The passage of the Canal, under the lofty bluff which springs at this place from the edge of the Mohawk, is one of the most beautiful of the many beautiful features disclosed to the voyager on this great outlet of the West. No traveller sees a greater variety of fine objects within the same distance than the follower of the Canal from Schenectady to Buffalo; and certainly none sees them with more ease and comfort to himself. The packet-boats are long drawing-rooms, where he dines, sleeps, reads, lolls, or looks out of the window; and if in want of exercise, he may at any time get a quick walk on the tow-path, and all this without perceptible motion, jar, or smell of steam. Of all the modes of travelling in America, the least popular and the most delightful, to our thinking, is travelling on the Canal. One of the descriptions of scenery through which the Canal passes, and one which is, we believe, peculiar to our country, is what are called _openings_. When one of these plains is seen at a little distance, a traveller emerging from the forest naturally concludes that it is the commencement of a settled country; and as he advances towards it, is instinctively led to cast his eye forward to find the town or village of which it is the outskirt. From this impression he will be unable to free himself; for though given up, the thought will recur again, spite of his conviction, that he is in the heart of a wilderness. At the same time a sense of stillness and solitude, a feeling of absolute retirement from the world, deeper and more affecting than any he has ever felt before, will be forced upon him while roving in these sequestered regions. No passage out of them is presented to his eye. Yet, though the tract around him is seemingly bounded every where, the boundary is every where obscure, being formed of trees, thinly dispersed, and retired beyond each other at such distances, that, while they actually limit the view, they appear rather to border dim, indistinct openings into other tracts of country. Thus he always feels the limit to be uncertain, and until he is actually leaving one of these plains, will continually expect to find a part of the expansion still spreading beyond the reach of his eye. On every side, a multitude of chasms conduct his eye beyond the labyrinth by which he is surrounded, and present an imaginary passage back into the world from which he is withdrawn, bewildering him with expectation continually awakened to be continually disappointed. Thus, in a kind of romantic rapture, he wanders over these plains with emotions similar to those with which, when a child, he roamed through the wildernesses created in Arabian tales.