the orthoepy has but little changed, now that a | thousand-greater than that of the city of New beautiful city covers their slopes and crowns York, in 1791. their summits, and the Dutch language is no more heard. When settlements and farms increased upon Long Island a ferry was established. A broad flat-boat for man and beast was provided, and the rental of the privilege to navigate the channel was appropriated to the building of the old City Hall in Wall Street, New York, where Washington was inaugurated President of the United States. A ferry house was built upon the Brooklyn side, where the farmers ate and drank, and parties from New York went to devour delicious fish, served in Epicurean style. Long years afterward the ferry house continued to be a solitary tenant of the soil, where now is so much life-so much of brick and mortar, merchandise and confusion. A friend of the writer, has given him, in a letter recently written, a picture of Brooklyn as it appeared to him in boyhood. The house stood upon the high bank, some thirty or forty feet above the water, and the road to the little ferry wharf below was cut through the bank, where Fulton Street now terminates. At the bottom of the bank, about one hundred and fifty yards below the ferry house, was a large fresh water spring, from which almost every vessel that came into the harbor procured a supply. To that spring the friend alluded to went with a boat's crew, in 1791, and filled casks with water, to supply their vessel anchored in the stream. Then New York was a comparatively small city. The ship yards (foot of Catharine Street) were upon its extremest verge; the City Hall Park was close by the green slopes that terminated in the "Fresh Water Pond," where the Halls of Justice now stand, and beyond were orchards and "milk farms," whose "bars" opened into the "Bowery road to Boston." For twenty years longer, Brooklyn remained in almost an embryo state. Three churches were erected, but the worshippers were chiefly from the adjacent farms. The ferry house, so long a solitaire, began to have a few companions, and some of the more progressive people aspired to the dignity of villagers. But opposition to the measure was strong and pertinacious, and it was not until 1816 that Brooklyn became an incorporated village. It then received its vital spark. Commerce expelled families from the lower wards of the city of New York, and many sought pleasant residences over the water. Emigration thither became fashionable; steam succeeded horses in the propulsion of ferry boats; the village developed strength, dignity, and beauty; put on city airs, and in 1834 the whole little township of Brooklyn, with its kernel at the ferry house, was incorporated a CITY. Since then (not twenty years,) its progress has been wonderful. Williamsburg, Bedford, Flatbush, and Gowanus, are already hiding beneath the fringe of its mantle. Its population to-day is more than one hundred ROCHESTER is emphatically a Child of the Wilderness, only forty years of age. It is at the First Fall of the Genesee, a few miles from Lake Ontario, and upon the spot where, fifty years ago, Allen, a Tory of the Revolution, built a mill to supply the scattered settlers in the wilderness all over western New York. When public spirited and far-seeing men were making earnest endeavors to open highways from the Hudson to the Lakes, and resolved, in 1807, to erect a bridge over the Genesee River at the First Fall, Enos Stone built a log-cabin there. He cleared a few acres and planted corn, but the wild beasts destroyed it. His chief enemy was a huge she-bear, who long baffled his attempts to destroy her. Early in the autumn of 1811 his rifle bullet brought her from a tree, mortally wounded, and he had but little trouble afterward. In 1810, Micah Brooks, Hugh M'Nair, and Matthew Warner, acted as State Commissioners for laying out a road to connect the Susquehanna with Lake Ontario; and a little later they were busy in surveying a route by which to connect the turnpike at Canandaigua with the Mississippi Valley, through the Allegheny River. When they were upon the site of Rochester, they slept upon straw and bear skins in the only house in the city, the log-cabin of Mr. Stone. Some of the fine old forest trees which they blazed on the route of their surveys, are yet standing in the groves of Mount Hope Cemetery, at Rochester, living monuments which speak of the progressive spirit and energy of many of those whose mortality slumbers beneath their shadows. General Brooks was one of the earliest advocates, in public and private, of the Erie Canal and other internal improvements; and in 1816 he offered a resolution in Congress to inquire "as to the expediency of establishing a post-route from the village of Canandaigua, by way of the village of Rochester, to the village of Lewiston, &c. Nine years later he saw, not only post-roads and frequent mails there, but a great artificial river, bearing upon its bosom the vast soil-products of the West, and the manufactures and merchandise of the East, flowing over the Genesce, near the original bridge. He lived ten years longer, and, at a public meeting in Rochester, then a city of almost twenty thousand inhabitants, he lifted up his voice earnestly in favor of a great and immediate enlargement of that mighty artery of inland commerce. then seventeen years have elapsed, and he still