What can induce so many intellectual citizens to prefer these long, silent tables, scantily covered with morsels of fried ham, salt fish and liver, to a comfortable loaf of bread with their wives and children at home?  How greatly should I prefer eating my daily meals with my family, in an Indian wig-wam, to boarding at a table d’hote in these capacious hotels; the custom, however, seems universal through the country, at least we have met it, without a shadow of variation as to its general features, from New Orleans to Buffalo.

Lake Erie has no beauty to my eyes; it is not the sea, and it is not the river, nor has it the beautiful scenery generally found round smaller lakes.  The only interest its unmeaning expanse gave me, arose from remembering that its waters, there so tame and tranquil, were destined to leap the gulf of Niagara.  A dreadful road, through forests only beginning to be felled, brought us to Avon; it is a straggling, ugly little place, and not any of their “Romes, Carthages, Ithacas, or Athens,” ever provoked me by their name so much.  This Avon flows sweetly with nothing but whiskey and tobacco juice.

The next day’s journey was much more interesting, for it showed us the lake of Canandaigua.  It is about eighteen miles long, but narrow enough to bring the opposite shore, clothed with rich foliage, near to the eye; the back-ground is a ridge of mountains.  Perhaps the state of the atmosphere lent an unusual charm to the scene; one of those sudden thunderstorms, so rapid in approach, and so sombre in colouring, that they change the whole aspect of things in a moment, rose over the mountains and passed across the lake while we looked upon it.  Another feature in the scene gave a living, but most sad interest to it.  A glaring wooden hotel, as fine as paint and porticos can make it, overhangs the lake; beside it stands a shed for cattle.  To this shed, and close by the white man’s mushroom palace, two Indians had crept to seek a shelter from the storm.  The one was an aged man, whose venerable head in attitude and expression indicated the profoundest melancholy:  the other was a youth, and in his deep-set eye there was a quiet sadness more touching still.  There they stood, the native rightful lords of the fair land, looking out upon the lovely lake which yet bore the name their fathers had given it, watching the threatening storm that brooded there; a more fearful one had already burst over them.

Though I have mentioned the lake first, the little town of Canandaigua precedes it, in returning from the West.  It is as pretty a village as ever man contrived to build.  Every house is surrounded by an ample garden, and at that flowery season they were half buried in roses.

It is true these houses are of wood, but they are so neatly painted, in such perfect repair, and show so well within their leafy setting, that it is impossible not to admire them.

Forty-six miles farther is Geneva, beautifully situated on Seneca Lake.  This, too, is a lovely sheet of water, and I think the town may rival its European namesake in beauty.