LITTLE FALLS MISERABLE ROADS.

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ped for breakfast at the village of Little Falls, so called from a cascade in the Mohawk.

On getting into motion after breakfast I could not help looking out with some degree of despondency, on the prospect before us. The village through which we passed was unpaved, and deep mud extended from house to house, except where a log of timber here and there afforded a narrow footing to the pedestrian. The merciless rain dropped upon us through numerous chinks in the roof of our vehicle, and was blown in at the front and sides, in spite of the leathern apron with which we were surrounded. The horses were wading up to the knees, and occasionally past them; while at short intervals the carriage made sudden plunges to right or left, knocking the passengers against each other, and bruising our limbs on the boxes. It was something the very reverse of comforting to reflect, that there were upwards of two hundred miles between us and Buffalo, and that the roads, if the rain continued would become progressively worse as we advanced; while it was but here and there that we could expect a comfortable inn, and never a comfortable carriage.

My forebodings of disaster seemed to hasten to an accomplishment, when, after advancing a few miles, we reached the bank of a river in which the bare stone piers of a bridge rose above the flood, without any superincumbent arches or platform. But this contingency seemed no way to discompose

our phlegmatic driver, who very coolly brought us to the brink, emptied us and our luggage into two or three small boats, and leaving us to find our way across turned his horses' heads towards the village from which we had started.

The rain here agreed to a temporary but very opportune cessation of hostilities, and the contents of the stage, animate and inanimate, were soon safely landed on the opposite bank. Here we learned that the wooden floor of the bridge had accompanied the ice down the river in the early part of the spring; no stage was in waiting to receive the passengers, and we found it necessary to send notice of our arrival to the next town, two miles distant. While two of my fellow travellers set forward on this service, the others rambled about to explore the neighbourhood, and I was left beside the luggage upon the bank, sole guardian of the United States' Mail, which seemed to excite as little interest as if it had been a bag of old clothes.

Having got again into motion we passed through the flourishing little town of Herkimer, situate in the midst of what is called the German Flats. This is esteemed a very fertile district of the country, but for the present every thing presented to us a dreary prospect.

The road now became hilly and continued so for some miles. After we had slowly ascended the successive acclivities, we reached a more level country,

UTICA.- -OVERHAULING A TRUNK.

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and found a harder surface than we had hitherto known. Our driver seemed inclined that we should enjoy the variety, and urged his horses to a very hard trot, which occasionally broke into a canter; our stage rattled furiously along, clearing the stump of a tree or a large stone, with a bound and a shock which jarred every bone in my body. Between four and five o'clock in the afternoon we reached Utica, thirty eight miles from our place of starting.

Had time and opportunity admitted of it I should willingly have spent a few hours at Utica, in acquiring information about the progress of the western canal, which is to pass close by the town; but the evening was occupied with matters which more immediately concerned my present comfort. Unacquainted with American travelling, I had unfortunately brought with me a trunk which was too large to be admitted into the interior of the waggon, and had therefore been exposed without covering to the long continued rain, and the unmerciful shaking which was inseparable from resting upon the frame of the carriage, without the intervention of springs; its dimensions procured me the additional pleasure, of paying nearly as much for its transportation as for my own. On overhauling its contents I found my clothes and books, from the united effects of soaking and friction, in a sad condition; the aspect of affairs had been no way brightened by a furious contest which had taken place, in the wooden tray at the top, between some specimens of

rocks from the Cohoes fall, and an unlucky box of charcoal, which disinclination to toothache had induced me to carry along with me. A pleasant afternoon's work I had of it, as you may readily believe...

At four o'clock next morning, in darkness and rain, we resumed our seats and drove forward, leaving the course of the Mohawk by which we had hitherto travelled, and inclining more to the westward. The roads were now worse than ever. The horses could only advance at a slow walk, and the driver had to take his chance of the road, for in the ocean of mud before us, selection of one part rather than another was out of the question. Now and then the poor cattle were floundering almost up to the neck, and on one occasion the leaders plunged so deep that one got a mouthful of mud which nearly choked hima

After breakfast we passed through a village of the Oneyda Indians, and saw a few of the wretched descendants of that once powerful tribe. Both men and women presented a disheartening spectacle of squalidness and poverty, but fallen and degraded as they are the behaviour of the women was perfectly decorous; they shunned us as much as possible, and whenever we did meet unvariably drew their blankets completely round them, bringing them up on the face so as to leave only the upper part of it visible. They live in small log huts apparently without windows, and scattered at a consider

ONEYDA WOOD AN OVERTURN.

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able distance from each other. Part of the ground round their cottages was surrounded by rail fences, but I did not observe any other marks of cultivation.

Our course now lay through the Oneyda wood where the road ascended a pretty steep hill, and besides being as deep as that through which we had come, was encumbered with stumps of trees. The rain still fell, but as it was comparatively moderate and as there was a kind of foot path through the wood, we agreed to relieve the poor horses by walking. The footing was soft and slippery; occasionally we had to leap from one prostrate trunk to another, and again to make a circuit of considerable extent to avoid a quagmire. Had it been possible for an Oneyda warrior of former days to have looked down on our uncouth array, how scornfully would he have smiled at the white men, muffled in great coats, and skulking under umbrellas, feebly dragging their steps round every little pool of water, and turning out of the way to avoid a fallen tree, where he had been accustomed to chase the panther or the deer, with a foot as light as the animal's before him, dashing through opposing torrents, and bounding like an antelope over every obstruction!

Having overcome at length the difficulties of the wood, and begun to descend the opposite side of the hill, we resumed our seats. Scarcely had we begun to move forward when we descried the stage from the westward coming slowly up, with the passengers