lives, enjoying a ripe old age, and hoping not to close his eyes forever until the great work shall be accomplished. Hawley, Ellicott, Eddy, Watson, and others of his associate-backwoodsmen of New York, who inspired Clinton with the idea and importance of such a work, and the zeal to use his private and official influence in Since prosecuting it to completion, have passed | hamlet of 1813. In 1822, it began to feel the away. The cities and villages along the canal prospective advantages of the completion of the are their monuments, upon which a generous Erie Canal, which was to terminate there. It posterity will yet inscribe their names and epi- was incorporated a village that year, and in 1832, taphs. twenty-one years ago, it was incorporated a city. Now it contains a population of about fifty thousand. The marshes are drained and covered, and where, thirty-eight years ago the little Buf falo Creek wound its way into Lake Erie, along the low banks which were covered with trees and shrubbery, long lines of wharves, with forests of masts, and stately warehouses filled with merchandise and produce, now present themselves. The aggregate of commercial operations, best illustrates the growth of this modern Tyre upon the American Mediterranean Seas: Nathaniel Rochester, a patriot of the Revolu. tion, became a resident of Western New York in 1810; and in 1812, in company with two others, procured from the Holland Land Company a hundred-acre lot, at the Falls, for a settlement to be called RɔCHESTER. The patriot became a resident of the village bearing his name in 1816, and lived there until his death, in 1831, when the log-cabin of Mr. Stone was surrounded by a permanent population of eleven thousand people. In the very year when Rochester became joint proprietor of the wild tract, "inhabited only by musk-rats," pagan religious rites were celebrated, where now is the centre of the city of Rochester. There, in the winter of 1812 and '13, the Seneca Indians were quartered upon the ground now traversed by a portion of St. Paul's Street; and in January, 1813, the "sacrifice of thanksgiving" was celebrated for five days. The life of a white dog was offered up at the door of the council-The value of imports was, in round numbers, house, while separate bands of men and women, ornamented with feathers and trinkets, each holding an ear of corn, danced around the councilfire! In 1812 the population of Rochester was 15; in 1820 it was 1500; in 1830 it was 11,000; in 1840, it was 20,000; and now (1853) the number is about 40,000! The little log flour-mill of Ebenezer Allen has passed away; but in its stead, there are now twenty-two large mills, with one hundred runs of stone, capable of grinding more than twenty thousand bushels of wheat daily. Flour is the great staple product of Rochester; yet every other kind of business incident to a numerous and thriving population, is flourishing there; and the future growth of the city will doubtless exhibit a result as wonderful as that of the past. BUFFALO is the Child of Traffic! It is at the mouth of Buffalo Creek, at the outlet of a great chain of lakes whose waters, twenty miles below, make the leap of Niagara. Buffalo was originally laid out in 1801, by the Holland Land Company, upon a bluff or terrace, and partly upon the marshy ground between the high land and the creek. In 1813, it contained a few scattered houses, but no signs of even a respectable village appeared in the horoscope of its future. It was then made a military post, which invited a visit from the British and Indians on the frontier, with whom our people were then at war. They came in December, and laid every house in ashes, but two. When peace came, and there seemed a probability of the opening of a water communication with the Hudson from that point, enterprising men, with the old inhabitants, began earnest efforts there; and in 1817, one hundred houses had arisen from the ashes of the little In 1852, there arrived at the port of Buffalo, nine hundred and twenty-nine sailing vessels, with an aggregate of one hundred and thirty-five thousand tons, and eight thousand eight hundred and fifty-one men and boys, as crews. During the same period, a thousand and sixty-two sailing vessels left the port, with the same average amount of tonnage, and number of men and boys. thirty-five millions of dollars; and the amount of duties collected was about seventy thousand dollars. This amount of imports is exclusive of the hundreds of thousands of dollars value in earth-products and merchandise brought by canal-boats and railway-cars. During the year, six steamboats, nine propellers, and eight schooners, were built at Buffalo; and four steam-boats, of eighteen hundred tons burden each, one of six hundred and fifty tons, two propellers, four schooners, a brig, and a steam-tug, were in process of construction. There are twenty-eight steamers, thirty-one propellers, and one hundred and thirtyfour sailing vessels, with an aggregate of fifty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-three tons, now owned at Buffalo. During 1852 the value of exports from Buffalo, by the Erie Canal, was twenty-one millions fortynine thousand nine hundred and eight dollars, producing eight hundred and two thousand eight hundred and six dollars, in tolls. The value of imports by the same channel was forty-one millions eight hundred and ten thousand three hundred and ninety-eight dollars. The whole amount of productions delivered in Buffalo, by the canal, during the year, was three hundred and thirty-seven thousand six hundred and twenty tons. In these statements no account is made of the immense amount of property carried to and taken from Buffalo, by the various express companies. The future prospects of Buffalo are brilliant in the extreme. Within the past year two new lines of railway to the city have been completed, namely, the New York City and the State Line; and three other lines are rapidly progressing towards completion. Such, in brief, is the record of the birth and growth of three flourishing cities in the State of New York. Look westward of the Alleghanies, and greater wonders meet the vision.