In western New York a high ridge crosses the country south of Lake Erie, and to the southward of its most elevated portion there stretches the elongated Chautauqua Lake, almost bisected by two jutting points at its centre. This charming lake is eighteen miles long, three or four miles wide, and elevated seven hundred and thirty feet above Lake Erie, its outlet draining southward into a tributary of the Allegheny River. Its elevation above tide is nearly thirteen hundred feet. The low hills enclosing it are popular summer resorts, and on the western bank in the season are drawn enormous crowds to the Chautauqua Assembly, which has established the "Summer School of Philosophy" for education. There are often twenty to thirty thousand people here at one time, and the plan has been so successful that it has various imitators elsewhere, the "Chautauqua idea" being varying instruction with recreation. The Indians named this lake, from the mists arising, Chautauqua, or "the foggy place." Beyond this popular resort the land falls away, and crossing the New York western boundary into the "Pennsylvania Triangle," a jutting corner thrust up to Lake Erie, a fine harbor is found at Erie, known in earlier history by its French name of Presque Isle. This triangle of the Keystone State, giving about forty miles of coast-line on the lake, has a history. The early surveyors discovered that, owing to misdescriptions in various English grants, this large triangular tract was, from a legal standpoint, "nowhere." It was north of Pennsylvania, west of New York and east of the Connecticut Western Reserve, which became part of Ohio. Pennsylvania finally bought it, paying the United States Government, in 1792, $150,640 for it, and also getting the Indian title for £1200. It was a good purchase, for Erie harbor is the best on the lake. Erie has about fifty thousand people, and is in a picturesque situation, owing to the beauty of the bay and the outlying island, which was formerly a peninsula. There is additional protection by a breakwater, making an extensive basin with spacious docks that have a large trade. The French were the early settlers, building their "Fort de la Presque Isle" in 1749, which was one of the chain of outposts they projected between the St. Lawrence and the Ohio. It was here that Commodore Perry hastily built the rude fleet with which he gained the noted victory over the Anglo-Canadian fleet on Lake Erie in 1813, and back here he afterwards in triumph towed his prizes. The remains of his flagship lie in the harbor. Perry's guns were the heaviest in that memorable contest for control of the lake, and therefore he won. In Lake Side Cemetery is buried Captain Charles Vernon Gridley, who commanded Admiral Dewey's flagship, the "Olympia," at the battle of Manila Bay in 1898. THE CITY OF BUFFALO.