296 The Genesee Country. 
dian orchard had been trimmed up and the fruit secured from in- 
jury. At the head of the Seneca Lake was another extensive 
clearing and village called Catharine's Town; where the cele- 
brated Catharine Montour lit her council fires among the drooping 
hemlocks of Catharine's Creek; but her domains were compelled 
to undergo the desolation that awaited every Indian possession 
among the Senecas during the invasion of General Sullivan. Fire 
and the axe w^ere destructive weapons when directed by an army 
of 5000 men, and silence brooded over the broad domains of Kate 
Montour. Her bitter exclamations upon her return to the spot 
M'here once stood her home, it is needless here to detail. Fruit 
was very abundant where the Indian clearings had been, at the 
time of the settlement of the Genesee country. The trees cut 
down by the army in its progress, had sprouted up and bore fruit 
in great abundance. One farmer near Geneva at this time made 
100 barrels of cider during the season. The town of Canandar- 
qua from consisting of a few straggling huts as described in 1792, 
had now assumed the appearance of a handsome village. A tract 
of country extending from this place to Genesee river, was inter- 
spersed with rich and elegant farms and filled with a population 
of respectable inhabitants. In this year, (1796) a sloop of 40 
tons burthen was put upon the stocks at Geneva to ply as a packet 
from that place to Catharine's Town, a distance of about 40 miles. 
Towards the close of the season the sloop was launched, and this 
event was sufficient to draw together several thousand people, 
and no circumstance having occurred previously, to assemble the 
inhabitants of the country, they were not a little surprised to find 
themselves, as a body, so numerous. Every State in the Union, 
almost, w'as represented, and natives of almost every country in 
Europe mingled, in the throng. This season a printing office was 
established at Geneva, and the subscription list exhibited about 
800 names. The flour manufactured in this country was so much 
superior to what was made upon the Mohawk, that samples were 
sent to different places as presents. The only part of the Genesee 
country which until now failed to keep even pace, was the coun- 
try lying on the Genesee river, below Hertlbrd, nearly west of 
Canandarqua; settlers were intimidated by the idea of exposure 
to Indian depredations upon the frontier, always sufficient to deter 
the peaceable and industrious inhabitants from settling. The mo- 
ment however, that the western posts were delivered up by the 
British to the Americans, in 1795, by virtue of a treaty made be- 
tween these two powers, the Indians gave up all hopes of attempt- 
ing hostilities, and this part of the country was rendered safe, so 
that the industrious settler directed his attention to the rich lands 
west of the river. The immigration that took place in the year 
1797, into this western country, not only exceeded former years 
