The Flora of the Cayuga Lake Basin 447 



Still we should know nothing of the region had not a Jesuit, Father Raffeix, who 

 evidently had an observant mind, taken de Carheil's place, during a temporary ab- 

 sence of the latter. He was a man of wide experience and had visited the other 

 tribes of the League in their own homes. He writes in the Relations for the year 

 1671-72, (Quebec Ed. p. 22) : 'Cayuga is the most beautiful country I have seen in 

 America. It is situated in latitude 42£, and the needle dips scarcely more than ten 

 degrees. It is a country situated between two lakes and is no more than four 

 leagues wide, with almost continuous plains bordered by beautiful forests. Agnie, 

 (the country of the Mohawks), is a valley very narrow, often very stony, and al- 

 ways covered with fog ; the hills which enclose it seems to me to be very poor land. 

 Oneida and Onondaga, as well as Seneca, appear too rough and too little adapted to 

 the chase. Every year in the vicinity of Cayuga more than a thousand deer are 

 killed. Four leagues distant from here, on the brink of the river (Seneca outlet) are 

 eight or ten fine salt fountains, in a small space. It is there that numbers of nets are 

 spread for pigeons, and from seven to eight hundred are often taken at a single 

 stroke of the net. Lake Tiohero, one of the two which join our canton, is fully four- 

 teen leagues long and one or two broad. It abounds in swan and geese all winter, 

 and in tbe spring one sees a continuous cloud of all sorts of game. The river which 

 rises in the lake, soon divides into different channels enclosed by prairies, with here 

 and there fine and attractive bays of considerable extent, excellent places for hunt- 

 ing.' It is not difficult to picture to one's self the country here described. The 

 marshes were as they are now, while all the country about, used by the Indians for 

 the purpose of deer-stalking, was made up of 'continuous plains' (the 'oak-openings') 

 bordered by the forest. The openings were kept clear by the Indians, by annuallv 

 burning them over. These openings were described by President Dwight in his tour 

 through Western New York, 1822. Greenhalgh in his Journey 'from Albany to ye 

 Indians westward,' 1677, says of the Cayugas: 'they have abundance of corne,' 

 which implies of course cleared fields near their villages, at the foot of Cayuga Lake. 

 But the universal testimony is that the forests became very much denser and more 

 tangled near the head of the lake and throughout the country south. The Cayugas 

 made frequent excursions through this country southward to the Susquehanna, and 

 they are spoken of in Hiawatha's decrees as the people whose 'habitation was the 

 dark forest,' their country being much more densely wooded than Onondaga. John 

 Bartram, a Pennsylvania Quaker and most excellent botanist, a keen observer and 

 the most delightful of letter-writers, made a journey to Onondaga in 1743, passing 

 up the Susquehanna to Owego Creek. He then passed through the forest probably 

 traversing the east part of Tompkins Co., and the western part of Cortland Co. He 

 at first passed 'over fine, level, rich land' with 'oak, birch, beech, ash, spruce, linden, 

 elm, hepatica, and maidenhair in abundance.' _ Then he struck 'swampy land, then 

 thickets, and on the hills, spruce and white pine.' Reaching level ground — perhaps 

 near the present site of Cortland — he found it 'full of tall timber of sugar-maple, 

 birch, linden, ash, beech, and shrubs of opulus, green-maple, hornbeam, hamamelis, 

 Solanum, gooseberries and red currants.' He describes the tops of the trees as so 

 thick and interlacing that it is 'impossible to see which way the wind drives or the 

 clouds set.' He next reached the dividing ridge where he found chestnut and cherry 

 in addition to the other trees ; and toward Onondaga they found many 'oaks, hick- 

 ories, plums and apple-trees full of fruit.' 



"This corresponds well with the present distribution of species, so far as the hard- 

 woods are concerned. From Dr. Parker and other residents of Ithaca, whose recol- 

 lections reach back to 1830 or 1835, we know that the tracts of white-pine now 

 wholly cleared away, were extensive and well-defined. There was a heavy growth 

 of it in Enfield stretching up for a long distance between the lakes. Tt descended 

 into the Negusena valley near Buttermilk Falls, covered the top of South Hill, 

 extended back in several well defined tracts through Danby and Newfield and oc- 

 cupied portions of Neguaena and other valleys. The pine was particularly heavy about 



