Seneca Lake, the largest of the group, is a short distance west of
Cayuga, and its prolonged southern valley is bordered by ridges rising
even higher, through which the streams have carved remarkable gorges.
Two of the larger torrents coming into the prolonged Seneca Valley
have hewn out of the hillsides, one on either hand, romantic fissures
of wide renown,--the Havana and Watkins Glens. The Havana Glen is
three miles south of the lake and about a mile long, being cut out of
the eastern wall of the valley. The ravine is steep, having quite a
large stream. Its characteristic is that the water and frost have made
great fissures and caverns, but so fashioned them that all the joints
and corners are right-angles. The cascades are successions of ledges,
the water apparently running down a staircase. If the stream runs over
a waterfall, it comes from a level ledge as if running over a wall. If
it rushes through a gorge, all the corners are square, the sides
perpendicular and the bottom level. If a brigade of stonemasons had
built the place it could hardly have been more accurately constructed.
Several of the cascades are magnificent, the "Bridal Veil" and the
"Curtain Falls" going down a maze of rocky ledges, their frothy waters
making resplendent sheets of exquisite lacework. In one place the
stream flows through a perfectly square grotto known as the "Council
Chamber," entering this great hall by a right-angled bend from an
adjoining square-cut grotto of similar character. Each is a perfect
apartment, the water rushing from one to the other through an
entry-like passage, from which it makes a square turn. The glen is
quite steep, and its "Central Gorge" is a narrow fissure, clean-cut
and deep, making a half-dozen right-angled bends, each lower than the
other, the torrent rushing around the sharp corners and over the
straight edges with wild swiftness and clouds of spray. The visitor
mounts ladders and steps through the spray, and the glen can be
followed a long distance upward past many cascades, its
picturesqueness being enhanced by the huge tree-trunks the torrent
occasionally brings down and lodges in the many angular bends.
[Illustration: _Watkins Glen_]
Watkins Glen, carved out of the western wall of the valley just at the
head of Seneca Lake, is constructed upon a grander scale, yet entirely
different. The torrent has hewn it among similarly laminated rocks,
but the erosive processes have made vast amphitheatres, their great
size dwarfing the diminutive brook flowing like a thread at the
bottom. The entrance, level with the floor of the valley, presents the
same squared and angular features as Havana Glen, but inside it is a
grand amphitheatre enclosed within perpendicular stone walls three
hundred feet high, and is proportionately spacious. It is quickly
seen, however, that within the grand hall the rocky layers, instead of
being squared and angular, have been smoothed and rounded by the
waters, the small but dashing stream flowing over the floor by
graceful curves through circular pools and winding channels. This glen
is built on a prodigious scale, being over three miles long, and its
head rising eight hundred feet above the valley. A narrow cascade
eighty feet high falls at the far end of the entrance amphitheatre,
and climbing up, the visitor enters "Glen Alpha," the first of the
vast chambers. There are successive glens and caverns as one proceeds
onward and upward through the "Cavern Gorge" and "Glen Obscura," where
a hotel and chalet are perched on the rocky ledges at four hundred
feet elevation. Above is the "Sylvan Gorge," and then the fissure
broadens out into its grandest section, the "Glen Cathedral," a
magnificent nave, with walls rising nearly three hundred feet, the
rocky layers giving it a level stone floor. It has the "Pulpit Rock"
and "Baptismal Font," and climbing out one hundred and seventy feet
upward alongside a cascade, the visitor then goes onward past more
grottoes, falls and gorges for a long distance, until the "Glen Omega"
is reached at the top. Here an airy railway bridge of one of the
Vanderbilt roads spans it at two hundred feet height above the floor.
The shores of Seneca Lake, as one progresses northward, present
various pretty little glens cut deeply into the bordering hills, and
as these become lower there are vineyards and pastures displayed.
Gradually the bluffs disappear, giving place to extensive farm lands
as the level plain at the outlet is reached. Here, in imitation of a
noble Swiss example, the town of Geneva has been built at the foot of
the lake, its chief street extending along the western bank, with
villas peeping out from the foliage. This is a prominent nursery town,
florists and seedsmen being its chief merchants, and a large part of
the adjacent country being devoted to seed-growing and propagation.
Hobart College, a leading Episcopal foundation, is at Geneva. The
outlet of the lake is the Seneca River, having an attractive
waterfall, and after gathering the outflow of this group of Central
New York lakes, it goes away northeastward to Oswego River.