-Harper's Monthly Magazine. ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS IN PERSIA. gether in one place, there is nothing to exclude the same consoling presence from the solitary worshipper. ous perusal of this valuable epistle, but the prac tice of appropriating a portion of time to religious retirement, either singly, or in such small companies as circumstances may permit to convene. The Society of Friends more than any other denomination of Christians, have been taught to At the sitting of the London Astronomical So- rely on the assurance that where outward circumciety, extracts were read of a letter to Sir John stances prevent the assembling of larger numbers, Herschel, from Mr. Stoddard, an American Mis- even two or three, if gathered in the Saviour's sionary versed in Astronomy. The letter is dated name, will experience his presence to be among Oroomiah, Persia, October 29, 1852. Mr. Stod-them. And if even two or three cannot come todard begins with an account of the surprising distinctness with which distant objects are seen in Persia. The snowy peak of Arrarat, he relates, is just as bright and beautiful when two hundred miles distant, as when we stand near its base. Though accustomed to watch the heavens in different parts of the world, he had never seen any thing like the splendor of a Persian summer evening. "Were it not for the interference of the moon, we should have seventy-five nights in three summer months, superior for the purpose of observation to the very finest nights which favor the Astronomer of the New World." He distinguished the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn with the unassisted eye; deemed altogether telescopic objects before. FRIENDS' REVIEW. PHILADELPHIA, TENTH MONTH 8, 1853. The feeling address from our brethren in England to their members and others in Australia, which has been kindly furnished, with some introductory observations, by a valued correspondent, is probably little less applicable to some of the members of our Society on this side of the Atlantic, than to those to whom it is specially directed. Besides those that are scattered over the extended regions on the upper waters of the Mississippi, it is well known that a considerable number of members of our Society, and other professors with us, have cast their lots, for a time at least, if not permanently, on the shores of the Pacific. Though a number of Friends, or professors, are located at San Francisco or its vicinity, it is not known that any meeting of Friends either for worship or discipline, has been established there. As those who are thus situated are unavoidably almost totally cut off from the benefits and restraints of religious communion, there is great danger of their losing a proper sense of the importance and advantages of regularly organized religious society. It would be well for those who have enjoyed the advantage of an education among Friends, but who have, either from choice or the force of circumstances, been placed, in great measure beyond the pale of religious society and influence, often to recur to the principles of their education, and to remember that the divine law is not moulded or modified by climate or circumstances. It may be asserted, without forming invidious or uncharitable comparisons, that the standard of morals which the profession of Friends tends to support, is of a higher order than that which is maintained by the world in general. If, then, the members or professors of our Society, when scattered, either singly or in small numbers, among people of other professions, or of no religious profession, maintain their principles, in life and conduct, their example can scarcely fail to exercise a salutary influence on all around them. But in proportion as they abandon the practice to which their profession, consistently supported, would lead, and adopt the language and habits of others, that salutary influence must be diminished or lost. The declaration of our Lord to his disciples, "ye are the salt of the earth," is still emphatically true. But that salt, to preserve its savour, must be kept free from adulterating mixtures. From a letter recently received by a friend in this city, dated at Pyrmont on the fifth of last month, we learn that our dear friends Eli and Sybil Jones have accomplished an interesting and edifying visit to the few under our name in Norway. They left that country on the 16th of Eighth month, and on the 19th arrived at Minden, in Germany. It is understood that the only meetings of Friends in Germany are held at Minden and Pyrmont, but at a village seven miles from the