210 View from the Upper Falls of the Genessee River. 



Wonder, and even of fear, with which the sublime perpendicular 

 walls of the river, inspire you. They may truly be called walls, — 

 for they do not, like the beautiful rocks at Trenton, recede as they 

 approach the top ; but are for a great distance, perfectly upright, or 

 impending, and almost as regular, for a great part of three miles, as 

 a work of art, and rising, as the inhabitants around tell you, from two 

 to five hundred feet ; and so they appear, but probably four hun- 

 dred is not beyond the truth. To this depth, the river seems to 

 have worn its circuitous passage, in the solid rock, — in turns almost 

 as short, and bends nearly as graceful, as if winding through the 

 softest meadows. I have never witnessed in nature, a scene of 

 more savage grandeur and loneliness, than the view from these fear- 

 ful walls, when looking into the gulf from one of their highest points, 

 to the very edge of which, by trusting to the boughs of the thick 

 shrubbery, you can approach, without apparent danger. Gigantic 

 evergreens stand upon the extreme verge, lifting their tops to the 

 clouds, and loolcing unconsciously over the awful precipice which 

 man cannot approach without alarm, and they seem from their vast 

 height, to have held their places on this brink, for ages. 



The spectator, in the drawing, is supposed to stand about one 

 hundred and fifty feet above the river — and the wall of rock, in the 

 bend facing him, to be four hundred and fifty feet high. 



Remarks hy the Editor. 



The view given in the frontispiece was sketched by Mr. Wads- 

 worth, during a journey in the autumn of 1827 ; and he has, at my 

 request, permitted it to appear in the present place, because, as I con- 

 ceive, it illustrates, in a very striking manner, not only the pictur- 

 esque scenery of that interesting region, but also the peculiar geolo- 

 gical structure upon which it depends. Happily, these two subjects, 

 the one so interesting to science, and the other to taste and moral 

 feeling, are capable of being blended, in a manner both highly in- 

 structive and delightful. If the painter were always a geologist, his 

 sketches of rock scenery, and of the ever varying outline of land- 

 scape, as it is seen in hills, plains, valleys, waters and mountains, 

 would assume a verisimilitude, depending on physical laws, since none 

 of these features are matters of chance ; were the geologist a painter, 

 he would breathe into his faithful graphic outlines, the living spirit 

 of the sublime and beautiful ; the beholder would be arrested, 

 through his imagination, as well as his understanding ; and were the 

 powers of poetry added, or at least the ability to conceive, with cor- 



