40 NAERATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 



and there was a fall of snow between tlie lOtli and lltli of Feb- 

 -ruary, which laid four feet deep in the streets of New York. 

 March opened with mildness, and every appearance denoted an 

 early spring, which led me to hasten my movement north. I left 

 New York on the 6th of March, in the citizens' post-coach, on 

 sleighs, for Albany, taking the route through Westchester, and 

 over the Highlands of Putnam and Dutchess; sleeping at Fishkill 

 and Kinderhook, the first and secon^ nights, and reaching Albany 

 on the morning of the 7th, a distance of one hundred and 

 sixty miles. This distance we made in forty hours actual travel- 

 ling, averaging four miles per hour, incidental stops included, 

 which is about the rate of travelling by the trekschuits of Holland,* 

 and by sledges over the frozen grounds of Kussia.f In crossing 

 the Highlands, some one, in the change of the stage-sleighs, 

 pilfered a small box of choice minerals which I set store by ; the 

 thief thinking, probably, from the weight and looks of the box, 

 which had been a banker's, that it was still filled with coin. We 

 crossed the Hudson from Grreenbush, in a boat drawn through a 

 channel cut in the ice. Snow still laid in the streets of Albany, 

 and a cold north wind presaged a change of temperature. Next 

 day there was a hail-storm from the north-west, with rain and sleet, 

 and on the morning of the 9th, the hail lay six inches deep in 

 the streets. In the evening, proceeded by stage to the city of 

 Schenectady, a distance of sixteen miles, across the arenaceous 

 tract of the Pine Plains, by a turnpike, which forms the shorter 

 line of a triangle, made by the junction of the Mohawk with the 

 Hudson River. This tract is boanded southerly by the blue 

 summits of the Helderberg, a .prominent spur of the Catskill 

 Mountain. At Schenectady, we experienced a night of severe 

 cold, and the next day, at an early hour, I took a seat in the stage- 

 sleigh for Utica, which we reached at seven in the evening. The 

 distance is ninety-six miles, which we passed in seventeen hours, 

 going an average rate of five miles per hour. The road lies up 

 the valley of the Mohawk, a name which recalls the history of 

 one of the most celebrated members of the Iroquois, a confederacy 

 of bold and indomitable tribes, who, at an early day, either pushed 

 their conquests or carried the terror of their arms from the St. 

 Lawrence to the Mississippi. 



* Professor F. HaU. f Clarke's Travels. 