former, a small company, of nine individuals, If, through the medium of this periodical, the address of our English Friends should be pre-have been drawn to sit down together to wait on sented to any of our members or professors, in California, or other remote localities, the Editor would affectionately recommend not only the seri the Lord. Among these people, and the Friends of Minden and Pyrmont, our above mentioned friends were engaged in the fulfilment of their gospel message. It appears that a visit to those | dear friend bore a painful illness of eight days professing with us in the south of France is con- with Christian fortitude, manifesting by his peacetemplated as a sequel to their labors in Germany. day time, and that he was ready to obey the call. ful close that his day's work had been done in the The present number contains the first of a series of essays on the culture and manufacture of flax, to which the Editor would respectfully invite the attention of the readers of the Review. It is expected that the facts which appear in the first or early essays, will be fully corroborated by unquestionable statistics, before the series comes to a close. At her residence, in Brunswick, Maine, on the 17th of 9th month, 1853, EUNICE JONES, relict of Stephen Jones, in the eighty-eighth year of her age. An esteemed member and Elder of Durham Monthly Meeting. FRIENDS' ASYLUM. Wanted a Friend capable of keeping accounts, making purchases and rendering general assis Superintendent, at the Institution near Application may be made to Dr. J. H. WorthFrankford. It is well known that the use of cotton has be- tance, at Friends' Asylum. come so interwoven with our domestic arrange-ington, ments, and into the commerce and manufactures of Great Britain and America, that it is too late to disentangle the connection, unless a substitute should be found. As a large part of the cotton which supplies the markets and manufacturers of the world, is produced by the labor of slaves, cotton may be justly regarded as one of the pillars which support the system of slavery. If flax, the growth of temperate climates, should prove to be capable of superceding, either partially or wholly, the demand for cotton, it may be reasonably hoped to contribute to the overthrow of a system, which originated in violence and wrong, and which, wherever tolerated, paralyzes the industry and morals of the community. WEST TOWN SCHOOL. A Teacher is wanted in the Boys' Classical Department. Application may be made to either of the undersigned. William Evans, Samuel Hilles, Pennock Passmore, Thomas Evans, Samuel Bettle, Jr. Phila. 9th mo. 19th, 1853. HAVERFORD SCHOOL. month 12th. Applications for admission may be The Winter Term will begin on Fourth day, 10th addressed to Charles Yarnall, Secretary of the Board of Managers, No. 39 High Street, Philadel phia. ENGLISH PUNCTUALITY. 3t. MARRIED,-At Westfield Meeting House, on the 8th day of the 9th month, ZACHARIAH REESE to It is stated that at the recent opening of AckLUZENA COOK; JESSE BALDWIN, Son of Isaac Bald-worth School, after the usual vacation, out of 291 win, to MARY JANE, daughter of John White; SAMUEL ROBERTS, son of Judah Roberts, to REBEC CA. daughter of Moses Coffin, deceased, all of Westfield Monthly Meeting. At Friends' Meeting House. Newberry, Clinton County, Ohio, on the 20th ult., THOMAS BRANSON TO MARY JANE, daughter of Calvin Wasson. At Friends' Meeting House, in Lagrange, Duchess County, New York, on 5th day of 9th Mo.. WILLIAM ÓSBORN, of Quaker Hill, to CONTENT W., daughter of the late Stephen Moore, of the former place. At Friends' Meeting House, Highland, Morgan County, Ind., on the 14th ult., BENJAMIN KIRBY to ASENATH C. HADLEY. On the same day and at the same place, JOHN B. GRIFFITH to ASENATH BOWLES, all of West Union Monthly Meeting. DIED, At his residence at Haddonfield, New Jersey, on the 25th ult., in the 67th year of his age, BLAKEY SHARPLESS, for many years a resident of this city, a valuable member of Haddonfield Monthly Meeting. children only eleven failed to attend on the day appointed; and of these all but three were known to be prevented by sickness. FLAX IN AMERICA," With some observations on the history of its cuiture and manufacture in other countries, and their prospects in our own. Y "Inventress of the woof, fair Lina flings DR. DARWIN's" Loves of the Plants." Canto. II. Within the last two or three years an extraordinary degree of interest and attention appears In the 45th and 46th numbers of the last volume of the Review appeared an interesting article from the "Connecticut Valley Farmer," on the Flax Manufac- At his residence in Highland county,ture; which, though containing some important statisOhio, on the 18th inst., in the seventy-ninth year tical errors, was on the whole well written, and calcuof his age, ISAAC KENWORTHY, a worthy member lated to advance the object it had in view of drawing and Elder of Clearcreek Monthly Meeting. This attention to the general subject.. to have been awakened in this country, from various causes, to the subject of the cultivation and manufacture of Flax. some of the considerations which seem to him most important in reference to the flax question in America; also to glance at the historical facts of its progress in other countries; and to furnish carefully prepared statistical tables of the average profit of its cultivation