A SCENIC GIFT TO NEW YORK STATE. 



571 



THE FAMOUS PORTAGE BRIDGE ACROSS THE GENESEE RIVER. 



(A prominent feature of the Letchworth Park landscape.) 



approach it from Portageville, a little station house and reaches the brink: of the chasm, 



on that line of the Erie Railway which runs with a lake at one side of it, and a fountain in 



from Hornellsville to Buffalo. Portageville the center of the lake. The visitor notes the 



stands at one end of the famous Portage almost tropical luxuriance of the vegetable 



Bridge over the Genesee gorge. This bridge life around him. The grass of the lawn is 



is 800 feet long and 234 feet high, and has wonderfully thick and green ; the trees, 



been familiar in' many photographs and en 

 gravings. After walking across the bridge 

 the visitor enters Mr. Letchworth's domain 

 by descent of a stair- 

 way and thence may 

 drive or walk along a 

 well-constructed wind- 

 ing roadway through 

 the virgin forest until, 

 at a distance of about a 

 mile, he reaches a stone 

 gateway through which 

 he passes to the door- 

 way of Mr. Letch- 

 worth's home. This 

 house fronts on the can- 

 yon, and overlooks the 

 middle, or larger, of 

 the three cascades, the 

 walls of the canyon 

 there rising from the 

 base of the. falls to a 

 height of 350 feet. 



A spacious lawn 

 spreads out before the 



whether of maple, beech or evergreen, display 

 a marvelous thickness of foliage and surpris- 

 ing symmetry of form. All this, of course, is 



GORGE OF THE GENESEE, INCLUDING UPPER AND MIDDLE FALLS. 



