dwellings, and store-edifices of brick or stone. The stores are numerous and well furnished, and the whole place wears an air of great commercial activity and prosperity.

Of public buildings there are an abundance proportioned to the population of the city, including a courthouse for the transaction of the county business, and no less than 18 churches, of which the Presbyterians have the greatest number; the others include Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Universalists, and Unitarians. There are, besides these, several institutions connected with education and the diffusion of useful information, including a highschool, an academy, a female institute or seminary, a lyceum, a gymnasium, a museum, and a mechanics' hall, where the members of the Young Men's Association chiefly meet, and where a reading and news room is open to them, to which all strangers in the town have free admission. The materials for the cultivation of future literary taste are therefore provided and set in motion, though the effects hitherto produced by them all are only just beginning to be perceptible; but time, which is requisite for the accomplishment of all improvements, will bring the fuller development of this taste in its train. Business is the chief object and pursuit of all classes; and, for the accommodation of persons thus engaged, nothing is wanting. There are five hotels, three banks, several insurance companies, three daily newspapers, several weekly ones, and a religious journal called "The Baptist Register," as well as a magazine, published here.

During our stay at Utica a Whig Convention was held to determine on the Whig candidates for the offices of governor and lieutenant-governor of the state, the election for which takes place in November next. The town was therefore very full, and the hotels so crowded that it was difficult to procure accommodation.

To such conventions it is usual for each Congressional district in the state to send as many delegates as they are entitled to send representatives to the Legislature of the State. To this number New-York City, from its great population, contributes 11, while no other district sends more than four. The state is divided into 33 Congressional districts, by which votes are given for members of the Lower House, or House of Assembly, of which there are 128, and into eight Senatorial districts, by which the votes are given for the members of the Upper House, or Senators, of which there are 32, each district sending four members. The members of the Lower House are all elected annually, and those of the Upper House for four years, one member for each district going out each year, and the vacancy being filled up by an annual election. The suffrage for both houses includes every male citizen above 21 years of age, and the mode of voting is in both cases by ballot.

The Convention, thus consisting of 128 members, corresponding with the number of the representatives in the House of Assembly, was quite full; but, in addition to those who came officially, a great many of the citizens and voters were drawn in from the surrounding country as visiters and spectators. The meetings were all on one side, as is usual in this country, and all the preliminary ones were secret. The public meeting at which the nomination took place was held in the courthouse; and it having been ascertained by the preliminary meetings (this being, indeed, their object) which of the several persons named as candidates was likely to command the greatest number of votes, these were selected and put in nomination, the minority yielding up their particular views or preferences in favour of the persons chosen by the majority; thus evincing that sort of unanimity which is shown by an English jury when the minority gives way to the majority, and present their verdict as unanimous; or by the cabinet ministers of England, when they make any public act what is called a "cabinet measure," and come down to Parliament declaring themselves to be of one mind, and not only voting, but sometimes speaking, in favour of a measure in the House which they had just before opposed in the Council-chamber, the unanimity in each case being only obtained by a sacrifice of truth and principle.

From Utica we made an excursion to Trenton Falls, this being the nearest convenient point on the western route from which they can be visited. They are distant from Utica only fourteen miles, in a northerly direction; but the roads are so much worse than the stage-roads in general, that it takes three hours, with the best horses, to accomplish the journey. We accordingly left Utica at eight o'clock, and reached the hotel at the Falls at eleven, having stopped twice to water the horses by the way. The drive is beautiful, from the extensive and delightful views with which it abounds. From the ridge of the elevated land, that lies about midway be

tween Utica and the Falls, the view is really superb, embracing distant mountains, successive ridges of forests, swelling uplands, and cultivated plains, containing every element that can contribute to the sustenance and enjoyment of their occupiers. The hotel is commodious and well furnished, and there are two or three villages with good inns on the road, so that every requisite accommodation can be procured.

The stream on which the Trenton Falls occur is called the West Canada Creek, though it is a river of some length, rising in the north of the State of New-York, and joining its waters with the stream of the Mohawk, at a distance of twenty-two miles from the Falls. At this spot the bed of the river is upward of 100 feet below the upper edge of the banks, so that the stream itself is not visible until you are upon its very edge; but a dark and deep hollow between the eastern and western hills that overhang it on either side indicates the course of the valley through which it runs.

The hotel is not more than 100 yards from the western bank, and this short way is through a thick mass of trees, which ascend from the river close to the edge of the lawn. At the end of the walk you arrive at the place of descent, where five broad ladders, or series of steps, with hand-rails, make the passage perfectly safe and easy to the bed of the stream. At the time of our visit the water was low, no rain having fallen for many weeks, so that we saw more of the rocky bed, and of the different strata composing it, than is visible when the water is high; though, at the seasons when this is the case, in the months of April and November, the increased body of the flood gives greater force and grandeur to the cataracts; but then, on the other hand, the difficulty and danger of visiting every part of them is much greater.

The depth of the rocky bed over which the river runs, and on which we were now enabled to walk, is upward of 100 feet from

TRENTON FALLS.-FOSSIL REMAINS.

