From the roof of the Eagle, a very large hotel, I took a general view of the wide-spread frame of Buffalo, whose many as yet barely definable streets are in the keeping of houses so thinly scattered, that they reminded me of lines of sentries placed to denote occupation. I traced the course of the great Erie canal from the Niagara river to the lake, whose busy harbour was filled with steamers, schooners, and other trading craft. After sunset we descended from our lofty observatory, and followed the line of the main street, witnessing the rejoicings called forth by this anniversary of American Independence. The feeling of the community at large could only be guessed at, since it made no sign; but if the body politic of Buffalo might be considered fairly represented by some hundred or so of active urchins who were congregated in a square near the centre of the main street, nothing could be more ardent than this city's gratitude, for these delegates beat drums, blew fifes, fired crackers, and huzzaed until the welkin rang with their shrill small yells. We found, upon inquiry, that there was no ball, dinner, or other public demonstration; the reason was ascribed to the extreme violence of party politics, which at this period completely divided the community, and were carried out to an extent without precedent in their brief annals. The street was chiefly occupied by a number of Indians of the Seneca tribe, dressed in a costume part native and part European: these holiday-keepers lounged lazily about in all the delight of utter intoxication, the men invariably in groups by themselves, and the ladies of the tribe trapesing after them at a long interval with stoical indifference. Nothing can be more subversive of the poetry one's early recollections connect with this race, than a first rencontre with the outcasts by whom it is represented on these frontiers, who daily degenerate where all else seems to thrive, and who perish in the midst of an abundance, which, for all but them, increases with each year. I am not sure whether it would not be more humane to deal upon the natives as summarily as with their forests; for the fall of the former before the advance of civilization is not, though slower, less certain. They may at present be likened to girdled trees, about whose vigorous trunk the axe of the woodman is but lightly drawn, yet whose fall is assured past remedy; the springs of health and life are stopped, upon their fading leaves the sun rises and heaven's dews descend in vain; for a little while they continue to wave their naked crests in the gale, and hold forth their gaunt limbs as if life were in them, objects exciting at once commiseration and disgust; until, crumbled into decay, the unseemly skeletons lie prostrate athwart the roots of their once fellows, who were stricken down in their bloom, and so perished by a quicker and more merciful sentence. NIAGARA.