No. 216.] 559 



affectionate kinsman, with a superfine article, which was conveyed to 

 them in small trading vessels from the port of Wilmington. While 

 Delaware at that time was scarcely paid for sending her products in 

 small trading vessels to her neighbors, we still see an evidence of 

 her advancement before the other States of the confederacy. Even 

 the Empire State was then in her infancy, and mostly an unexplored 

 territory, — 



" The plow of wisdom not yet entering there.''' 



A voyage to Albany was then the perils of a fortnight, and the 

 magnificence of the Hudson and its ample resources were neither re- 

 alized nor dreamed of. The valley of the Genesee was the wild 

 hunting-ground of the untutored Indian; the rude wigwam still lodg- 

 ed the natives of the soil, and the rapid and gigantic strides of civili- 

 zation, which have since annihilated the tribes of the Iroquois and 

 the Mohawks, was yet an unbroken silence. When we think of these 

 things, we confess that it is with wonder and admiration that we 

 glance back at the short ajid rapid career of our own State. Forests 

 have been felled, fields have been opened, cities have been built, learn- 

 ing is universally felt, commerce, manufactures and the arts are wide- 

 ly disseminated, and millions acknowledge the triumphant success of 

 agriculture. 



It is but about thirty-five years since the site of the present thriv- 

 ing city of Rochester was a solitary wilderness, and when proposals 

 were then made in the Assembly to raise a small sum by county tax 

 to build a bridge over the Genesee river, it was strongly objected to 

 — one member opposing it on the ground that it was a " God-forsa- 

 ken place, inhabited by muskrats, and visited only by straggling trap- 

 pers." It is scarcely requisite to say, that Rochester now ranks with 

 the flourishing cities of the Union, and that the wheat of Genesee is 

 some of the finest in the world. 



During the year 1798, the exiled Duke of Orleans (now King of 

 the French) was travelling with his brothers from Buffalo to Canan- 

 daigua. On their route they met with Mr. Alexander Baring, (since 

 Lord Ashburton,) who was on his way to Buffalo; when the English 

 traveller informed the Duke, that he had left behind him a savage 

 and almost impassable country; whereupon the Duke repaid the cour- 

 tesy by assuring his companions that they would find no improve- 

 ment in the route through which they had yet to pass, and of all the 

 fatiguing adventures of a wandering life,. Louis Phillippe describes 

 this as the most difficult and dangerous. 



