Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/132

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128
LUNATIC ASYLUM.

forth suddenly as if to give you welcome. It is formed by the precipitation of Fall Creek, over a prominent and steep rock. A cataract of more power exists in the vicinity, and should always be visited by strangers. Its approach is through an excavation in the form of a tunnel, upon a causeway of boards, over deep, black waters, where one imagines there may be some peril. This feeling probably heightens the effect of the scene, when once more emerging into light, the bold, beautiful torrent bursts upon you, making successive leaps of great height, while the comparatively small quantity of water causes it to assume a flaky, feathery lightness, which adds to its peculiar beauty.

Utica exhibits undoubted marks of opulence and prosperity. One of its most conspicuous edifices is the State Lunatic Asylum. Its fine doric portico, and magnificent front of five hundred and fifty feet are of hammered stone, and were completed in 1842. With its various and well arranged offices and appendages, it is sufficient for the comfortable and even luxurious accommodation of several hundred patients. Attached to it are gardens, and a farm of one hundred and forty acres, where healthful exercise may be obtained by those able and disposed to seek it. A library and schools have been established, and music and a green-house are among the pleasures here provided for the diseased mind. This munificent endowment and benevolent sympathy on the part of New York, to one of the saddest forms of suffering human-