Westward from Rochester the country is underlaid by red sandstones,
and at Medina quarries are plentiful, this reproduction of the Arabian
"City of the Prophet" being an extensive supplier of these dark-red
Medina sandstones, as the geologists call them. Beyond, at Lockport,
the higher terrace is reached, and here the Erie Canal is raised by an
imposing series of five double locks from the Genesee level up to the
Lake Erie level. Through these locks and by means of a subsidiary
canal an immense water-power is obtained which is utilized by the
Lockport mills. The much lower Genesee level is marked by the base of
a bluff, stretching through the town and across the adjacent region,
evidently the bank of an ancient lake.
In western New York a high ridge crosses the country south of Lake
Erie, and to the southward of its most elevated portion there
stretches the elongated Chautauqua Lake, almost bisected by two
jutting points at its centre. This charming lake is eighteen miles
long, three or four miles wide, and elevated seven hundred and thirty
feet above Lake Erie, its outlet draining southward into a tributary
of the Allegheny River. Its elevation above tide is nearly thirteen
hundred feet. The low hills enclosing it are popular summer resorts,
and on the western bank in the season are drawn enormous crowds to the
Chautauqua Assembly, which has established the "Summer School of
Philosophy" for education. There are often twenty to thirty thousand
people here at one time, and the plan has been so successful that it
has various imitators elsewhere, the "Chautauqua idea" being varying
instruction with recreation. The Indians named this lake, from the
mists arising, Chautauqua, or "the foggy place." Beyond this popular
resort the land falls away, and crossing the New York western boundary
into the "Pennsylvania Triangle," a jutting corner thrust up to Lake
Erie, a fine harbor is found at Erie, known in earlier history by its
French name of Presque Isle. This triangle of the Keystone State,
giving about forty miles of coast-line on the lake, has a history.
The early surveyors discovered that, owing to misdescriptions in
various English grants, this large triangular tract was, from a legal
standpoint, "nowhere." It was north of Pennsylvania, west of New York
and east of the Connecticut Western Reserve, which became part of
Ohio. Pennsylvania finally bought it, paying the United States
Government, in 1792, $150,640 for it, and also getting the Indian
title for £1200. It was a good purchase, for Erie harbor is the best
on the lake. Erie has about fifty thousand people, and is in a
picturesque situation, owing to the beauty of the bay and the outlying
island, which was formerly a peninsula. There is additional protection
by a breakwater, making an extensive basin with spacious docks that
have a large trade. The French were the early settlers, building their
"Fort de la Presque Isle" in 1749, which was one of the chain of
outposts they projected between the St. Lawrence and the Ohio. It was
here that Commodore Perry hastily built the rude fleet with which he
gained the noted victory over the Anglo-Canadian fleet on Lake Erie in
1813, and back here he afterwards in triumph towed his prizes. The
remains of his flagship lie in the harbor. Perry's guns were the
heaviest in that memorable contest for control of the lake, and
therefore he won. In Lake Side Cemetery is buried Captain Charles
Vernon Gridley, who commanded Admiral Dewey's flagship, the "Olympia,"
at the battle of Manila Bay in 1898.