they propagate and care for
the millions of tiny things, even selecting individual cases for
special care. Half a dozen men were here picking out the poor eggs
and doing different kinds of work. The eggs are about half as large
as a lead pencil in diameter, and the poor ones are white, the others
colorless. In one of the many shallow troughs in the building through
which water is constantly running were thousands of eggs spread out
just ready to hatch. When they break through the shell the little
fish are scarcely longer than the egg itself, which remains attached
to them and is finally absorbed. Millions of these eggs, as well as
millions of these little trout not an inch long, are annually shipped
to all parts of the country. Seth Green came in, and a few minutes'
chat with the jovial, gray bearded, two hundred and fifty pound man
would make anyone wish to come again and know him better. Then I
went out to see them take the spawn. During the spawning season the
trout run up a long covered sluiceway at the head of each pond, and a
net placed at the lower end of this covered brook catches every fish
in it after the boards are removed and the trout driven down with a
pole. The men hauled out about a bushel and a half at the first pond
and about two bushels at the second, and emptied them into tubs filled
with water. The females were parted from the males,--they separated
them much faster than a farmer could sort rotting apples--and then
the females were taken out by the men on their knees and squeezed dry
of every egg in them. Occasionally a few drops of milk were pressed
from a male into the pan with eggs to fecundate them, which occurred
in a few seconds, and the males were thrown back into the pond, the
female being put into a separate pond and tenderly cared for. Thus,
in about fifteen minutes 50,000 eggs, or about three quarts, were
obtained, and this process is carried out every day during the
season. The female brook trout only live to be five or six years old,
such necessarily rough handling naturally shortening their lives, and
the males are turned loose down the stream after about the same age,
but the salmon trout attain the age of fifteen or eighteen years. To
put an edge to the enjoyment of this visit, that was intense to
one interested in all out-of-door sports, Jim took a pan of chopped
liver and the instant the meat struck the water in one of the ponds,
three thousand yellow bellies made the water foam and boil with their
lightning-like flashes. Then he threw some to the big ones, those
lazy fifteen and eighteen pounders. They made some troubled waters,
too, a thousand of them, four tons of trout flesh all in motion,
handsome fellows that would come sailing, mouths wide open, towards
the surface and flop their bodies, nearly a yard in length, entirely
out of water. Connecticut fishermen, who tramp for miles with cold,
soaked feet and return home with a wet back and a hungry stomach,
having secured only a few ounces of trout meat, can, perhaps, get a
faint idea from this hurried description of what is to be seen here,
but they ought to come and see it themselves. Of course, fishing in a
hatching pond would lack the zest which men naturally feel in killing
a wild thing, but "I have known it done."
Those that are turned loose down the stream make very poor eating,
for their life diet of liver and lights renders their meat very
tasteless. It evidently needs the piquancy of a spider or fly to
give a true gamey flavor. Just before reaching Lima, I stopped at
Mr. Augustus Metcalf's, to make inquiries about the roads, and his son
Willard, being a wheelman, kindly invited me to stay over night. My
short visit with them will always be remembered with pleasure.
All the way from Syracuse, in fact all the way from Albany to Buffalo,
I took the old, original turnpike. No matter whether I finally
decided to take the "lower" road between intermediate places, or the
"upper" road or the "middle" road or the "river" road or the "ridge"
road or the "middle ridge" road, or a plank, clay, sand, or gravel
road; whatever road I happened to be on some old farmer would soon
tell me I was traveling on the "old original turnpike between Albany
and Buffalo." One went back so far as to say that the said turnpike
followed an old Indian trail, and they all seemed to take pride in
mentioning the fact that their farms are situated on what was once
such a celebrated thoroughfare. But there is another fact in regard
to old highways that rests on a more substantial foundation than the
disputed question as to which is the "old original." The main street
leading out of Utica west towards Syracuse is called Genesee street,
into Syracuse it is East Genesee, out of Syracuse West Genesee, and
so on through Auburn, I think, and all the principal places until
Buffalo is reached by going into the city by the same Genesee street.
