- ber upon them is principally hard wood, and their soil is of
a superior quality. Grand island is fifteen miles in length.
From the falls of Niagara I proceeded to Buffalo. The distance from the former place to Black Rock, is about twenty-two miles.[36] The way to it is through a gloomy wood, between the trees of which one may occasionally see the river. Here the aspect was dreary. The snow was still very deep; the weather cold, windy and wild; the river presented a green appearance, was partially covered with masses of ice, and violently agitated by the spirit of an approaching storm. In this situation I met three Indians. We were thinking of a shelter.—We passed each other, only with a mute and sympathetic glance.
In the vicinity of the Lakes Ontario and Erie deeper snows fell, during the last winter, than had ever been known there; and the severity of the cold was without a parallel. Many people on the Lakes, and in the woods were frozen to death. A hunter, who went into the wood for an afternoon, was so frozen as to render necessary the amputation of his feet; and it was not uncommon, in the upper part of the state of New-York, to see men, in consequence of the frost, moving upon crutches.
It may be well for me here to mention some additional facts, in relation to the country through which I have passed since leaving Vermont. The face of it, from the Green Mountains to Niagara River, is rather level than mountainous; there are, however, many high and steep hills. On both sides of the Mohawk north and south, and from sixty to one hundred miles west from Albany, there are a number of considerable hills. In the vicinity of these, particularly near Scoharie, the soil is of an inferior {82} quality. West of this to Lake Ontario is an
