42 - The Genessee Falls, Rochester

Summary

In the three thousand miles between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, there may be said to be three water-steps formed by the different levels of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and Lake Superior. Niagara and the Genessee river fall over the middle step, the edge of which is formed by the brow of a bed of limestone, computed to be four hundred and ten feet above the level of Lake Ontario. Saint Lawrence may thus be said to take but three leaps from the Rocky Mountains to the ocean—an agility which, one would suppose, might have saved the holy martyr from his gridiron.

The ledge over which these two celebrated falls are precipitated, comes out of Canada from an immense distance, and keeps its course along the shore of Lake Ontario, in a direction nearly due east. At the Genessee Falls, as at Niagara, the descent to the lake is between the walls of a tremendous ravine, the grandeur of which seems to have had no terror for the souls of manufacturers. The thriving village of Rochester stands round the lip of the fall; and if you talk to the inhabitants of the beauty of the cascade, they stop your mouth, and strike calculation dumb, with the number of sledge-hammers, nail-cutters, mill-stones, and cotton-jennies, it carries; the product per diem; the corresponding increase of population, et cetera et cetera—the only instance in the known world of a cataract turned, without the loss of a drop, through the pockets of speculators.