To this day, I can not help shuddering as I contemplate what a frightful appearance I must have presented with those goggles on. A good-looking young man like myself, on a crutch, with such an immense round patch on either side of his nose, must have been a marvel to look at. I regret that I did not procure a mirror, and take a look at myself while wearing them, for I have never had the courage to put them on since. My memory records that several passengers, with subdued smiles on their countenances, manifested the most intense interest in my welfare, and asked me what was the matter with my eyes? In reply to this impertinent question, I gave them to understand that it was an hereditary weakness of the “windows of the soul;” and intimated that the Smith family had, from time immemorial, been amateur astronomers, and had done a good deal of gazing at the moon and stars. The New York Central Railroad takes its way through the beautiful Mohawk valley. That valley is famed in history, and we read of a great many bloody scenes enacted there by the savage Mohawk tribe; but I think that now, with its green meadows, its fields of grain, its grazing sheep and cattle, its farm-houses and dairies, with PEACE smiling over all, it is far more beautiful and interesting than it was in its wildness, when the red-skinned son of nature made it his home, and followed killing bears, deer, and the pale-faces for a living. There is one grand picture in the Mohawk valley which I can not forbear to mention. It is an enchanting cascade. The amount of water is not great, but it comes streaming down from a height of two hundred feet, sparkling in the sunbeams, and bounding from rock to rock like a thing of life. For calm, quiet enjoyment, I would rather sit among the trees that hover about this romantic cascade and listen to its murmurs, than on the banks of the Niagara, and hear the roars of that grand old cataract. It was after night-fall when we reached Rochester, and as I wanted to stay there a few days, I went into an hotel that was in the same building with the depot _itself_, and registered my name. Next morning I walked out and looked about me. Rochester is a very pleasant city of about sixty thousand inhabitants, and is situated at the Falls of the Genesee river, seven miles from Lake Ontario. I say _at_ the Falls, for the city is built on all sides of the cataract, except one. It occupies either shore, and one of its principal streets, with its solid rows of buildings, actually _crosses_ the river on an arched bridge or viaduct about two hundred yards above the Falls.