1846.] Geological, of a Trip to Carbondale. 3 



has rendered agriculture a secondary pursuit, until a period coii- 

 paratively recent, in the pine producing regions which border on 

 our navigable rivers. 



Binghamton is a beautiful — nay, a superb village, of three 

 thousand inhabitants, situated on, and near the apex of, the angle 

 of land, between the Susquehannali and Chenango rivers, at thf 

 point of their confluence. Both are fine streams, the formei 

 somewhat the largest, measuring forty-five rods across at the 

 ferry, — though it does not quite average this width for any dis- 

 tance. 



I looked at Binghamton with peculiar interest, as here, twenty 

 years ago, 



" I was a happy boy at Driiiy's," — 



or rather, under the private tuition of the Ilev. Mr. G , now 



a chaplain in the United States army, — and I had not been there 

 since. I could scarcely find the spot where I once lived, all is so 

 changed! Stately blocks of commercial buildings have supersed- 

 ed the scattering residences and shops. The hamlet has grown 

 into an incipient city. Nothing remained to remind me of " lang 

 syne," but the hills and the rivers I And even these had chf?nged 

 somewhat from the picture painted on my youthful memory. Tne 

 blue outline of the hills tower' not so near the sky — the rivers 

 seem to flow in diminished channels, — so true is it, that not only 

 " tempora mmantur" but that " nos mutamur in illis I " But with- 

 out allowing any thing for that reversion of the telescope, by 

 which advancing years dwindle, what youth magnified, I looked 

 for an island off the point, which I have a thousand times trod, 

 and it was clean gone — swept away by the abrasion of the rapid 

 currents ! 



It is a most agreeable feature in Binghamton that the business 

 part of the town, all its stores, shops, &c., are compressed into a 

 single district, while its fine residences lay clustered about, in 

 spacious shady streets, uninvaded by the din of commerce. What 

 more odious than to see shops garnished in front with hams, 

 and fish-barrels, and clouds of blue bottle flies, — all redolent of 

 tar, and treacle, and rum, — thrust under the windows — under the 