Going up the Mohawk valley the view one gets is not very extended,
but after leaving Syracuse, clear through to Batavia, 125 miles, the
country is undulating, and from the top of the many hills a traveler
gets a fine view of a most beautiful country. Although the leaves were
not yet out when I passed through this section, the grass was green,
and the cherry trees were in bloom on Good Friday. Fine shade trees
abound along the highways, and through many of the places a double
row lines the principal streets, and fine sidewalks and level riding
make a trip through this section, even so early in the season, very
enjoyable. Arriving at Buffalo, the instant I crossed his threshold
Mr. C. W. Adams, secretary of the Buffalo Bicycle Club, made me feel
perfectly at home. He is dark complexioned, below the medium height,
smooth faced, wears glasses, and is about 25 years of age. I found in
traveling farther west that his hospitable manner and winning ways
have made him a favorite with all wheelmen who have met him. It was
not enough to take me about the finest rides in that beautiful city,
after supper, and find a very entertaining escort for me about the city
the next morning, but a trip to the falls and the bridge with him the
next afternoon made my visit at Buffalo the pleasantest by far of any
short stop I have had during a tour of many pleasant experiences. In
the city there are fifteen or twenty miles of asphalt pavements as
smooth as glass, block asphalt excepted, besides miles and miles of
fine park roads, and with such drives it is not strange that the club
is outgrowing its old club house--old only in name--and is moving
into a very large two-story building on the main street, which will
soon be nicely filled up with everything that such a genuine riding,
working, racing, hospitable club needs. Judging from the dozen
or more members of the club that I met, such kind, open-hearted,
courteous fellows deserve all the success that the nutmeg stranger
they took in could wish them, and that is unlimited. By train to
the falls and out upon Goat Island on our wheels. I dared to follow
where Mr. Adams led, but being ahead he didn't notice I took the
inside rut of the driveway that runs around the island close to the
edge, where a fall to one side would have sent my friend and machine
over the bank into the rapids. I can follow as narrow a path on a
wheel as anyone in some places, but around the edge of Goat Island
is not one of those places. After visiting the place a dozen times
or more I might, perhaps; but the first--yes, it was the first time
I ever saw Niagara. When I tried to express myself about it every
word sounded so flat, so meaningless, so utterly unfit. I might as
well try to define the Infinite. I had nothing to say and was dumb,
and am yet whenever I think of it. It seems about fifty years ago an
insurrection broke out in Canada and the steamer Caroline was used
by some filibustering Americans a few miles above here to help the
fuss along. But the Canadian authorities finally seized the steamer,
touched a match to it and set it adrift. How it came down over the
rapids, all afire from stem to stern, and went over the falls, can
better be imagined than described, at least by me. In conversation
about the occurrence, near the stairs that lead down to where the
tower used to stand, and telling how I should like to have seen it,
the hackman said with a condescending air: "O yes, but that is only
one of many grand scenes that you have missed by coming here late,"
and from his manner I inferred that strange and wonderful things had
occurred on this river for the last 10,000 years at least, and that if
I had come in when the doors first opened the one price of admission
would have taken me through the entire show. Considering the amount
of time and labor required to put this play upon the stage, or hack,
rather, the wonder is, not Niagara by any means, but that these poor
palæozoic hackmen can afford to exhibit for the price they do. The
unfortunate delusion abroad that they charge only for the scene in
the play that is being acted now is undoubtedly a great mistake,
and they suffer in the estimation of the public accordingly. Their
price is for what has occurred since the curtain rose in the Upper
Silurian down to the present and until the curtain falls where Erie
and Ontario are one. Those who come early and stay late and are not
satisfied will doubtless have their money refunded at the close of the
entertainment. At least such was the intimation of the man I met. Down
a couple of miles to the suspension bridge, a look at the cantilever
bridge,--a structure that in its construction was more wonderful than
in its completed state, for the arms of the immense iron piers were
built out over the river till they met in the middle--across the river
and down to the whirlpool and back, and the day, a red letter one,
was ended.
