170 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK, 



He said : " Napoleon was a great man and a great 

 general. He conquered armies, and he conquered 

 nations, but he couldnt jump the Genesee Falh. 

 Wellington was a great man and a great soldier. He 

 conquered armies, and he conquered nations, and he 

 conquered Napoleon, but he couldnH jump the Gene- 

 see Falls. That was left for me to do, and I can do 

 it, and will." 



Rochester, the capital of Monroe County, New 

 York, was first settled in 1810, and incorporated as a 

 city in 1834. It is situated on both sides of the 

 Genesee River, seven miles from Lake Ontario, two 

 hundred and fifty miles from Albany and sixty-nine 

 from ■ Buffalo by railway. An aqueduct of stone car- 

 ries the Erie Canal across the river, the cost of which 

 amounted to over half a million dollars. The city is 

 well laid out with wide and handsome streets, lined 

 with shade trees. 



Within the city limits the Genesee undergoes a 

 sudden descent of two hundred and sixty-eight feet, 

 falling in three separate cataracts within a distance of 

 two miles. The roar of these falls is heard contin- 

 ually all over the city, but no one is inconvenienced by 

 it in the slightest degree. The cataracts are believed 

 to have formed, at one time, a single fall, but the dif- 

 ferent degrees of hardness of the rocks have caused 

 an unequal retrograde movement of the falls, until 

 they have assumed their present position. At the 

 Upper Falls, the river is precipitated perpendicularly 

 ninety-six feet. It then flows between nearly perpen- 

 dicular walls of rock, for about a mile and a quarter to 

 the Middle Falls, where it has another descent of twenty- 

 five feet. One hundred rods below, at the Lower 