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the top of the overhanging banks, and the breadth across the ravine at the top is about 200 feet. The stream, when at the fullest, is about 150 feet in breadth; but at the present time it did not exceed fifty, and in some of the narrowest parts was less than twenty. The sides of the lofty banks presented nearly perpendicular cliffs, exhibiting a vast number of thin strata or laminæ of transition-rock, of which the patient perseverance of Mr. Sherman (grandson of Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) has counted 400 separate layers, varying from one to eighteen inches thick. The lower strata are of what is called compact fœtid carbonate of lime, and these abound most with organic or fossil remains; each layer, however, having fossils peculiar to itself. Some of the middle strata, about fifty feet below the upper surface, contained shells like those in the bed of the Genesee River at Rochester; others, the 400th stratum particularly, contained trilobites, of which, it is said, no perfect specimens have been obtained entire, except at this spot, either in Europe or America; and even here it is very difficult to get them without their being more or less mutilated.

Its generic name, first given by Dr. Dekay, of New-York, is the Isotelas Gigas. Its ordinary size is from one to two inches long, from half an inch to an inch broad, and from a quarter of an inch to half an inch thick; its head is unusually large for the size of its body, occupying one fourth its whole length, and its body is divided longitudinally into three lobes (from whence its name), with transverse stripes, like rings, or ridges, or scales, overlapping each other. They occur abundantly at Dudley in Warwickshire, being found in the limestone there, and were at first called "Dudley fossils." They are now known, however, to be abundant in other parts of England, always in limestone, and some have also been found in Germany and Sweden, but the most perfect specimens are said to be here; one recently obtained by the keeper of the hotel, and which we saw, was the largest ever found, being 8 inches in length by 4 in breadth, beautifully marked, and perfect in all its parts: he asked 300 dollars, or £60 sterling, for it, and believed he should get 500 dollars for it if he kept it a few years!

The animal, now extinct, having a sort of slip at the termination of the side-lobes, like an Indian paddle, it is inferred that it could readily swim, and these slips being not only movable, but crustaceous, it is also conjectured that it could as readily crawl at the bottom of the sea, to which it once belonged. Another fossil is found here, called the Favosite, on which Mr. Sherman has the following curious observations:

"I have hazarded, to several, the novel conjecture that the Favosite -found here in the greatest abundance, from one eighth of an inch to six inches in diameter at the base, and from two to nine superstructures, some containing 6 or 800,000 columns-is a miniature exemplifi

cation of columnar basaltes at the Giants' Causeway and other places; which, if my conjecture is correct, must have been the production of a gigantic order of marine antediluvian (not to say antimundane) polypi. Whether the substance which composes these columnar forms is lime, silex, basalt, or other substance, so exactly do they correspond to each other in their prominent but very singular peculiarities, that I am unable to doubt it. There is one single point only in which I have not had opportunity to make a comparison, viz., as to the circular perforations in the parities of the cell, by which the mass becomes one connected system. I am not advised whether any such thing has been observed in columnar basaltes, i. e., in the prism, or space of column between the articulations. The hollow specimens or the weatherworn summits are those alone where we are authorized to expect this demonstration, and where, in view of the entire correspondence in every particular, I have no doubt it can and will be found. It would be a miracle in nature that there should be a perfect correspondence in twenty particulars, and yet a failure in the last. The basaltic columns must, of course, be mammoth favosites."

From the depth of the ravine, the singular appearance of the countless lines of horizontal strata in the perpendicular cliffs, the rich clothing of foliage which crown these summits, and often lines their sides, the solitude of the spot, and the turbulent rushing and roaring of the waters, as well as the beauty and variety of the views either up or down the stream, the prospect was full of beauty, uniting the wildness and softness of nature in an unusual degree. We walked up from hence along the rocky platform of the western bank, which at the present time was perfectly easy, though, when the river is full, it is necessary to hold on by chains fastened to the cliff, to avoid the danger of falling into the stream: a fate that has befallen two young ladies, one, Miss Suydam, of New-York, in 1827, and another, Miss Thorne, of the same city, a few years later.

This brought us to the first Falls, which are called Sherman's Falls, and are about thirty-five feet high. The appearance was picturesque rather than grand, and pleasing rather than sublime; the impression, even of the picturesque and pleasing, was derived more from the surrounding scenery than from the Fall itself. A little below this, a safe and well-secured wooden bridge is thrown across the stream, by which a passage is effected to the eastern bank; and, ascending thence to a height called the Pinnacle, a fine view is commanded of the upper and lower Falls, and the deep gorge of the ravine.

Descending again to the bed of the river, and recrossing the bridge, a series of ladders and paths lead higher up the western bank, along which you walk till you arrive at what are called the High Falls, of which there are three separate cascades, the upper one having a descent of forty-eight feet, the second eleven, and the third or last thirty-seven; the whole, including the perpendicular and sloping descents, making one hundred and nine feet. This is, on the whole, the finest point of the Falls, the scenery and the cat