SOLON ROBINSON, 1850 401 



In leaving Buffalo, we take the cars for Niagara Falls, 

 twenty-two miles over a cold, flat, clay soil, originally, 

 and still, in part, covered mostly with oak, beech, and 

 maple, and other kindred timber, and little of it culti- 

 vated in a manner to begin to show its capability of 

 producing small grains and grass. I noticed farmers 

 along the road busy cutting oats; and occasional spots 

 were white and fragrant with the bloom of buckwheat. 

 Corn, to one from a southern corn region, looked very 

 diminutive, though of a rank-green hue, and now just in 

 blossom. Orchards few, trees scrubby, fruit small, as a 

 general thing. The railroad and cars upon this route 

 are good; fare, 75 cents, time, ll^ hours. 



The Falls Village is a place capable of affording a 

 great and cheap water power; and if half the energy 

 were displayed in turning it to some account, that is 

 devoted to plucking the gulls that annually flock there, 

 it would soon become a great manufacturing town, fur- 

 nishing employment to thousands of laborers, and add- 

 ing value to all the farming land in the vicinity. 



From the Buffalo road, passengers for Lewiston and 

 Canada step into the cars of the Lockport road, which 

 stands ready in the open street, where all are disem- 

 barked, instead of a commodious depot under shelter, as 

 is the fashion in some Christian countries. The road 

 now runs just along the very edge of the frightful pre- 

 cipitous bank, and the boiling flood that rolls between 

 the perpendicular walls of that immense chasm below the 

 Falls. We begin to bear off from the stream at the Sus- 

 pension Bridge, a structure that looks like a frail ribbon 

 stretched from bank to bank, but yet is capable of carry- 

 ing over heavy teams, elevated more than two hundred 

 feet above the river, which seems here to be struggling 

 to force its way through a gorge too narrow to admit the 

 mass of water that pours down the great fall, three miles 

 above. At the Junction, three and a half miles from 

 Lewiston, we exchange from the wretched cars of the 

 Lockport road, to others not much worse, drawn by 



