Canandaigua

“ The bells have not stopped ringing more than five minutes all day and every one is glad to see Canandaigua startled out of its propriety for once. Every yard of red, white and blue ribbon in the stores has been sold, also every candle and every flag. One society worked hard all the afternoon making transparencies and then there were no candles to put in to light them, but they will be ready for the next celebration when peace is proclaimed. ”

“ Wounded to death by the poisoned darts, the horrid monsters rolled down the hill in great agony, sweeping away, in their descent, all the trees upon the side to its very bottom, and amidst their contortions disgorging the heads of the Indians they had swallowed. Those heads rolled into Lake Canandaigua, where they were converted into stones, and are to be found there to this day. The Indian, as seated in his canoe he glides over the lake, frequently sees them lying on its pebbly bottom, and the larger bark of the white man is often dashed to pieces against them. ”

“ Canandaigua, capital of Ontario county, New York, on the outlet of the lake of the same name, is one of the pleasantest towns in the country. The principal street runs along the ridge of a hill, which rises from the north end of the lake, for the distance of a mile; it is handsomely planted with trees, and the houses, which are generally painted white with green blinds, present a very neat appearance. In the centre of the town is a large square; the neighborhood abounds with pleasant gardens. Population, five thousand six hundred and fifty-two. ”

“ Though I have mentioned the lake first, the little town of Canandaigua precedes it, in returning from the West. It is as pretty a village as ever man contrived to build. Every house is surrounded by an ample garden, and at that flowery season they were half buried in roses. ”

“ The great hill at the head of Canandaigua lake, from whence they sprung, is called Genundewah, and has for a long time past been the place where the Indians of that nation have met in council, to hold great talks, and to offer up prayers to the Great Spirit, on account of its having been their birth place; and also in consequence of the destruction of a serpent at that place, in ancient time, in a most miraculous manner, which threatened the destruction of the whole of the Senecas, and barely spared enough to commence replenishing the earth. ”

“ To the east and west of the town, the mountains rose abruptly, their steep sides bare or covered with patches of yellow pine. At the north, the cañon closed in to form a narrow gorge between the mountains; but towards the south it opened out into a broad valley, through which the swiftly rushing creek twisted and turned along its willow-bordered bed. A half mile below the town the creek suddenly broadened into a little lake that was now frozen over, forming a sheet of dazzling ice, upon which a quartette of boys and girls were darting about on skates. ”

“ The little cañon stream still wound down its shaded course, disappearing in a patch of sand at the cañon's mouth, so the prospector felt secure. None had ridden out to look for him through that furnace of burning sand that stretched between the hills and the desert town.
The stream dwindled slowly, imperceptibly.
One morning the prospector noticed it, and immediately explored the creek clear to its source—a spurt of water springing from the roof of a grotto in the cliff. Such a supply, evidently from the rocky heart of the range itself, would be inexhaustible. ”

“ Sometimes, as one sits gazing from a high, jutting promontory, the sky all clear, showing not the slightest wisp or penciling, a bright band of cumuli will appear suddenly, coming up the cañon in single file, as if tracing a well-known trail, passing in review, each in turn darting its lances and dropping its shower, making a row of little vertical rivers in the air above the big brown one. ”

“ To every gulch and gorge on its favorite ground is given a passionate torrent, roaring, replying to the rejoicing lightning — stones, tons in weight, hurrying away as if frightened, showing something of the way Grand Cañon work is done. Most of the fertile summer clouds of the cañon are of this sort, massive, swelling cumuli, growing rapidly, displaying delicious tones of purple and gray in the hollows of their sun-beaten bosses, showering favored areas of the heated landscape, and vanishing in an hour or two. ”

“ As the day draws to a close, shadows, wondrous, black, and thick, like those of the morning, fill up the wall hollows, while the glowing rocks, their rough angles burned off, seem soft and hot to the heart as they stand submerged in purple haze, which now fills the cañon like a sea. ”

“ Forty Mile River is one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards wide at the mouth, and the current is generally strong, with many small rapids. Eight miles up is the so-called cañon; it is hardly entitled to that distinctive name, being simply a crooked contraction of the river, with steep rocky banks, and on the north side there is plenty of room to walk along the beach. At the lower end of the cañon there is a short turn and swift water in which are some large rocks; these cannot generally be seen, and there is much danger of striking them running down in a boat. ”

“ Leaving Golden, we enter the wilds of Clear Creek Cañon, similar in many respects to Eagle River Cañon, the mighty sloping hills on either side being honeycombed with mines. In places the cañon is very narrow; the rugged walls overhanging the tracks almost meet at the top, a thousand feet above. The stream we follow is a shallow one, and here and there we catch sight of a prospector wading in the water with his shovel and pan, washing the sand he scoops up from the bottom of the creek in the hope of finding grains of gold. ”

“ Yet a surprising number go down the Bright Angel trail to the brink of the inner gloomy granite gorge overlooking the river. Deep cañons attract like high mountains; the deeper they are, the more surely are we drawn into them. On foot, of course, there is no danger whatever, and, with ordinary precautions, but little on animals. ”

“ While the trees are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends its graceful head in the lake, and the wild duck dwells amidst the rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway’s home is the birch-bark canoe. When the winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the wild swan and the wavey, passing northward to the polar seas, call it again from its long icy sleep. ”

“ From afar appeared the numerous pagodas of Canton, with their domes adorned with little gold bells. Our boat nosed her way into the crowded river, traversed by a perpetual scurry of launches, and we were at once surrounded by a flotilla of numerous sampans ornamented with golden devices. We were deafened by the screams and the dreadful noise. Canton is a veritable town of amphibians. There is not room enough on land for the two million inhabitants, who spend all their lives on the water in floating huts. ”

