and Fort Erie. – International Bridge. – Iron Manufacture. – Danger of the Niagara. – Forest Lawn Cemetery. – Decoration Day. – The Spaulding Monument. – Parks and Boulevard. – Delaware Avenue. – On the Terrace. – Elevator District. – Church and Schools. – Grosvenor Library. – Historical Rooms. – Journalism. – Public Buildings. – City Hall. – Dog-carts and their Attendants.
Buffalo is a kind of half-way house between the East and the West – if anything may be called west this side of the Mississippi River – and it partakes of the characteristics of both sections. It was once the chief trading post on the Niagara frontier, and its vicinity has been the scene of many a hotly contested battle between dusky races now forever lost to this part of the world, and almost forgotten of history. Long ago, the Eries, or the Cat Nation, lived on the southern shores of the same lake whose waters now lap the wharves of Buffalo. They left it the heritage of their name, and that is all.
The race, in its lack of calculation, did not greatly differ from many isolated instances of the paler race of mankind around us now; for it died of a too o'erreaching ambition. Jealous of the distant fame of the Five Nations, the Eries set out to surprise and conquer them in deadly battle, and themselves met the fate they had meant for the Iroquois. They were exterminated; and few returned to the squaws in their lonely wigwams, to tell the tale of doom.
The noble race of Senecas succeeded the Cat Nation on the shores of Lake Erie, and after them, from across the great seas, came the dominant, pushing, civilizing Anglo-Saxons.
When the war of 1812 broke out, Buffalo was an exceedingly infant city, and did not promise well at all. Nobody would have then predicted her importance of to-day. Later, in 1813, the battle of Black Rock was fought, and while a few old soldiers made a determined stand against the onset of the solid British phalanx, most of the raw recruits fled down Niagara street in a regular Bull Run panic, chased by the pursuing foe. The village was then fired by the enemy, and every building except one was burned to the ground. The description of the suffering and flight of women and children, during that harrowing time, draws largely on the sympathies of the reader, and sounds strangely similar to the newspaper accounts of the burning of Western and Pennsylvania towns, of more recent occurrence.
But, though Buffalo was destroyed by fire, it shortly evinced all the power of the fabled phœnix, and rose from its ashes to a grander future than its early settlers ever dreamed of prophesying for it. The young city, however, suffered in its first days from a multiplicity of names, struggling under no less than three. The Indians named it Te-osah-wa, or "Place of Basswood;" the Holland Land Company dragged the Dutch name of New Amsterdam across the ocean and endeavored to drop it at the foot of Lake Erie; and finally, it took its present name of Buffalo, from the frequent visits of the American Bison to a salt spring which welled up about three miles out of the village, on Buffalo creek.
I think Buffalonians have reason to be grateful that the last name proved more tenacious than the other two. Think of the "Queen City" of the most Eastern West being overshadowed by the tiled-roof name of New Amsterdam!
It was not until 1822, on the completion of the Erie Canal, that Buffalo began the rapid advance towards prosperity that now marks its growth, the muster-roll of its population, at this writing, numbering the round figures of one hundred and sixty-one thousand. It now rejoices in business streets three and four miles long – full-fledged two-thirds of the distance, and the remainder embryonic. The harbor-front, facing the ship canal and the Lake, bristles with the tall tops of huge grain elevators – a whole village of them. A network of railroad lines, and the commerce of the great Lakes, have combined to build up and carry on a vast business at this point, and to make it a station of much importance between the East and the West. The rails of the New York Central, the Great Western, the Lake Shore, and the Buffalo and Philadelphia roads, besides many other lines, all centre here, carrying their tide of human freight, mainly westward, and transporting the cereals of the great grain regions in exchange for the manufactured products of less favored localities. When the representative of New York or New England wishes to go west, he finds his most direct route by rail, via Buffalo; or, if he desires a most charming water trip, he embarks, also via Buffalo, on one of the handsome propellers which ply the Lakes between this city and Chicago, and steaming down the length of Lake Erie, up through the narrower St. Clair and the broad Huron, he passes the wooded shores of Mackinac's beautiful island, surmounted by its old fort, and entering Lake Michigan, in due time is landed on the breezy Milwaukee banks, or is set down within that maelstrom of business, named Chicago. Indeed, after Chicago, Buffalo is the ranking city of the Lakes, and is said to cover more territory than almost any city in the country outside the great metropolis – the distance, from limit to limit, averaging seven and eight miles. Its suburban drives and places of summer resort, owing to the superior water localities of this region, are much out of the usual line. Niagara River, famous the world over, allures the daring boatman from Fort Porter onward, and the wonderful Falls themselves are only eighteen miles beyond that. Fort Porter, about two miles out from the heart of the city, is located just at the point where Niagara River leaves the lake in its mad race to the Falls. Here the banks are high and command a wide water prospect. Away to the westward the blue lake and the blue sky seem to meet and blend together as one; and in the opposite direction the rushing river spreads out like another lake, towards Squaw Island and Black Rock. One or more companies of United States Regulars are stationed here, and the barracks and officers' quarters surround a square inclosure, which is used as a parade ground. Graveled walks are laid out around it, and a grassy foot-path leads from the soldiers' quarters to the site of the old Fort on the brow of a gentle elevation just beyond. The Fort was built for frontier defence, in 1812, and the interior, now grass-grown and unused, is so deep that the roof of the stone structure, once appropriated as a magazine, is nearly on a level with the high ground at your feet. During our last war the building was occupied as a place of confinement for Rebel prisoners. It is now in a state of advanced collapse, and the battered walls and open windows expose to view the ruin within. A small, square outhouse, near one of the embrasures higher up, which was used for firing hot shot, is still intact. Field pieces, pointing grimly towards the Lake, and little heaps of cannon balls lying near, bring freshly to mind the nation's last war days, when "the winding rivers ran red" with the mingled blood of comrade and foe. The sunset gun boomed over the waters while we lingered at the old Fort, and the fading glow of day bridged the river with arches of crimson and gold.
Diagonally opposite from this point, one looks across into the Queen's dominions, where lies the little village of Fort Erie, historic as the place from which the British crossed to our shores on the night preceding the burning of Buffalo.
At Black Rock, about two miles below Fort Porter, the great International Railroad Bridge, a mile in length, spans the mighty river, having superseded the old-time ferry. This bridge is the connecting link on the Grand Trunk Road, between Canada and the States.
Near its terminus, on the American side, are located the immense malleable iron works of Pratt & Letchworth, said to be the largest manufactory of the kind in the world. Their goods certainly find a world-wide market, taking in New England and the Pacific coast, Mexico, England and Australia. A pretty picture of the country seat of Mr. Letchworth, at Portage, New York, may be seen at the Historical Rooms. It is named Glen Iris, and is surrounded by handsome grounds, groves and fountains.
Boating on the Niagara is much in vogue here, notwithstanding the rapid current and the dreadful certainty of the Falls in case of accident. The keeper of a boat house at Black Rock, opposite Squaw Island, told me that the proportion of accidents on the river was frightfully large – far greater than ever got into the public prints.
Forest Lawn Cemetery – Buffalo's city of the dead – is one of the loveliest burial places between Brooklyn and Chicago. It is picturesque with hill and dale and grove, not to mention a large artificial lake lapped in one of its grassy hollows, and a winding, wide and rocky-bedded creek running through it. The name of the creek is spelled S-c-a-j-a-q-u-a-d-a and pronounced Kon-joc'-e-ta. The Pratt monument, in a remote portion of the grounds, is perhaps