and manufacture. One naturally feels considerable diffidence however, in discussing a subject of such deep importance in all its bearings; not only in relation to the agricultural and commercial interests of this country, but also to its hopeful prospect for the establishment of a great free staple, which may ultimately rival in its growth and manufacture, the cotton of our Southern States. Whether this interest has been aroused by the plausible but chimerical theories of the Chevalier Claussen, for the conversion of a fibre, grown and prepared by nature in the precise state suitable for spinning, into a tangled and irregular mass wholly useless for any practical purpose; or whether it is due to the sober convictions of a portion of our citizens that we were importing many millions of dollars annually, of an article of which we ought to be large annual exporters to the old World; or whether both of these causes may have operated on the excited state of public feeling at the North in reference to the question of slavery, are matters of little consequence at pre-rized statistics on the subject. After a careful sent to discuss or determine. This difficulty is further increased by the impossibility of obtaining any published or autho search of the patent office reports for the year 1850 for instance, the agricultural department of which fills a volume of 700 pages octavo, no useful information whatever was obtained. The word flax does not appear to occur in the whole range of elaborate sectional and State reports, or recommendations; and the only table in which it is included is full of such gross errors, and the flax returns are so entirely confounded with those of hemp, that the statistics are worse than useless. The last two considerations are undoubtedly of a serious and practical character. As to the visionary experiments of Claussen, which have been so widely published and circulated under the title of "Flax Cotton," they may be passed lightly and charitably over, for the sake of the general good they may have done in turning increased attention to the culture of the raw material, in Ireland and this country. The old farmer of the fable, who enjoined on his children with his last breath, the search for an imaginary trea- What is still more remarkable, in the valuable sure, buried somewhere on his plantation, did and standard work of Professor De Bow on the them no practical wrong. True, they never found" Commercial Statistics of the Western and the hidden wealth in the precise shape they had been led to anticipate. But the extraordinary overturning that the land received in their enthusiastic search, produced to them-so runs the fable-in increased crops for several years thereafter, a much larger treasure than the old gentleman had promised them. Perhaps it needed a like ambiguous and brilliant announcement, to rouse up the dormant enthusiasm of our countrymen to the importance of this great national question; which, when turned into a practical and philosophical channel, may accomplish for our agricultural and commercial interests more than the Chevalier Claussen ever predicted. It fell to the lot of the writer, during a visit to Europe some years since, to examine with considerable care the position and progress of the cultivation and manufacture of flax, in those countries whence we derive our principal supply of linen fabrics. Since then, in conjunction with other parties, he has taken an active interest in the establishment of large works for the introduction of the regular linen manufacture into this country. Southern States," comprising about 1700 octavo pages of closely printed statistical information on their local products and their general interests, and brought down, in the last edition, to the close of the year 1852, there is not a word of allusion in the text to the growth or manufacture of flax proper, in America.* A passing table of the flax manufacture in Great Britain occupies a few lines of the article "British Manufactures;" and the unfortunate census returns of 1850, alluded to above, are Nothing else seems to have escaped the learned Professor. Accurate tables are given of wheat, barley, oats, Indian corn, buckwheat, beans, peas, potatoes, turnips, carrots, mangel wurzel, meadow hay, clover hay, pea straw, wheat straw, oat straw, barley straw, rye straw, and grasses of every description. Beeswax, honey, silk cocoons, maple sugar and a hundred other secondary items are treated of. (Pharmium Tenax) which grows in swampy ground, He devotes one page to the New Zealand hemp and furnishes good material for cordage; and which he thinks might be available for the swamps of the south; but does not furnish a line on flax proper (Linum usitatissimum). To enable the reader to appreciate the oversight, I have estimated the number of It may not therefore be presump-lines he devotes to certain products of the south, with tuous in him to suppose that, in the course of advice for cultivation and use. Some of which are as these investigations, some facts of general interest follows: may have come under his observation, which would repay the reader for a perusal, as well as contribute to the information now so eagerly sought for on this subject. He proposes therefore to present, in as brief a space as possible, Tobacco, Rice, Sugar, 1000 lines. 3500 3000 66 15000 66 15600 << Cotton, Negroes, 18500 |