In ascending the Mohawk valley the distant view is circumscribed on
the south by the Catskills and Helderbergs, and on the north by the
Adirondack ranges. The outcrops of the latter compress upon the river
in long protruding crags covered with firs and known as the "Noses."
There are various villages, started in the eighteenth century as
frontier posts among the Indians. There are also hop-fields in plenty
and much pasture, and finally the hills become higher and the valley
narrower as Little Falls is reached, where the Mohawk forces a passage
through a spur of the Adirondacks, known as the Rollaway. The river,
approaching the gorge, sharply bends from east to south, and plunges
wildly down a series of rapids, the town being set among the rocky
precipices right in the throat of the defile. The place is heaped with
rocks, the stream falling forty-two feet within a thousand yards, the
descent forming three separate cataracts, which give power to numerous
mills on the banks and clustering upon an island in the rapids. They
make cheese and paper, and on either hand precipitous crags rise five
hundred feet above them. The pass is very narrow, compressing the
Erie Canal and the New York Central and West Shore Railways closely
upon the river; in fact, the canal passage has been blasted out of the
solid granite on the southern river-bank. Here can be readily studied
the crystalline rocks of the Laurentian formation, which are described
as "part of the oldest dry land on the face of the globe." It is this
pass through the mountains, made by the Mohawk, that gives the Erie
Canal and the Vanderbilt railways their low-level route between the
Atlantic seaboard and the West. All the other trunk railways climb the
Allegheny ranges and cross them at elevations of two thousand feet or
more, while here the elevation is not four hundred feet, thus avoiding
steep gradients and expensive hauling. The Rollaway stretches for a
long distance, clothed to its summit with pines and birches.
Beyond, the amber waters of Canada Creek flow in from the north,
giving the Mohawk a largely increased current, and the land becomes a
region of gentle hills, with meadows and herds, a scene of pastoral
beauty, the great dairy region of New York. Here is Herkimer, which
was an Indian frontier fort, and a few miles farther is Utica, the
dairymen's and cheese-makers' headquarters, a city of fifty thousand
people. The whole Mohawk valley for miles has an atmosphere of
peacefulness and content, innumerable cows and sheep grazing and
resting upon the rich pastures. The river is narrow and meanders
slowly past Utica, which is built to the southward along the banks of
the canal. This city also grew up around an Indian border post.
General Schuyler, who came westward from Albany, seeking trade, built
Fort Schuyler here in 1758, the grant of land being known as Cosby's
Manor. Then a block-house was built, but the settlement, known as Old
Fort Schuyler, grew very little until after the canal was opened.
Utica had the honor of producing two of the leading men of New York,
Roscoe Conkling and Horatio Seymour, the latter having been Governor
of New York and the Democratic candidate for President when General
Grant was first elected in 1868. The city rises gradually upon a
gentle slope south of the Mohawk, until it reaches one hundred and
fifty feet elevation, Genesee street, the chief highway, wide and
attractive, extending back from the river and across the canal,
bordered by elegant residences, fronted by lawns and fine shade trees.
Its leading public institution is the State Lunatic Asylum, but its
pride is the regulation of the butter and cheese trades of New York.
In journeying through New York, it is noticed that there is an
ambitious nomenclature. The towns are given classic names, as if there
had been an early immigration of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Thus
we were at Troy on the Hudson, and coming up the Mohawk have passed
Fonda, Palatine bridge and Ilion on the route to Utica, while farther
on are Rome and Verona. It seems that in the primitive days of New
York old Simeon de Witt was the Surveyor General, and under his
auspices the remorseless college graduate is said to have wandered
over the country with instrument and map and scattered broadcast
classic names. These flourish most in Western New York. Albion and
Attica, Corfu and Palmyra, are near neighbors there, the latter being
chiefly known to fame as the place where the original Mormon apostle,
"Joe Smith," claimed to have found the sacred golden plates of the
Mormon bible and the stone spectacles through which he interpreted the
signs written upon them. Memphis is near by, and Macedon and Jordan
are adjacent villages. Pompey, Virgil and Ulysses are named up, and
Ovid is between Lakes Seneca and Cayuga, with Geneva at the foot of
Seneca and Ithaca at the head of Cayuga. Auburn--"loveliest village of
the plain"--is to the eastward, and Aurelius, Marcellus and Camillus
are railway stations on the route to Syracuse, one of whose former
names was Corinth. To the southward is Homer, having Nineveh and
Manlius near by; Venice is not far away, and Babylon is down on Long
Island. The Mohawk thus heads in classic ground, rising in the
highlands of Oneida about twenty miles north of Rome, past which it
flows a small and winding brook through the almost level country.
Rome, unlike its ancient namesake, has no hills at all, but is built
upon a plain, having grown up around the Indian frontier outpost of
Fort Stanwix of the Revolution, the battle of Oriskany, in August,
1777, which cut off the reinforcements going to Burgoyne at Saratoga,
thus helping to defeat him, having been fought just outside its
limits. There are about seventeen thousand people in Rome, which is a
prominent lumber market, being at the junction of the Erie and Black
River Canals, the latter fetching lumber down from Canada, which has
come through Lake Ontario. From Rome the narrow Mohawk flows to Utica,
and thence with broadening current onward to the Hudson, its whole
length being about one hundred and forty miles. Its gentle course and
pastoral beauty remind of the pleasant lines of that poet of nature,
John Dyer:
"And see the rivers how they run
Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,--
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life to endless sleep!"