mile. The splendid aqueduct of the Erie Canal crosses the stretch, disparting these rapids, on a noble limestone bridge of three arches.- -The scenery in the neighborhood of Little Falls is bold and beautiful, nor is the stupendous triumph of art over nature as exhibited in the constructure of the Canal at this place less admirable than the majesty of nature herself. Foaming torrents and perpendicular rocks here interposed to check the progress of the work; but the genius of man prevailed. The rock was cut away and the torrent spanned by the graceful arch. The sudden difference. of level which causes the cataract of Little Falls, is overcome by a series of locks of which there are no less than ten within a mile and a quarter of the village. At one place a vertical section of an immense rock has been made down to the requisite level, here a horizontal section meets the other at right angles, thus furnishing a bed for the Canal; and you glide along with a high rock towering above you on one side, while on the other you look down a tremendous precipice and see the Mohawk river tumbling and roaring along far beneath you. The scenery of Little Falls is moreover interesting to the observing traveller from the evidence it affords of the wonderful changes that have taken place in the character of the surrounding country. The hills that rise on either side to the elevation of four hundred feet, have once unquestionably been united, and have been cleft to their base by the might of running waters. Through this defile the waters of a mighty lake once flowed. After the reduction of Lake Ontario, and the subsequent reduction of the Lake that overspread the Oneida vale, there must have been a Lake that spread from the Little Falls back, at least as far as Rome; this lake decreased as the rocky barrier at Little Falls gave way, and finally became dry, leaving but the trifling streams that meander through the lower parts of the vale. The action of water may be seen in the innumerable cavities worn in the rocks that compose the bottom and sides of the defile. In one of these rocks there is a water worn tunnel the top of which is nearly fifty feet above the low water mark of the river. This tunnel is about two feet in diameter and descends perpendicularly from the top of the rock to its base, near

which it has been broken so that the sky may be seen by looking up.

Many other instances of water worn cavities might be mentioned, and many were observed in carrying the canal through a forsaken bed of the river fifteen feet above its present bed.

The Valley of the Mohawk embraces parts of the Counties of Oneida, Herkimer Mongomery and Schenectady and contains a great many flourishing towns and villages.-The Mohawk Indians were a branch of the Agoneaseah or Five Nations, and the name they gave the river was Ye-no-na-natch, or going round the

mountains.

For the Monthly Repository, and Library of Entertaining Knowledge. TIME AND GRIEF.

Time has been called, both by philosophers and poets, the healer of grief, the comforter of those who imourn.--It may be so, with regard to slight sorrows,— or those that more immediately affect the passions.But there are losses, whose extent is made more evident by the revolution of years,-in the waste of comfort, the desolation of hope, the impossibility of restitution. To such afflictions, Time only seems to bring relief. It hushes the tempest of grief,-but it reveals more perfectly the magnitude of the wreck,-the depth of a ruin which can neither be repaired or concealed.

To the sorrows of youth, Time may be frequently a successful physician. Then, the heart, full of strength, voluntarily co-operates with the sanitary regimen.-It readily finds,--or fancies that it finds, substitutes for the desolations made in its sanctuary.-If its tendrils are stricken from one press, they are pliant and powerful to adhere to another.-But it is not thus, in the wane of life. The heart, often smitten, clings with a rigid tenacity to what remains. As the circle of its joys diminish, it seems to spread itself over the whole, endeavoring like a sleepless sentinel, to touch and to guard every point.

The affections, too, at the approach of age, seem to

lose their power of reproduction.-They become too inert to allure new objects, and too feeble to enchain them. Like the ruminating animals, they slumber over what they once eagerly pursued.-With a hallowed jealousy, they refuse to admit new idols to the shrine, where the long-consecrated ones dwelt, and were worshipped. With a morbid constancy they seal hermetically the vase, whence their first, purest odors, sprang forth, and were exhaled. Therefore, on the bereavements of the aged,-Time is a physician of little value: -their decayed affections have lost the pulse of earthly hope.

But under the happiest auspices, the medicine which Time brings to Grief, must be remarked rather as a sedative, than among those mightier agents which extirpate the root of disease.-He, who seeks solaee for a wounded soul,-independent of Him who hath "smitten, and can make whole," who hath fashioned and knoweth its frame,-will find that he has only stupified his senses with an opiate, and that his anguish will still awake and rankle, till in the bitterness of the bereaved Patriarch, he " go down into the grave mourning."

L. H. S.

SCENES IN PALESTINE.

Description of the Country South and East of Jerusalem.

Valley of Jordan-Mountains-Description of Lake Asphaltites-Remains of ancient cities in its basin-Quality of its waters-Hasselquist, Chateaubriand -Width of river Jordan.

With an Engraving.—See page. 296.

On leaving the Church of the Nativity the traveller pursues his course eastward, through a vale where Abraham is said to have fed his flocks. This Pastoral tract, however, is soon succeeded by a range of hilly ground, so extremely barren that not even a root of moss is to be seen upon it. Descending the farther side of this meagre platform two lofty towers are perceived, rising from a deep valley, marking the site of the Convent of Santa Saba. Nothing can be more dreary than the situation of this religious house. It is erected in a ravine, sunk to the depth of several hundred feet, where the brook Kedron has formed a channel which is dry

the greater part of the year. The church is on a little eminence at the bottom of the dell; whence the buildings of the monastery rise by perpendicular flights of steps and passages hewn out of the rock, and thus ascend to the ridge of the hill, where they terminate in the two square towers already mentioned. From hence you descry the sterile summits of the mountains both towards the east and west; the course of the stream from Jerusalem; and the numerous grottos formerly occupied by Christian anchorites.

In advancing, the aspect of the country still continues the same, white and dusty, without tree, herbage, or even moss. At length the road seeks a lower level, and approaches the rocky border which bounds the Valley of the Jordan; when, after a toilsome journey of ten or twelve hours, the traveller sees stretching out before his eyes the Dead Sea and the line of the river. But the landscape, however grand, admits of no comparison to the scenery of Europe. No fields waving with corn,no plains covered with rich pasture present themselves from the mountains of Lower Palestine. Figure to yourself two long chains of mountains, running in a parallel direction from north to south, without breaks and without undulations. The eastern or Arabian chain is the highest; and when seen at the distance of eight or ten leagues, you would take it to be a prodigious perpendicular wall, resembling Mount Jura in its form and azure color. Not one summit, not the smallest peak can be distinguished; you merely perceive slight inflections here and there, as if the hand of the painter who drew the horizontal line along the sky had trembled in some places."

66

The mountains of Judea form the range on which the observer stands as he looks down on the Lake Asphaltites. Less lofty and more unequal than the eastern chain, it differs from the other in its nature also; exhibiting heaps of chalk and sand, whose form, it is said, bears some resemblance to piles of arms, waving standards, or the tents of a camp pitched on the border of a plain. The Arabian side, on the contrary, presents nothing but black precipitous rocks, which throw their lengthened shadow over the waters of the Dead Sea The smallest bird of heaven would not find among these