'■ ■-" -r "" ' 



^l)c ianncv's iflontljln iHsitor. 



41 



more (then a candidate but now Vice President 

 of the United Slates) Mr. J. C. Spencer and 

 niece, with his son-in-law I\lr. G. W. Clinton and 

 daughter. Mr. Spencer on that day had deliver- 

 ed the address as the successor of Silas Wright, 

 whose preparation the year before we heard ut 

 Saratoga as delivered alter his sudden decease 

 by Gen. Dix. We did not hear Mr. Spencer: 

 his address was said not to be equal to that of 

 Mr. Wright. We give in 10 the belief that the 

 more eminent statesmen of the country are but 

 as infants in the calling of the practical farmer 

 to which they are taken as instructors. 



Intending when we left home to visit and find, 

 if alive, in this journey, our kinsman and friend 

 the venerated John Adams, residing in a part of 

 Pennsylvania to which we were not acquainted 

 with the most ready means of access, we return- 

 ed in the cars directly to Cayuga bridge, where 

 we found that the steamer run daily to Ithaca in 

 the line towauls Pennsylvania. The car-travel- 

 ling from Albany to Buffalo is twice as expensive 

 per mile as the passenger prices on the better 

 New England roads, with the comforts and ac- 

 commodations lessened in the ratio of price. 

 The steamboat on Cayuga lake, a beautiful sheet 

 of water adorned with line farms all along its 

 borders wherever an opening breaks lo the view, 

 we suspect is no heuer in its accommodations 

 than it was twenty-five years ago : the lessened 

 facilities, here as in the New York railroads, as a 

 natural consequence reduce the travel and busi- 

 ness. Ithaca, at the head of the Cayuga lake, is 

 n flourishing place with a population of six 

 thousand inhabitants: a small creek brings the 

 steamboat some distance out of the lake to liie 

 landing. The soil and climate here are well 

 adapted to fruit trees; and many of the yards of 

 the residences are adorned with trees and shrub- 

 bery. This part of the country on all sides of 

 the lake is productive of clover, which is raised 

 for '.he seed. The seed clover, we take it, is 

 generally the growth of a second crop. Exten- 

 sive fields on the tenth of September were black- 

 i ned by the clover which lies along in the open 

 air for the more ample curing. 



From Ithaca, the capital of Tompkins county, 

 to Owego, the shin- of Tioga county, the dis- 

 tance is forty miles. Over this distance is a rail- 

 road made some twenty years ago, intended to 

 connect the business of the country on the south 

 line by means of the lake with the Erie 'canal 

 passing east and west. The outlet of both the 

 Cayuga and Seneca lakes connects these lakes 

 with this {rrand canal. But the railroad tip lo 

 this time has been n failure. Steam locomotives 

 were first employed to oarry passengers and 

 freight: the great expense of the road affording 

 no dividends with the corporation in debt, re- 

 pairs were neglected. Finally breaking through 

 a bridge weakened by age with the loss of hu- 

 man life, the steam engine was taken off; and 

 the travel over the road is now once a day with 

 horses in even a slower pare than over a good 

 common road, on which at night We took pas- 

 sage. It was a cold Saturday night, but a bright 

 moonlight. The first few miles out of Ithaca 

 the rise several hundred feel in the ridge which 

 divides the upper waters of the Susqtiehannah 

 from those which (low into Ontario lake is en- 

 countered. The course of the road from the 

 height downward was along one of those valleys 

 common to that region where a mountain ridge 

 from three to live hundn d feel in height uniform 

 on both sides lies along the way, leaving an open 



intervale on the stream of various width and 

 fertility. It was our regret to pass this distance 

 of a night when we could not distinctly descry 



the lay and value of the hind. We came to 

 Owego nfter midnight cold anil tired ; and sleep 

 rested on us so long that we had no time after 

 hastily rising to dress next morning to get break- 

 fast before we had sought out and attended the 

 morning service of the episcopal church. The 

 only recognized acquaintance we met here was 

 the lion. Mr. Leonard, who, a printer at first, 

 became afterwards a member of Congress, and 

 was now occupying the quiet position of post- 

 master to the village which was somewhat near 

 the size of Ithaca. Sunday at the tavern, we re- 

 gretted to observe, was a time for the exercise of 

 great bar-room political bitterness. The inmates 

 of the tavern, at the two extremes of the old 

 parties in New York, claimed to cover all the 

 possible ground of strength. The event here, as 

 in other portions of New York, proved a few 

 weeks after that the valiant combatants did not 

 much overrate their strength. 



passable road for a stage and four horses. The 

 first lawyer of Bradford county with another in- 

 telligent gentleman joined company on the way 

 from Athens to the Towanda court. The gen- 

 tlemen regretted that there was no capital in the 

 country left to effect internal improvements. 

