At one o'clock the wind became decidedly fair, and the men, relieved
from their paddles, are nearly all asleep, in the bottom of the canoe.
While the wind drives us forward beautifully I embrace the time to
resume my narrative of early journeyings, dropt yesterday.
In the year 1808, my father removed from Albany to Oneida County. I
remained at the old homestead in Guilderland, in charge of his affairs,
until the following year, when I also came to the west. The next spring
I was offered handsome inducements to go to the Genesee country, by a
manufacturing company, who contemplated the saving of a heavy land
transportation from Albany on the article of window-glass, if the rude
materials employed in it could be found in that area of country. I
visited it with that view; found its native resources ample, and was
still more delighted with the flourishing appearance of this part of the
Western country than I had been with Utica and its environs. Auburn,
Geneva, Canandaigua, and other incipient towns, seemed to me the germs
of a land "flowing with milk and honey.
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