38 - Forest Scene on Lake Ontario

Summary

The view over this immense forest was taken in the Tuscarora reservation, from an Indian cabin, which serves as a sort of halting-place for travellers to Niagara. We arrived here about noon, emerging from a tract of deep woods which had darkened the road for several miles, and glancing off to the right, discovered that we were following a high ridge, from which extended, with a radius of forty miles, one unbroken sea of foliage. A thin silver line on the very rim of the horizon looked brighter than the sky, and we found on inquiry that it was Lake Ontario, which, with its thread of bright light, forms a limit to what, else, were an object as boundless as the sea.

An Indian woman of about forty, dressed very neatly, came out to offer for sale specimens of Indian workmanship, such as moccosins, pouches, &c.; and, among other things, a beautiful little model of a bark canoe. De Kalm, who travelled in this country in 1749, gives a very detailed account of the making of a canoe. He was going to Canada under the escort of a party of Indians, who, on coming to a portage of forty miles, between the Hudson and Lake Champlain, (now superseded by a canal,) were compelled to leave their canoe and build another.