Rochester, the capital of Monroe County, New York, was first settled in 1810, and incorporated as a city in 1834. It is situated on both sides of the Genesee River, seven miles from Lake Ontario, two hundred and fifty miles from Albany and sixty-nine from Buffalo by railway. An aqueduct of stone carries the Erie Canal across the river, the cost of which amounted to over half a million dollars. The city is well laid out with wide and handsome streets, lined with shade trees. [Illustration: VIEW OF ROCHESTER.] Within the city limits the Genesee undergoes a sudden descent of two hundred and sixty-eight feet, falling in three separate cataracts within a distance of two miles. The roar of these falls is heard continually all over the city, but no one is inconvenienced by it in the slightest degree. The cataracts are believed to have formed, at one time, a single fall, but the different degrees of hardness of the rocks have caused an unequal retrograde movement of the falls, until they have assumed their present position. At the Upper Falls, the river is precipitated perpendicularly ninety-six feet. It then flows between nearly perpendicular walls of rock, for about a mile and a quarter to the Middle Falls, where it has another descent of twenty-five feet. One hundred rods below, at the Lower Falls, it again descends eighty-four feet, which brings the stream to the level of Lake Ontario, into which it enters. The immense water-power thus afforded in the centre of one of the finest wheat-growing regions in the world, with the facilities of transportation afforded by the Erie Canal, Lake Ontario, and the several railways, have given a vast impulse to the prosperity of Rochester and it has, in consequence, become one of the most important manufacturing cities in the East. At the period of my visit, there were eighteen flour mills in operation, grinding annually 2,500,000 bushels of wheat. The manufacturing interests are immense--ready-made clothing being the most extensive, and boots and shoes ranking next. Other leading manufactures are those of iron bridges, India-rubber goods, carriages, furniture, optical instruments, steam engines, glassware and agricultural machinery. Of flourishing industries may be mentioned breweries, tobacco factories, blast furnaces and fruit canning. The largest nurseries in America are found here. Thousands of acres within a short distance of the city are devoted to the cultivation of fruit trees, and millions of these trees are annually shipped to other States and foreign countries. Over $2,000,000 is the annual product of these prolific nurseries.