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The Mohawk, so famous in the early annals of NewYork for the courage and ferocity of the savages who inhabited its banks, takes its rise in the Highlands of Black river, and, after a sinuous course of a hundred and fifty miles, separates into four branches which enter the Hudson at Waterford, Lansingburgh and Troy. The upper and lower branches are four miles distant at their mouths, and they form in their course, three sinall islands, one of which, Van Schaick's island, was the place where the northern army under General Schuyler, took its position in 1777, just before it advanced to meet Gen. Burgoyne.

The mouths of the River are called by the Dutch, the Spruytem or the Sprouts.

After passing the city of Utica, the course of the river is through a winding valley of exceeding beauty, varying in breath from half a mile to a mile, and about seventy miles in length. The direction of this valley is nearly from west to east; on the west it expands into the Oneida and Seneca vales, and on the east into the flat grounds about the city of Schenectady. The hills. that bound it are from one to four hundred feet in height and about half a mile distant from the river. The scenery is always picturesque and beautiful; often highly romantic. The river, at one time glides smooth ly and silently along, through woods that seem to spring from its very bed, and throw their many coloured branches far over its waters; at another it foams in an

gry rapids or dashes in cataracts over the rifted rocks; and again its gently swelling banks are covered with teeming orchards or waving with golden grain, the rich rewards of the laborious husbandman. The hills too, sometimes rise in easy and gradual acclivities and are cultivated to their very summits; at others, they start up abruptly and nod beneath the burden of primeval forests. The lands in the Valley of the Mohawk are generally very good, and the flats in particular are famed for their extraordinary fertility. This is in a great measure owing to the inundations to which, like the Nle, they are periodically subject, and which, though they occasionally do great mischief, fertilize the soil by depositing a rich alluvion far more valuable than the best artificial manure. In addition to this great source of fertility, the soil of this valley is kept constantly moist by the immense body of vapors which rising nightly from the river is condensed in the form of dew upon the land. So dense are those nightly exhalations, that the whole valley often assumes the appearance of a sea.With a soil of inexhaustible riches the farmers of the Mohawk enjoy the farther advantage of having a market always at their door. This they find in the Erie Canal, a stupendous monument of the public spirit of New-York,-which is fast changing the character of the western region of the state, causing the forests to disappear and villages and cities to spring up in their place.

Besides the numerous rapids in the Mohawk, there are two waterfalls of considerable celebrity; the Cohoes and Little Falls-The Cohoes Falls are situated about half a mile above the mouths of the river, near the village of Waterford; they are nine hundred feet wide and fall about eighty feet. The Erie Canal passes close by them but they cannot be seen from it owing to its depth which is twenty eight feet; the traveller however may have a splendid view of them from the towing path,

The little Falls are in the County of Herkimer, and about seventy miles west of Albany. These falls, properly speaking, consist of a series of rapids separated by stretches of deep water; each of these rapids is about a quarter of a mile in extent, and the whole descent of the water is about fifty feet in the course of a

mile. The splendid aqueduct of the Erie Canal crosses the stretch, disparting these rapids, on a noble limestone bridge of three arches.- -The scenery in the neighborhood of Little Falls is bold and beautiful, nor is the stupendous triumph of art over nature as exhibited in the constructure of the Canal at this place less admirable than the majesty of nature herself. Foaming torrents and perpendicular rocks here interposed to check the progress of the work; but the genius of man prevailed. The rock was cut away and the torrent spanned by the graceful arch. The sudden difference of level which causes the cataract of Little Falls, is overcome by a series of locks of which there are no less than ten within a mile and a quarter of the village. At one place a vertical section of an immense rock has been made down to the requisite level, here a horizontal section meets the other at right angles, thus furnishing a bed for the Canal; and you glide along with a high rock towering above you on one side, while on the other you look down a tremendous precipice and see the Mohawk river tumbling and roaring along far beneath you. The scenery of Little Falls is moreover interest-ing to the observing traveller from the evidence it affords of the wonderful changes that have taken place in the character of the surrounding country. The hills that rise on either side to the elevation of four hundred feet, have once unquestionably been united, and have been cleft to their base by the might of running waters. Through this defile the waters of a mighty lake once flowed. After the reduction of Lake Ontario, and the subsequent reduction of the Lake that overspread the Oneida vale, there must have been a Lake that spread from the Little Falls back, at least as far as Rome; this lake decreased as the rocky barrier at Little Falls gave way, and finally became dry, leaving but the trifling streams that meander through the lower parts of the vale. The action of water may be seen in the innumerable cavities worn in the rocks that compose the bottom and sides of the defile. In one of these rocks there is a water worn tunnel the top of which is nearly fifty feet above the low water mark of the river. This tunnel is about two feet in diameter and descends perpendicularly from the top of the rock to its base, near

