Various - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832.

The Genesee is one of the most picturesque rivers of North America. Its name is indeed characteristic: the word Genesee being formed from the Indian for Pleasant Valley, which term is very descriptive of the river and its vicinity. Its falls have not the majestic extent of the Niagara; but their beauty compensates for the absence of such grandeur.

The Genesee, the principal natural feature of its district, rises on the Grand Plateau or table-land of Western Pennsylvania, runs through New York, and flows into Lake Ontario, at Port Genesee, six miles below Rochester. At the distance of six miles from its mouth are falls of 96 feet, and one mile higher up, other falls of 75 feet. 1 1 It may be as well here to quote the formation of Cataracts and Cascades, from Maltebrun's valuable System of Universal Geography. "It is only the sloping of the land which can at first cause water to flow; but an impulse having been once communicated to the mass, the pressure alone of the water will keep it in motion, even if there were no declivity at all. Many great rivers, in fact, flow with an almost interruptible declivity. Rivers which descend from primitive mountains into secondary lands, often form cascades and cataracts . Such are the cataracts of the Nile, of the Ganges, and some other great rivers, which, according to Desmarest, evidently mark the limits of the ancient land. Cataracts are also formed by lakes: of this description are the celebrated Falls of the Niagara; but the most picturesque falls are those of rapid rivers, bordered by trees and precipitous rocks. Sometimes we see a body of water, which, before it arrives at the bottom, is broken and dissipated into showers, like the Staubbach, (see Mirror, vol. xiv. p. 385.); sometimes it forms a watery arch, projected from a rampart of rock, under which the traveller may pass dryshod, as the "falling spring" of Virginia; in one place, in a granite district, we see the Trolhetta, and the Rhine not far from its source, urge on their foaming billows among the pointed rocks; in another, amidst lands of a calcareous formation, we see the Czettina and the Kerka, rolling down from terrace to terrace, and presenting sometimes a sheet, and sometimes a wall, of water. Some magnificent cascades have been formed, at least in part, by the hands of man: the cascades of Velino, near Terni, have been attributed to Pope Clement VIII.; other cataracts, like those of Tunguska, in Siberia, have gradually lost their elevation by the wearing away of the rocks, and have now only a rapid descent."— Maltebrun , vol. i. Above these it is navigable for boats nearly 70 miles, where are other two falls, of 60 and 90 feet, one mile apart, in Nunda, south of Leicester. At the head of the Genesee is a tract six miles square, embracing waters, some of which flow into the gulf of Mexico, others into Chesapeake Bay, and others into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This tract is probably elevated 1,600 or 1,700 feet above the tide waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Engraving includes the falls of the river, with the village of Rochester, seven miles south of Lake Ontario. This place, for population, extent, and trade, will soon rank among the American cities: it was not settled until about the close of the last war; its progress was slow until the year 1820, from which period it has rapidly improved. In 1830 it contained upwards of 12,000 inhabitants: the first census of the village was taken in December, 1815, when the number of inhabitants was three hundred and thirty-one. The aqueduct which takes the Erie canal across the river forms a prominent object of interest to all travellers. It is of hewn stone, containing eleven arches of 50 feet span: its length is 800 feet, but a considerable part of each end is hidden from view by mills erected since its construction.

On the brink of the island which separates the main stream of the river from that produced by the waste water from the mill-race, will be seen a scaffold or platform from which an eccentric but courageous adventurer, named Sam Patch , made a desperate leap into the gulf beneath. Patch had obtained some celebrity in freaks of this description, though his feats be not recorded, like the hot-brained patriotism of Marcus Curtius in olden history. At the fall of Niagara, Patch had before made two leaps in safety—one of 80 and the other of 130 feet, in a vast gulf, foaming and tost aloft from the commotion produced by a fall of nearly 200 feet. In November, 1829, Patch visited Rochester to astonish the citizens by a leap from the falls. His first attempt was successful, and in the presence of thousands of spectators he leaped from the scaffold to which we have directed the attention of the reader, a distance of 100 feet, into the abyss, in safety. He was advertised to repeat the feat in a few days, or, as he prophetically announced it his "last jump," meaning his last jump that season. The scaffold was duly erected, 25 feet in height, and Patch, an hour after the time was announced, made his appearance. A multitude had collected to witness the feat; the day was unusually cold, and Sam was intoxicated. The river was low, and the falls near him on either side were bare. Sam threw himself off, and the waters (to quote the bathos of a New York newspaper) "received him in their cold embrace. The tide bubbled as the life left the body, and then the stillness of death, indeed, sat upon the bosom of the waters." His body was found past the spring at the mouth of the river, seven miles below where he made his fatal leap. It had passed over two falls of 125 feet combined, yet was not much injured. A black handkerchief taken from his neck while on the scaffold, and tied about the body, was still there. He is stated to have had perfect command of himself while in the air; and, says the journalist already quoted, "had he not been given to habits of intoxication, he might have astonished the world, perhaps for years, with the greatest feats ever performed by man."

The Genesee river waters one of the finest tracts of land in the state of New York. Its alluvial flats are extensive, and very fertile. These are either natural prairies, or Indian clearings, (of which, however, the present Indians have no tradition,) and lying, to an extent of many thousand acres, between the villages of Genesee, Moscow, and Mount Morris, which now crown the declivities of their surrounding uplands; and, contrasting their smooth verdure with the shaggy hills that bound the horizon, and their occasional clumps of spreading trees, with the tall and naked relics of the forest, nothing can be more agreeable to the eye, long accustomed to the uninterrupted prospect of a level and wooded country.