“ Numerous streams come down from the high plateaus on either side, each having its own winding cañon, and these have tributary cañons, making the topography adjacent to the river exceedingly intricate.” In the valley of the Colorado below the cañons is found a large extent of fertile bottom land, easily cultivated by artificial irrigation. This valley varies in width from 3 to 8 m. The greater part of it is covered with timber, chiefly cottonwood and mezquite. Just below Callville is the Black cañon, about 25 m. long, with walls in places from 1,000 to 1,500 ft. ”

“ Their bark houses are scattered irregularly along the beach above high-water mark, and a fleet of slender, black canoes, with high, carved bows, are drawn up on the sand and pebbles. The canoe is the only means of locomotion in this region of unexplored and impenetrable woods, and the Indian is even more at home in it than on shore. No horseman cares for his steed more faithfully than the Siwash tends and mends his graceful cedar canoe, hewn from a single log, and given its flare and graceful curves by being steamed with water and hot stones, and then braced to its intended width. ”

“ The next afternoon, being tired of this sort of prison-life, and cramped for lack of exercise, I launched the canoe into the rough water, and crossing to Crow Island found a lee under its shores, which permitted me to ascend the river to the mouth of Atchison Creek, through which I passed, two miles, to the South Santee River.
All these rivers are bordered by rice plantations, many of them having been abandoned to the care of the freedmen. I saw no white men upon them. Buildings and dikes are falling into ruins, and the river freshets frequently inundate the land. ”

“ To civilized people from corn and cattle and wheat-field countries the cañon at first sight seems as uninhabitable as a glacier crevasse, utterly silent and barren. Nevertheless it is the home of a multitude of our fellow-mortals, men as well as animals and plants. ”

“ Instead of thus riding in dust with the crowd, more will be gained by going quietly afoot along the rim at different times of day and night, free to observe the vegetation, the fossils in the rocks, the seams beneath overhanging ledges once inhabited by Indians, and to watch the stupendous scenery in the changing lights and shadows, clouds, showers, and storms. One need not go hunting the so-called “points of interest.” The verge anywhere, everywhere, is a point of interest beyond one’s wildest dreams.
As yet, few of the promontories or throng of mountain buildings in the cañon are named. ”

“ No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or how many famous gorges and valleys you have seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had found it after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and grand and supreme is it above all the other cañons in our fire-moulded, earthquake-shaken, rain-washed, wave-washed, river and glacier sculptured world. ”

“ The pond has an outlet, but it rarely overflows. It is a very deep and a very clear body of water.
Canarsie, now so written and applied to a hamlet in the town of Flatlands, Kings County, is of record Canari See, Canarisse, Canarise, Canorise (treaty of 1655) , Kanarisingh (Dutch) , and in other forms, as the name of a place or feature from which it was extended to an Indian sub-tribe or family occupying the southwest coast of Long Island, and to their village, primarily called Keshaechquereren (1636) . On the Lower Potomac and Chesapeake Bay the name is written Canais, Conoys, Ganawese, etc. ”

“ Cacambo, who was always giving as good advice as the old woman herself, said to Candide, “You see there is no holding out any longer; we have travelled enough on foot. I see an empty canoe near the river-side; let us fill it with cocoa-nuts, get into it, and go down with the stream; a river always leads to some inhabited place. If we do not meet with agreeable things, we shall at least meet with something new.” ”

“ And the place is full of cañons, as they call gulches in this place; and thundering holes they are, two hundred feet deep, with a roaring stream at the bottom. The Black Cañon at the back of my place gives me the shivers. I am like a horse bred on the plains; when it gets on the mountains it is all abroad, and shivers at the sight of a sharp slope. I reckon I can ride on the flat, old as I am, but here, if it wasn't for my scoundrel Siwash Jim, who says he knows the country like a book, I shouldn't know where to go or what to do. ”

“ The dry atmosphere and the parched earth have absorbed it, and a dry cañon alone remains to mock the thirsty traveler. Reaching the edge of one of these cañons, five hundred or perhaps a thousand feet deep, with precipitous sides, one experiences a feeling akin to superstitious fear when, after descending to the bottom, and fully expecting to hear the rushing of a torrent of crystal water, he finds only a stream-bed of hot, glistening sand. ”

“ It is bleak without being absolutely barren. The great mountain chains form picturesque profiles, which in a measure compensate for the lack of vegetation. No country on the face of the globe bears such testimony to the power of running water to wear away the surface. The rivers commenced by wearing down great cañons. They occur here on a grand scale. The cañon of the Colorado River, having a length of two hundred miles, and through the whole, nearly vertical walls of rock, three to six thousand feet in height. ”

“ Before doing so, however, I made an examination of the cañon. The rapids below it, particularly the last rapid of the series (called the White Horse by the miners) , I found would not be safe to run. I sent two men through the cañon in one of the canoes to await the arrival of the boat, and to be ready in case of an accident to pick us up. Every man in the party was supplied with a life-preserver, so that should a casualty occur we would all have floated. Those in the canoe got through all right; but they would not have liked to repeat the trip. ”

“ The same alternation of courses reappears in the pueblos in ruins on the Animas River, about sixty miles north. The cañon commences very much like the McElmo Cañon in Southwestern Colorado, whose vertical walls are at first about three feet high, with a level space between from three hundred to five hundred feet in width; its walls rising slowly as you descend. Without a present running stream, and bordered with open prairie land, it makes a novel appearance to the eye. ”