The Report of the Commissioners of the State Reservation at Niagara lies before me. It is dated February 17, 1885.[13] The commissioners were appointed in 1883 to consider and report what, if any, measures it might be expedient for the State to adopt carrying out the project to place Niagara under the control of Canada and New York according to the suggestions contained in the annual message of Governor Cleveland with respect to Niagara Falls. The report states that the attractions of the scenery and climate in the neighbourhood of the Falls are such that with their ready accessibility by several favourite routes of travel it might reasonably be expected that Niagara would be a popular summer resort; that there was nevertheless, no desirable summer population, attributed chiefly to the constant annoyances to which the traveller is subjected: pestering demands and solicitations, and petty exactions and impositions by which he is everywhere met. While it is true that such annoyances are felt wherever travellers are drawn in large numbers, at Niagara the inconvenience becomes greater because the distinctive interest of Niagara as compared with other attractive scenery is remarkably circumscribed and concentrated. That the value of Niagara lies in its appeal to the higher emotion and imaginative faculties and should not be disturbed and irritated; that tolls and fees had to be removed; traffic was to be excluded from the limits from whence the chief splendour of the scenery was visible. That the only prospect of relief was to be found in State control; that the forest was rapidly destroyed which once formed the perfect setting of one of Nature's most gorgeous panoramas, and that the erection of mills and factories upon the margin of the river had a most injurious effect upon the character of the scene. It was therefore resolved on June 9, 1883, that