Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/133

Rh ity, is a noble example to her sister States, and to the world.

The scenery of Little Falls, is strikingly wild and fascinating. Rocks, woods, and waters are thrown together, as if to form a miniature of Switzerland. One would like long to linger in such a region. A feeder of the great western canal is here taken over the Mohawk, by an aqueduct of admirable construction. The Mohawk flows on, often studded with islets like emeralds, through a valley of extreme fertility. Here the reaper seems to wrestle with the bearded wheat, which looks at him, eye to eye, as he does his fatal office. The rich, alluvial region of German Flats, is peculiarly beautiful at the ripening harvest.

At Fonda and Johnstown and their vicinity, we noticed the corn-fields in early summer, to abound in a most ingenious variety of scare-crows. Something of the kind is often seen in New England among planted fields, or loaded cherry trees, but not worthy to be compared with these in device or execution. Here were parti-colored pennons, broad white flags and banners, long ropes hung with bright tin filings, and braided wisps of straw, flapping in every breeze; stuffed boys, with one foot raised as in the act of ascension; men in full vigor, brandishing the semblance of a fowling-piece, or some other non-descript weapons; aged sires, with uplifted brow, in an attitude