Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/126

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122
BUFFALO.

remember, five years ago, looking forward with the most delighted expectation to this very hour, and as each year passed, the pleasure of the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now; I anticipate what this plantation, and that, will probably become, if taken care of, and there is no spot of which I do not watch the progress. Unlike building, or any similar pursuit, this pleasure has no end, and is never interrupted; but goes on, from day to day, from year to year, with perpetually augmenting interest."

In striking contrast with what has seemed the too entire extinction of some of the lovely works of creation, are the rapid growth and prosperity of the works of man, in some of the new sections of our country. Especially at Buffalo, which has a population of 26,000, and all the marks of an enterprising, commercial city, it is difficult to realize that not a single house was left standing in 1813, at its conflagration, during our last war with England. Its spacious warehouses, hotels, and public buildings, and the numerous floating-palaces employed in the regular steam-navigation of the lakes, would naturally betoken a longer date.

In the streets were many of the aborigines, the Seneca and Tuscarora tribes residing near, and that of the Oneidas, not far distant. We were led to notice the erect, and well-proportioned forms of the females, not bending under any burden, and heeding that of their children no more than the weight of the gossamer.