Thursday morning was clear and cool, and I left Buffalo with a last
look at the black cloud of smoke hovering over it that stretched,
thinner and thinner, far out over the lake. The roads were fine along
the shore, and once or twice I laid down on the grass on the edge of
the cliff that juts out over the water, perhaps forty feet below, and
tried to imagine I was tired so I could have an excuse for stopping,
but the cool breezes at my back urged me on and the certain prospect of
fine road ahead kept me going, and so all day long I paddled onward,
always with the wind and sometimes like it. The breeze next day blew
strong, from the southeast, at right angles to my course, but the road
remained good. Once I stopped under a shed to avoid a slight shower,
but soon found a red handkerchief hanging at my waist was not a safe
thing to have around a barn-yard, for a bull over the fence near me
almost immediately began to paw the ground and bellow, and so I moved
on without much delay. At times the wind would blow me out of the road
on to the side, and when I got fairly braced to tack against it at
an angle of forty-five degrees, more or less, it would suddenly let
up and back into the road I would go with a rush, the wheel leaving
a sort of self-registering mark behind that indicated the velocity
of the wind at the different points in the road. Notwithstanding
the wind and ten miles of sand and clay, too soft and rutty to ride,
the 200 miles from Buffalo to Cleveland was made in three days, with
two or three hours to spare, so any wheelman can judge of the general
average of the roads. I never saw as long a stretch of fine wheeling.
Just here a word about guide-boards. In Connecticut, as we all know,
guide-boards are a feature of every main and almost all cross-roads
throughout the State, and are usually a great help to travelers by
road. But along the Sound they grew scarcer, until coming into York
State they were wanting entirely. In riding over 500 miles through
different parts of that State, I remember seeing but four public
guide-boards, and two of those were placed there by Poughkeepsie
wheelmen. The roads are no straighter than in other States, and so the
only thing to do in case of doubt is to take the side of safety and
ask questions. These delays many times a day amount to a great deal,
but there is no other way. But the instant I crossed the State line
into the northwest corner of Pennsylvania every road and cross-road
had a guide board. The change is like magic. And here in Ohio they
go so far in the guide-board business as to tell you which way you
can go to a certain place without crossing a railroad. For instance,
to-day I passed a board which read: "Painesville without R. R. crossing
2 miles," another way being shorter. For miles around Buffalo in every
direction the land is very low and wet, requiring much ditching, but it
rises gradually on towards Cleveland, after passing Erie, which like
Buffalo is situated nearly on a level with the lake, and the towns,
such as Conneaut, Ashtabula, and Painesville, seem to increase in
size as the land rises to a higher level, till Cleveland, largest
of all, stands on a higher bluff than any. After leaving Buffalo the
streams that flow into the lake gradually increase in size also, and
they wear a channel down through the solid rock which rises almost
perpendicularly on each side. These ravines, at each one of which is
a town or city, increase in depth as the general level of the land
rises. So, as one travels west from Erie over an apparently level
country, there are constantly seen larger streams, deeper ravines,
higher levels, and larger cities. The Lake Shore and Nickle Plate
railroads are of course obliged to cross all these ravines, and their
bridges increase in height till some of them are over one hundred feet
above the river bed. I passed close by the Ashtabula bridge where,
many will remember, a terrible accident occurred a few years ago on
a cold December night.
Speaking about railroads reminds me of a little incident of
yesterday. All the railroads along the route have adopted the four
whistles for a crossing, the Hudson River and New York Central being
the only exceptions, I think, so the familiar signal first used by the
New York and New England Railroad in the Eastern States is constantly
heard. Yesterday I sat down under a tree to rest a few minutes when
I heard in the distance the whistle of a train, and being near the
tracks, waited to see the train pass. It came no nearer for some
time, but I noticed the crossings seemed to be at regular intervals
apart. Still the train did not come. Finally, happening to turn my
head on one side the sound came from above, and looking up into the
tree I saw a small brown bird that at regular intervals would swell
up and utter a sound that nine persons in ten would mistake for the
four whistles of a locomotive in the distance.
The other day, in turning out to pass a team, I carelessly rode
into some hard clay ruts that threw me instantly,--so suddenly that
I turned almost a complete somersault. That is, I thought I did,
for some time, for the blow I received on the back of the head that
made it snap for a while could not be accounted for upon any other
supposition than that I had gone clear over and struck the back of my
head on the hard ground. I did not note just the position I was in
when I picked myself up; the person in the wagon did that probably;
but I was painfully aware that something hit me, hard too. It was
the fifteen-pound knapsack that flew up and hit me a stunning blow
on the back of the head. If I had been at home I would have bandaged
my head, gone into an easy chair, and called the doctor. As it was,
I simply remounted, trundled on, and was all right again in an hour.
Nine hundred and eighteen miles in three weeks.