between 12,000 and 13,000 it must be now much more considerable. Dr. Dwight says, the public buildings have been as much improved as the private ones. He mentions the State-house, ten churches,* an arsenal, a prison, and three banks. The new Dutch church in Hudson-street is described as one of the best and most beautiful of the kind he had seen. The streets are well paved; and upon the whole, few towns have so advantageous an appearance. The inhabitants, who are chiefly "immigrants" from New England and other parts, are distinguished by their public spirit. A singular mixture of poverty and splendour meets the eye in some parts of the town. "A number of the old Dutch erections," Mr. Duncan says, are still standing; small houses of red and yellow bricks with the gable end to the street, having a door and window in the ground floor, a single window in the next, and above it, the year of their erection embossed upon the surface in huge iron figures, and the whole surmounted with an iron weathercock rusted upon the rod. There is an air of antiquity about these buildings, which is interesting in a country where antiquity is so rare. The modern

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* Mr. Duncan enumerates eleven, viz.-3 Presbyterian, 2 Dutch Reformed, 1 Dutch Lutheran, 1 Baptist, 1 Episcopalian, 1 Methodist, 1 Quaker, and 1 Romish.

The very description given by Geoffrey Crayon of Antony Vander Heyden's house, in the days when Albany "was in all its glory, inhabited almost exclusively by the descendants of the original Dutch settlers;" when every thing was quiet and orderly, and the grass grew about the unpaved streets. The houses were built, in those days, partly of wood and partly of small Dutch bricks, "such as the worthy colonists brought with them from Holland, before they discovered that bricks could be manufactured elsewhere."See Bracebridge Hall, vol. ii. pp. 343, 231. Many of the neighbouring villages, Lieutenant Hall says, continue almost entirely Dutch.

erections exhibit the same tasteful style which prevails in New York and Philadelphia. Two or three of the public buildings are of white marble. One of them is surmounted with a very neat dome; but in another, the effect of the marble wall is sadly disfigured by the untasteful addition of a red-tiled roof. The Capitol or State-house has rather a neat portico, and a dome surmounted with a statue of Justice. Near the Capitol is a very neat academy, with two wings built of reddish-coloured freestone."* The Patroon's residence is in a pleasant situation, a little to the northward of the city. Nearly opposite to the town is a large wooded hill, on which are barracks capable of holding, it is said, nearly 10,000 men.

Albany, though not reputed unhealthy, is very warm in the summer months, the thermometer ranging sometimes from 85° to 92°. In winter, the cold is not less severe, and the Hudson becomes frozen up, so as to afford a regular road across the ice between the opposite shores. Mrs. Grant describes the periodical breaking up of the ice as a spectacle of uncommon interest and grandeur. Its approach being announced by a loud and long peal like thunder, the whole population of Albany, in former times, would be assembled at the river side in a moment, to witness the passage of the ice. 66 Every house was left empty; the meanest slave, the youngest child, all were to be found on the shore, immoveable and silent as death," till the whole was past. It is the swelling of the water under the ice, increased by rivulets enlarged by melted snow, that produces the phenomenon; the prelude to which

* Duncan, vol. i. p. 323. The Capitol stands at the upper end of a very steep but wide street, running at right angles to the river. Lieutenant Hall objects to the lofty columned portico as too large for the building, which, being but small," looks all porch."

