VI GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 



because there would not enter into it the gloomy gorges 

 and savage mountains that everywhere roll it into disorder. 

 I shall furnish, however, the best description, by giving an 

 extract from a letter of Professor Farrand N. Benedict, of 

 Vermont University, whose able report in the Geological 

 "Work of our State, and reports, also, to the Senate, on the 

 capabilities of this section for slack water navigation, have 

 been of equal service to science and to the practical man. 



In a letter to me, which the reader will acknowledge to 

 be written with singular clearness and beauty, he says : 



" The northern section of New York, embracing the 

 county of Hamilton, and the most of the counties of Essex, 

 Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Herkimer, Lewis, War- 

 ren, and Fulton, has hitherto resisted the march of improve- 

 ment, and still remains, with a few solitary exceptions, an 

 unsubdued forest. Until recently, little has been known of 

 its physical resources, and of its adaptedness to the wants of 

 man in his civilized state. Regarded as an unproductive 

 waste, it has left the vague and transient impression on the 

 mind that it answered well enough, the only purpose of its 

 existence, to constitute a barrier between the Mohawk and 

 St. Lawrence Rivers, and to prevent the waters of Lake 

 Ontario from carrying desolation with them into the valley 

 of Champlain. It seems until lately to have failed to 

 awaken that interest in its behalf, to which it is justly en- 



