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VIEW FROM THE RIDGE AT LEWISTON.

generality of minds, is a difficult task; but, once made, then the sound of the cataract comes in like far off music-not in the foreground, deafening and annoying, but soothing and lulling, as it were, in the distance, and thus administering to the enjoyment it had formerly intruded upon and broken up.

The fresh-water shells which occur in the deep bed of mixed slaty gravel and red clay drift, which covers the limestone rocks at the edge of the waterfall upon Goat Island, are now well known. The minute, almost microscopic species, I found very abundant in the clay. Besides the shells usually collected, I picked up a fragment of a fresh-water crustacean.

After dinner, I left Niagara, on my way to 'Lewiston —where the river escapes from the ravine and the high lands-to take the steamer down Lake Ontario. This railway is a very indifferent affair, and Lewiston a long straggling skeleton of a place; but the last mile's ride along the edge of the ridge, and the view it affords, is worth going twice as far, and by a still rougher road, to enjoy. Sheer down we looked from a high escarpment, upon the broad flat forest lands, stretching many miles back from the lake, and along its shores farther than the eye could reach. Here and there only, in all this distance, a clearing appeared; while right before us lay the endless lake, and its occasionally bolder shores beyond, with now and then a straggling sail or a distant steamer's smoke, and all mellowed and blended together by a four o'clock sun. The whole prospect perhaps struck me the more that it came upon me quite unexpectedly; but I regretted much that previous arrangements did not admit of my spending a day in wandering over these high lands-scarcely allowed me even a moment to master what was before my eyes, as the steam was up, and bags and portmanteaus demanded the attention of the careful traveller.

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The mountain-ridge, as it is called, formed by the outcrop of the Niagara limestone, has been long known to the inhabitants of western New York. When, some two centuries hence, all the low plain beneath it shall be cleared, and drained, and cultivated, and smiling villages, and cheerful homesteads, and scattered flocks and herds, overspread its surface, and the blue smoke dies away from many chimneys as the Sabbath-bell draws the gathering people toward the frequent house of worship - how many, in those days, for broad pictures of wide natural beauty, intense with countless little episodes of still life, will frequent this mountain-ridge, when the noise of the cataract has wearied them, and they wish again to calm and compose their spirits, worn out by its ever-fretting impatience!

The escarpment which forms this ridge is bolder above the village of Lewiston than it is in some other parts of its course along the southern shores of Lake Ontario. The following section (taken from Mr Hall) gives an idea of the physical and geological nature of the ridge itself, and of the flat country and its soils which lie below

Here the section No. 1 is the Medina sandstone, consisting chiefly of red sandstones and shivery clay marls. No. 2 is the Clinton group, of no great thickness or consequence; and No. 3 the Niagara shale, surmounted by the Niagara limestone. The long flat edging of the lake consists of the red soils of the Medina rocks, and ought to be very productive. In many places, from its

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258 A NATIVE ON THE PROFITS OF FARMING

level character, it is marshy or full of water; and in many others arterial drainage on an extensive scale will probably have to be introduced, before the capabilities of the country can be at all fully developed.

The escarpment of the Niagara limestone is not everywhere, as I have already remarked, so high nor so abrupt as it is represented in the above section; but, with occasional breaks, it may be visited along a great part of western New York, with the certainty of commanding from its summit an extensive view of the flat country below, and of the wide blue lake beyond. It extends also, towards the north, round the western end of Lake Ontario, and then eastward for many miles, forming an escarpment far behind Toronto, carrying with it into Upper Canada a wheat-region, not unlike that of western New York.

As we steamed from Lewiston through the mouth of the Niagara River, and entered the lake, Queenstown, on the Canadian side, appeared to us on the water to be at least as flourishing as Lewiston, which we had just surveyed by land. The heights above it, on which opposing forces of the same blood, with equal gallantry, fought the battle of Queenstown, and where the wellknown pillar commemorates the fall of the brave Sir Isaac Brock, are as high as the ridge above Lewiston, of which I have spoken, and promise to the lovers of the picturesque as wide, and if it bear the eye to the western extremity of Lake Ontario, a wider, and perhaps a still more beautiful view of mixed land and water, high-land, forest, and cultivated fields.

On board the steamer, I had a concluding conversation on the profits of farming in western New York, with a practical farmer from Syracuse. "The results of "that money is

my personal experience are," he said, not to be made by farming in this State. If a farmer hire two men, and work with them, and keep them at

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their work, he may maintain his family, and clear 8 per cent upon the value of his farm. But if he farm more largely, as a gentleman farmer, leaving the management to an overseer, he will not make more than perhaps 2 or 3 per cent. cent. Farming is much less profitable in my county of Onondaga, during the last five years, than it used to be. Exhaustion has diminished the produce of wheat, formerly the great staple of the country. When the wheat fell off, barley, which at first yielded 50 or 60 bushels, was raised year after year, till the land fell away from this also, and became full of weeds. It still grows 50 bushels of Indian corn, and this is the best crop we now get-but it must be manured. Much is now laid down to grass to be recruited; but those who are anxious to make money are turning their hands to something else, and either selling or letting their farms. A farm in a good situation can be let to pay 5 per cent; but as 7 per cent is easy to be got for money, few persons care to continue the owners of farms which they cannot cultivate themselves, and can only let to yield a return like this."

Such was my new friend's opinion of agriculture in the empire State; and I have since met with many who agreed with him in all essential points. No interest in national importance can ever, in this New World, compete with the agricultural; and yet, after the first two or three generations, the most energetic and aspiring sons of the first pioneers forsake the scene of their fathers' labours, and betake themselves either to other pursuits or to new regions. A certain numerical strength, permanent competency, and abiding position in long-known localities, will always in every country remain with the owners of the land; but in the United States, as elsewhere, the energy and activity, and intellectual influence upon social and political progress, will be mainly possessed by the alert and enterprising brood who yearly hive off from the old lichen-covered stationary stock.

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KNOWLEDGE OF NEW YORK FARMERS.

I shall have occasion, hereafter, to speak of the prospects of agriculture, and of the progress of rural improvement in general, in the State of New York. I will here only add, in justice to the New York farmers, that, in my journey to Buffalo, I was struck with the very general familiarity which seemed to prevail among practical men as to the geological character of their country, and the relation which the geological details had to the agricultural qualities of their farms. The efforts of the State Government, in distributing numerous volumes of their Natural History Survey, has no doubt aided much in diffusing this knowledge, so rare in an agricultural community, and yet so creditable to their intellectual position. In the county of Surrey only, and along the borders of the chalk and green-sand country of England-where geological differences affect the soils in so marked a manner, and within such short distances have I met among practical farmers, with so clear an idea of local geological relations, and of their connection with rural labours and profits.

As the boat paddled out into the lake, the water roughened a little, and many of the passengers became indisposed. I had a comfortable state-room; but the meals, which were included in the fare, were uncomfortable and crowded. It was little else than a rush and a scramble, where the slowest and weakest got neither place nor pudding. At 11 P. M. we reached Rochester, a distance of 80 miles, and after a short delay steamed on to Oswego, 65 miles farther, where we arrived at 6 in the morning, and were at first allowed time only for a short stroll, but finally were detained till half-past 10, in waiting the arrival of the train from Syracuse.

The flower-mills of Oswego are, I believe, the staple source of its prosperity. It is a thriving town, and, being at the termination of the canal and of the railroad-both of which connect it directly with the Atlantic, while the