Excerpt
FALLS OF THE GENESEE.
The Genesee is one of the most picturesque rivers of North America. Its name is indeed characteristic: the word Genesee being formed from the Indian for Pleasant Valley, which term is very descriptive of the river and its vicinity. Its falls have not the majestic extent of the Niagara; but their beauty compensates for the absence of such grandeur.
The Genesee, the principal natural feature of its district, rises on the Grand Plateau or table-land of Western Pennsylvania, runs through New York, and flows into Lake Ontario, at Port Genesee, six miles below Rochester. At the distance of six miles from its mouth are falls of 96 feet, and one mile higher up, other falls of 75 feet. Above these it is navigable for boats nearly 70 miles, where are other two falls, of 60 and 90 feet, one mile apart, in Nunda, south of Leicester. At the head of the Genesee is a tract six miles square, embracing waters, some of which flow into the gulf of Mexico, others into Chesapeake Bay, and others into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This tract is probably elevated 1,600 or 1,700 feet above the tide waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Engraving includes the falls of the river, with the village of Rochester, seven miles south of Lake Ontario. This place, for population, extent, and trade, will soon rank among the American cities: it was not settled until about the close of the last war; its progress was slow until the year 1820, from which period it has rapidly improved. In 1830 it contained upwards of 12,000 inhabitants: the first census of the village was taken in December, 1815, when the number of inhabitants was three hundred and thirty-one. The aqueduct which takes the Erie canal across the river forms a prominent object of interest to all travellers. It is of hewn stone, containing eleven arches of 50 feet span: its length is 800 feet, but a considerable part of each end is hidden from view by mills erected since its construction.
On the brink of the island which separates the main stream of the river from that produced by the waste water from the mill-race, will be seen a scaffold or platform from which an eccentric but courageous adventurer, named Sam Patch, made a desperate leap into the gulf beneath. Patch had obtained some celebrity in freaks of this description, though his feats be not recorded, like the hot-brained patriotism of Marcus Curtius in olden history. At the fall of Niagara, Patch had before made two leaps in safety—one of 80 and the other of 130 feet, in a vast gulf, foaming and tost aloft from the commotion produced by a fall of nearly 200 feet. In November, 1829, Patch visited Rochester to astonish the citizens by a leap from the falls. His first attempt was successful, and in the presence of thousands of spectators he leaped from the scaffold to which we have directed the attention of the reader, a distance of 100 feet, into the abyss, in safety. He was advertised to repeat the feat in a few days, or, as he prophetically announced it his "last jump," meaning his last jump that season....