Among the rugged mountains of Potter County, in the northern part of
Pennsylvania, the highest land in the State, are the springs feeding
the headwaters of three noted rivers, seeking the ocean in opposite
directions. The Allegheny flows westward and afterwards southward to
the Ohio; the west branch of the Susquehanna goes eastward to break
through the entire Allegheny chain in seeking the Atlantic; and the
smaller stream, the Genesee, flows northward through New York between
two long Allegheny ridges, the chief affluent of Lake Ontario. The
Genesee passes through a valley of great beauty and gives water-power
to many mills, a canal also being constructed to improve its
navigation. After a romantic course of one hundred and fifty miles it
empties into the lake at Charlotte, seven miles north of Rochester.
For much of the distance its course is through a magnificent gorge,
with a succession of cataracts that are renowned in American scenery.
Where it first attacks the highlands of New York to break out of them,
it plunges deeper and deeper down a series of grand cataracts at
Portage. Here the Erie Railway, coming from the westward, has boldly
thrown a stupendous bridge across the tremendous chasm and almost over
the top of the highest cataract. The river makes a gorge in the
yielding rocks, sinking from two hundred and fifty to six hundred
feet deep, and here are the Portage Falls, one cataract after another
making the stream-bed lower, the walls of the wild ravine rising
almost perpendicularly. The railway, crossing at the most favorable
place, has built one of the highest bridges in the country, elevated
two hundred and thirty-five feet above the river, resting upon
lightly-framed steel trusses. From the car windows the river can be
seen far below in what seems a narrow fissure, the current boiling
along and then tumbling down the cataract, the edge of which crosses
the river diagonally almost beneath the bridge. The waters pour into a
chasm seeming almost bottomless as the spray obscures it. The ravine
extends northward, and in the distance the waters go over a second
fall and then a third, the chasm finally curving around to the right,
making a bend, closing the view more than a mile away, with an
enormous wall of bare rock. The three cataracts fall respectively
seventy, one hundred and ten and one hundred and fifty feet--called
the Upper, Middle and Lower Portage Falls--and for several miles
below, the river flows through the deeper ravine amid equally
magnificent surroundings.
This descent brings the Genesee River down from the higher plateau to
what is known as the "Genesee Level," for at the end of the defile,
fifteen miles below Portage, it flows out of the highlands over
pleasant lands and with gentler current. Here on the "Genesee Flats"
is the village of Mount Morris, and near it has been placed, alongside
the ravine, the rude log cabin, which was originally on the higher
land above Portage, the Indian "Council House of Cascadea," where the
Iroquois chiefs often met. At the removal in 1872, the services were
conducted in the Senecas language, several Indians attending, and the
identical "pipe of peace" given by Washington to Red Jacket was passed
around. Nearby the river emerges through a Titanic gateway in the
rocks to the pastoral region stretching far to the northward, while
far over on the eastern verge is the village of Geneseo, sloping up
the ascent. Its Indian name, meaning the "beautiful valley," is also
given the river. After meandering placidly for miles across these
flats, the Genesee River reaches the "Flour City of the West,"
Rochester, the storage and distributing mart for this fertile valley,
getting its original start and title from the prolific wheat crops.
And here the Genesee plunges down another waterfall which gives power
to the Rochester mills.
When De Witt Clinton, in 1810, exploring the route for the Erie Canal,
crossed the river here, there was not a house. The place was
afterwards the "Hundred Acre Tract," planned in 1812 for a settlement
by three adventurous frontiersmen, and the town was named for one of
them, Nathaniel Rochester. After a few years, the spreading fame of
the fertility of the Genesee Valley attracted a large population, and
it became known as the garden spot of the then "West," so that out of
this grew the flour-mills which have continued to be Rochester's chief
industry. The Genesee River flows through with swift current, the Erie
Canal being carried over on a massive stone aqueduct and the New York
Central Railroad upon a wide bridge, and about a hundred yards beyond,
the river plunges down the great Rochester Fall. The ledge over which
it tumbles is a perpendicular wall, straight and regular in formation,
and almost without fragments of rock at the foot, so that the fall is
a clear one. The shores below are lined with huge stone mills and
breweries, to which races on each bank conduct the water from a dam
above the railroad bridge. This Rochester Fall, down which Sam Patch
jumped to his death, is ninety-six feet high. Below it, the river
flows through a somewhat wider channel, gradually bending to the left,
and then it goes down a second cataract of twenty-five feet height,
and finally, at some distance, over a third and broken fall of
eighty-four feet. As at Portage, this second succession of triple
cataracts sinks the river bed deeper and deeper into the gorge, so
that the enclosing walls are in some places over three hundred feet
high. This gorge is all within the limits of the city, the falls and
rapids having a total descent of two hundred and sixty feet. This
immense water-power, with the traffic facilities of canal and railway,
have made the city, so that there is a population of a hundred and
forty thousand around the Genesee Falls, and manufactures of flour,
beer, clothing, leather and other articles, valued at $75,000,000
annually. In the neighboring region there is also extensive
seed-growing, the Rochester nurseries occupying miles of the level
surface. Rochester University has two hundred students and valuable
geological collections. The city has been a headquarters for the
Spiritualists and advocates of Women's Rights. The Genesee emerges
from the rocky gorge below Rochester, and flows in more tranquil
course northward through a ravine carved deeply into the table-land,
to Lake Ontario, at the little port of Charlotte.