The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832.Various
General
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832.
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
from terrace to terrace, and presenting sometimes a sheet, and
sometimes a wall, of water. Some magnificent cascades have been
formed, at least in part, by the hands of man: the cascades of
Velino, near Terni, have been attributed to Pope Clement VIII.;
other cataracts, like those of Tunguska, in Siberia, have
gradually lost their elevation by the wearing away of the rocks,
and have now only a rapid descent."--_Maltebrun_, vol. i.
The Engraving includes the falls of the river, with the village
of Rochester, seven miles south of Lake Ontario. This place, for
population, extent, and trade, will soon rank among the American
cities: it was not settled until about the close of the last war;
its progress was slow until the year 1820, from which period it has
rapidly improved. In 1830 it contained upwards of 12,000 inhabitants:
the first census of the village was taken in December, 1815, when the
number of inhabitants was three hundred and thirty-one. The aqueduct
which takes the Erie canal across the river forms a prominent object
of interest to all travellers. It is of hewn stone, containing eleven
arches of 50 feet span: its length is 800 feet, but a considerable
part of each end is hidden from view by mills erected since its
construction.
On the brink of the island which separates the main stream of the
river from that produced by the waste water from the mill-race,
will be seen _a scaffold or platform_ from which an eccentric but
courageous adventurer, named _Sam Patch_, made a desperate leap into
the gulf beneath. Patch had obtained some celebrity in freaks of this
description, though his feats be not recorded, like the hot-brained
patriotism of Marcus Curtius in olden history. At the fall of Niagara,
Patch had before made two leaps in safety--one of 80 and the other of
130 feet, in a vast gulf, foaming and tost aloft from the commotion
produced by a fall of nearly 200 feet. In November, 1829, Patch
visited Rochester to astonish the citizens by a leap from the falls.
His first attempt was successful, and in the presence of thousands of
spectators he leaped from the scaffold to which we have directed the
attention of the reader, a distance of 100 feet, into the abyss, in
safety. He was advertised to repeat the feat in a few days, or, as he
prophetically announced it his "last jump," meaning his last jump that
season. The scaffold was duly erected, 25 feet in height, and Patch,
an hour after the time was announced, made his appearance. A multitude
had collected to witness the feat; the day was unusually cold, and Sam
was intoxicated. The river was low, and the falls near him on either
side were bare. Sam threw himself off, and the waters (to quote the
bathos of a New York newspaper) "received him in their cold embrace.
The tide bubbled as the life left the body, and then the stillness of
death, indeed, sat upon the bosom of the waters." His body was found
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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