Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/124

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120
PIONEER ROADS

miserable. Four miles to Shepard's, in Canajoharie, to sleep. . . The Mohawk in many places was shoal, and interrupted with so many islands and sandbanks that we were often at a loss to conceive how loaded boats could pass, and yet we saw several going up-stream with heavy loads. . . July 18th. To Carr's at Little Falls, to breakfast, twenty miles; a very good house. In this stage, we passed the East Canada Creek. Observed for the very first time the cypress-tree. The gloomy, melancholy air of this tree, and the deep shade which it casts, resulting from the downward direction of its branches, as well as the form and color of its leaves, have very properly marked it out as emblematical of mourning.

"On approaching the Little Falls, we observed undoubted marks of the operation of the water on rocks, now far out of their reach, particularly the round holes worn out [by] pebbles kept in a rotatory motion by the current, so common at all falls. It is certain that heretofore the falls must have been some ways further down stream, and have been much greater than they