which it has been broken so that the sky may be seen by looking up.

Many other instances of water worn cavities might be mentioned, and many were observed in carrying the canal through a forsaken bed of the river fifteen feet above its present bed.

The Valley of the Mohawk embraces parts of the Counties of Ŏneida, Herkimer Mongomery and Schenectady and contains a great many flourishing towns and villages.-The Mohawk Indians were a branch of the Agoneaseah or Five Nations, and the name they gave the river was Ye-no-na-natch, or going round the mountains.

For the Monthly Repository, and Library of Entertaining Knowledge. TIME AND GRIEF.

Time has been called, both by philosophers and poets, the healer of grief, the comforter of those who mourn.--It may be So, with regard to slight sorrows, or those that more immediately affect the passions.But there are losses, whose extent is made more evident by the revolution of years,-in the waste of comfort, the desolation of hope, the impossibility of restitution. To such afflictions, Time only seems to bring relief. It hushes the tempest of grief, but it reveals more perfectly the magnitude of the wreck,-the depth of a ruin which can neither be repaired or concealed.

To the sorrows of youth, Time may be frequently a successful physician. Then, the heart, full of strength, voluntarily co-operates with the sanitary regimen.—It readily finds, or fancies that it 'finds, substitutes for the desolations made in its sanctuary.-If its tendrils are stricken from one press, they are pliant and powerful to adhere to another.-But it is not thus, in the wane of life. The heart, often smitten, clings with a rigid tenacity to what remains. As the circle of its joys diminish, it seems to spread itself over the whole, endeavoring like a sleepless sentinel, to touch and to guard every point.

The affections, too, at the approach of age, seem to

lose their power of reproduction. They become too inert to allure new objects, and too feeble to enchain them. Like the ruminating animals, they slumber over what they once eagerly pursued.-With a hallowed jealousy, they refuse to admit new idols to the shrine, where the long-consecrated ones dwelt, and were worshipped.-With a morbid constancy they seal hermetically the vase, whence their first, purest odors, sprang forth, and were exhaled. Therefore, on the bereavements of the aged,—Time is a physician of little value: -their decayed affections have lost the pulse of earthly hope.

But under the happiest auspices, the medicine which Time brings to Grief, must be remarked rather as a sedative, than among those mightier agents which extirpate the root of disease.-He, who seeks solace for a wounded soul,-independent of Him who hath "smitten, and can make whole," who hath fashioned and knoweth its frame,-will find that he has only stupified his senses with an opiate, and that his anguish will still awake and rankle, till in the bitterness of the bereaved Patriarch, he " go down into the grave mourning."

L. H. S.

SCENES IN PALESTINE.

Description of the Country South and East of Jerusalem.

Valley of Jordan-Mountains-Description of Lake Asphaltites-Remains of ancient cities in its hasin-Quality of its waters-Hasselquist, Chateaubriand -Width of river Jordan.

With an Engraving.-See page. 296.

On leaving the Church of the Nativity the traveller pursues his course eastward, through a vale where Abraham is said to have fed his flocks. This Pastoral tract, however, is soon succeeded by a range of hilly ground, so extremely barren that not even a root of moss is to be seen upon it. Descending the farther side of this meagre platform two lofty towers are perceived, rising from a deep valley, marking the site of the Convent of Santa Saba. Nothing can be more dreary than the situation of this religious house. It is erected in a ravine, sunk to the depth of several hundred feet, where the brook Kedron has formed a channel which is dry

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