 Millions of dollars in the time of the United 

 States bank of Pennsylvania had been expend- 

 ed ; and its whole product was thrown away in 

 impracticable excavations of rock, gravel and 

 other soils intended for a canal ! The best ami 

 only use that we saw over the distance of the 

 immense waste of our travel was that the exca- 

 vatiqn in some short distances was made the 

 pathway of the travelled road. At other 

 places it was turned along the steep side of 

 the mountain ridge near the river. As the 

 ground was more steep, so the one track for the 

 carriage wheels was proportionally lower on the 

 one side than upon the other. The accidental 

 striking of a rock would for considerable dis- 

 tances have capsi/.ed the two-horse hermaphro- 

 dite stage-wagon, precipitating passengers and 

 baggage down a long ami frightful steep : the 

 gentlemen on the lower sub-, each of them about, 

 twice, our weight, made an exchange of sides 

 with us: more frightful did it look to us in the 

 altered position. The land in this part of Penn- 

 sylvania is much of it of that limestone cast 

 which is long fertile, producing generally wheat 

 as a sure crop. Put such has been the incubus 

 weight bearing upon them from the taxation of 

 a wanton State expenditure which has given no 

 benefit, that they have probably been discoura- 

 ged from doing any thing to improve their main- 

 ly travelle'd roads. The Susquehannah valley, 

 as beautiful and fertile by nature as our own 

 Connecticut, has been blighted and cursed by 

 the influence which inconsiderate expenditures 

 fur supposed internal improvements by the Slate 

 have brought to her floor. The country has yet 

 left great natural advantages: it possesses the 

 stamina which will assuredly bring prosperity 

 at some future day. The recuperative energies 

 of Pennsylvania w ill return as she leaves and 

 casts behind a mistaken, if not corrupt policy. 



Towanda, the shire town of Bradford county, 

 is on the western side of t'ne Susquehannah as 

 it turns south and east from iis south and west 

 course above. The turning of the river leaves 

 a peninsula with the county of Susquehannah at 

 its base and a portion of Bradford county at its 

 westerly point. The character of tins peninsula 

 is somewhat remarkable. Going east and west 

 you cross a succession of hills and valleys; 

 but generally in the other direction are valleys 

 north and south through which, when the wa- 

 ters stood at a higher former level, thry broke 

 the bills down at si verol points, seeking in vain a 

 (dear field until their accumulation found its 

 passage far west of iis natural direction towards 

 the sea. Our way, spending an agreeable day 

 and night with the best attentions of our friends 

 Gen. Patton, whose acquaintance we had first 

 made at Washington city, his amiable lady, 

 daughter and niece, after being greeted with a 

 call and hah' an hom's animated conversation at 

 the taverr. with the lion. Mr. \\ ilmot, the popu- 

 lar member of Congress from the district j— our 

 way, the second day from Towanda was in the 

 direction over the ridges of Bradford and Sus- 

 quehannah counties on the peninsula forty miles 

 to Montrose, the shin- town of the latter county. 

 Through that whole region the severe drought 



At the recommendation of our friend Leonard, 



we entered Pennsylvania by encircling the great 



bend of the Susquehannah: we should have 



saved in distance to go the other way eastward, 



which at this point is up the river. The New 



York and Erie railroad is to pass down the river 



from Binghamtnn to Owego to the line of 



Pennsylvania westward. The civil engineers of 



the part of the road to be worked this year were 



at Owego. From Owego to Athens, Pennsyl- 

 vania, where the Chemung river unites with the 



Susquehannah, is twenty-two miles: this dis- 

 tance we passed entirely before light after mid- 

 night of Monday morning. Nearly all the way 



we encountered evidence of that fatuity which 



both in Pennsylvania and New York as well as 



in other States, has forced expenditure on State 



or National improvements before prudent calcu- 

 lation could have time to lay a practicable useful 



plan. Passing by moonlight along the river road 



appeared a continuous range apparently of black 



or decaying tree slumps. On inquiry of our 



driver with whom alone we started, we found 



these slumps to he piles driven in the earth to 



save filling ami excavation in the construction of 



the road. Prom sixty to a hundred miles of this 



construction existed, and not a rod of it had ever 



arrived to the completion of the road. This 



great waste of expenditure descends as an heir 

 loom to the stock of the New York and Erie 

 road, which since we passed that country last 

 lall has been openi d some hundred and fifty 

 miles above Port Jervis, making over two hun- 

 dred miles in the whole, to the flourishing village 

 of Binghamtnn, situated highly up at the con- 

 fluence of the Susquehannah river with the Che- 

 nango, on which is the track of the canal from 

 Binghamton to Utica: this latter canal, a State 

 work commenced since 1833, has as jet hardly 

 paid one per cent, dividend on the original ex- 

 penditure. It may he made: hereafter more ex- 

 tensively useful iu the transport of anthracite, 

 which looks for its supply over to the Susque- 

 hannah valley in Pennsylvania as low down as 

 the county of Luzerne. 



F.ntering Pennsylvania at Alliens, a village 

 considerably less than Owego, a new feature 

 striken ns directly mi leaving the line of New 

 York. From Alliens to Towanda, the shire 

 town of Bradford county, is fifleeli miles. Down 



this river which finals tor many miles above large i wag PuUill g ,, tli ,, September the growth of corn 

 masses of pine and other timber, there is not a nn( j potatoes. Thirteen years before we had 