is a fracture lengthways in the middle of the stream, produced by the effort of the imprisoned waters. "Conceive," says this Writer, a solid mass from six to eight feet thick, bursting for many miles in one continued rupture, produced by a force inconceivably great, and in a manner inexpressibly sudden. Thunder is no adequate image of this awful explosion, which roused all the sleepers within the reach of the sound. The stream, in summer, was confined by a pebbly strand overhung with high and steep banks, crowned with lofty trees. Their tangled roots, laid bare by the impetuous torrents, formed caverns ever fresh and fragrant, where the most delicate plants flourished, unvisited by scorching suns or nipping blasts ; and nothing could be more singular than the variety of plants and birds that were sheltered in these intricate and safe recesses. But, when the bursting of the crystal surface set loose the many waters that had rushed down, swollen with the annual tribute of dissolving snow, the islands and lowlands were all flooded in an instant; and the lofty banks from which you were wont to overlook the stream, were now entirely filled by an impetuous torrent, bearing down, with incredible and tumultuous rage, immense shoals of ice; which breaking every instant by the concussion of others, jammed together in some places, in others erecting themselves in gigantic heights for an instant in the air, and seeming to combat with their fellow giants crowding on in all directions, and falling together with an inconceivable crash,-formed a terrible moving picture, animated and various beyond description. For it was not only the cerulean ice, whose broken edges combating with the stream, refracted light into a thousand rainbows, that charmed your attention; lofty pines, large pieces of the bank

torn off by the ice, with all their early green and ten. der foliage, were driven on like travelling islands amid this battle of breakers, for such it seemed." *

About ten miles above Albany, the Hudson receives, on its right bank, the Mohawk river, its principal tributary, and almost equal in size, at the junction, to the main branch. A short distance from its mouth are the falls called the Cohoz or Cahooz,+ where the river descends, at high water, in one sheet, to the depth of 70 feet. Their extreme breadth, according to Lieutenant Hall, is about 300 toises, which is much more than the mean breadth of the stream, both above and below them, being increased by the manner in which the ledge of rock forms an obtuse angle in the direction of the current. The bed of the falls is serpentine rock; and according to Volney, this river separates the freestone formation from the primitive. Above the falls, the banks are nearly on a level with the stream, but are increased below by the depth of the descent. In summer, the overflow is scanty; and when Lieutenant Hall saw them, in the middle of March, a cap of snow rested on the most prominent cliff of the angle, from beneath which the stream filtered in silver veins. The whole effect of these falls," he adds, "the broadest, I believe, in the States, except Niagara, is diminished for want of the relief of a bold, darkly shadowed back-ground. The air of wintry desolation, varied only by the sombre foliage of the

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* Grant's Amer. Lady, vol. ii. pp. 284-6.

+ Cohoz is the Indian name of the Falls. Volney supposed it to be an imitative word; and by a singular coincidence, he says, he found it applied, in the country of Liége, to a small cascade three leagues from Spa.

Volney says, some reckon it 65 feet in height; others, only 50. The Marquis de Chastellux makes it 75. In Carey and Lea, it is stated at 70, and the breadth at between 300 and 400 yards.

pine and cedar, stretching their dark masses over beds of snow, took little from the rude force of a scene, the character of which is simply grand, rather than lovely or romantic. There is a very good point of view from a long covered bridge, which crosses the Mohawk near its mouth, and leads to the village of Waterford."* At Waterford, 180 miles from the sea, the Hudson becomes " a reduced and rural stream, about as large as the Seine at Paris; and can be traced for leagues,sometimes still, lovely, and green with islands, sometimes noisy, rapid, and tumbling,—until you reach its sources in the rugged, broken mountains of the northern counties of this State." This remarkable river has its source in the township of Tipperary, (co. of Essex,) in about latitude 44° 10' N. After running for a short distance S. W., it turns with a right angle S.E., and flows in that direction, till it receives, after a course of between 50 and 60 miles, a branch from the Scaroon lake. It then winds southward and eastward, becoming first the northern, and then the eastern limit of the county of Saratoga, till it meets the Mohawk. On reaching the township of Hadley, it suddenly turns to the N.E., and maintains that course to Sandy Hill; whence it pursues a direction nearly due S., declining a little to the west, till it enters the ocean, after a course of about 330 miles.+

Saratoga Springs, about 30 miles N. of Albany, and those of Ballston, 12 miles S. W. of Saratoga, have of late years become the most fashionable watering-places in the United States; and a large concourse of persons assemble there, during the season (from July to September), from every part of the Union, and even from Canada. Although these springs are from 1000 to 1500 miles from the Southern States, the inhabitants

Hall's Canada, p. 30,

t Dwight, vol. iii. p. 425.