Railroad · Utica · Trenton Falls · Meetings

We get into the carriages of the Schenectady and Utica railroad at 6 h in the evening. There exists, on coming out of Albany, a most steep inclined plane. It is ascended again by a process as simple as it is ingenious wagons loaded with stones descend on one track towing on the other by counterweight effect a train of goods and of passengers a locomotive awaits the travelers at the summit of the mountain and sets off drawing the convoy, easily surmounting the slopes which find themselves from time to time before it. The landscape is fairly uniform one looks out over immense uncultivated plains where nothing can be made out but forests one finds nevertheless, along the railroad, farms, villages and a few cleared spaces.

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Arrived at Schenectady, we got into another train, which was to set us down at 4 h in the morning at Utica. We shortened the night with the help of a gaiety of twenty years. The pipe of a stove, placed at the front of the carriage passed between the travellers' legs. There resulted from it a heat hardly bearable. We were the only ones, to talk, to laugh and to complain our fellow travellers were plunged in a deep sleep.

They were four or five Quakers returning from the great meetings held annually at New York. The others, who appeared to be merchants of the interior, drank cups of tea, in the places, where the engine stopped to take on water. A charming family occupied one of the corners of the carriage. It was made up of a gentleman and his wife, elegantly dressed, who held on her lap two pretty little girls deeply asleep. An old blind Quaker, was seated opposite us, and at every moment he ran his broad hands over our shoes, to feel whether the stove-pipe was not setting his old shoes on fire.

We had reached Utica at 4 h in the morning. A part of the day, which we had before us was set aside in advance for an excursion to the falls of Trenton. We set out in a light carriage in spite of the rain and the bad roads.

The road one follows, to go to the falls, crosses a picturesque country. Arrived on the heights, one looks down on the town of Utica, which spreads out on the plain, in the middle of a vast carpet of forests. One makes out further off, a great building, asylum or hospital. The falls are situated about 20 kilometres from that point. On the way, we came upon several farms appearing in the middle of graceful solitudes. Horses cows grazed round about. One found there nothing of the disorder and the filth, which reign in the yards of our French farms. We saw also a few villages made up of few houses and several churches situated in places of easy access. Wood replaces stone in their construction. The Gothic form appears to be the preferred architecture. A long wooden shed is the obligatory appendage of all these churches in the country.

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It shelters the carriages of the farmers, who come from far off to […] of Sunday we passed on our road, several of these fairly elegant carts. The farm wives are ladies to judge by their dress which is that of small-town ladies. After having stopped several times to gather some directions on the road to follow, after having followed byroads gullied by the rain, lost in the middle of the woods, seeing, in the way of living beings, nothing but crows and magpies, we reached the hotel, beside which the falls plunge down. It was closed. It was not yet the moment of the villégiature [the country holiday season]. We left our carriage under shed, to cross a wood which was to bring us by path, to the desired point. It is difficult to find a site more beautiful and more wild. After having walked some time beneath gigantic trees a half-broken stair let us go down to the banks of the torrent which runs at the bottom of the precipice. One climbs its steep banks by means of a chain fixed into the rock which overhangs above your heads threatening you with its trees half uprooted at the crest and hanging over the abyss. One comes thus to a first fall of the river. Its noise answers the noise of a 2nd fall. The dark colour of the waters reflects the greenery of the mountains which surround it.

The valley widens it forms an amphitheatre of granite rocks crowned at the summit, with age-old forests. One comes from bend to bend to the foot of the second fall. It divides into three cascades, it is in this spot so steep that a young girl from New York met her death in 1827. She disappeared into the gulf at the moment when her companions' attention was captivated by the sight of the falls. Birds purple in colour blue birds rubies with gilded breast fluttered around us while the swallows skimmed with rapid wing the greenish waters which follow the fall.

We then climbed by a stair roughly made of tree trunks up to a little kiosk perched above the falls we were able to admire better the whole of the scene, lit by an unexpected burst of sunlight. After having carved our names on an old oak which we shall never see again we made our way back to the neighbourhood of the hotel.

Two squirrels seemed to want to dispute with us the possession of the old carriage-shed, open to all the winds, where we had tied our horse. Our determined bearing put them to flight. We were back at Utica at nightfall.

That day, it was a Sunday, the town was silent as a tomb. We visited several churches whose windows appeared lit up. Some young girls, in elegant dress, attended by as many young men were trying to decipher in one of them. Pieces of sacred music Books and hymns strewed the pews of the congregation. It was an Episcopal church (Anglican rite).

We saw, in another temple a meeting of Mormons a sect which had just been born. They were packed into a great hall listening attentively to a speaker come out of the crowd.

What surprised us the most, was the grave and sad aspect of a Presbyterian or Methodist congregation. All the members of the church few in number moreover, were grouped in the middle of the nave. They sang psalms in the attitude of the deepest recollection, a flute, placed in a gallery was trying to guide the general psalmody. We were losing our sang-froid when the eyes, surmounting all those open mouths turned our way we made our way back to our hotel to find there a night's rest after the one we had passed in the Schenectady wagons [railway carriages].