From this point there was no public conveyance, and Lieutenant Harriott bought a horse and proceeded in company with a young farmer from Massachusetts who was making his third trip westward to conclude a purchase of land on the Genesee River and could therefore serve as a guide. It took the travellers three days to reach Geneva, from which place they journeyed fifty miles to the river and thence to Niagara Falls, seventy miles more through the wilderness following the Indian trails. By making haste, they avoided spending more than one night in the woods. As darkness fell, they made a bed of boughs and kept two fires burning “as a guard against wolves and panthers.” Again gaining the Mohawk, he went down-stream in a bateau, managed by five men, which he hired for the trip. On his return, Harriott wrote that “except for a view of the grand falls,” there was nothing to reward him for the fatigue of the journey. Fifteen years after Harriott’s visit, John Melish, the map-maker, passed over the same route. He had come from Cleveland, Ohio, and Erie, Pennsylvania, to the Niagara River and the town of Buffalo, which had been laid out about five years previously, but already had five hundred inhabitants and was rapidly growing. The buildings were mostly of wood, painted white, but there were a number of good brick houses and a few of stone. There were four taverns, eight stores, two schools, and a weekly paper in this town, which Melish prophesied would become a great settlement. Already roads were being constructed in all directions, and the Albany turnpike had been brought to within a few miles of the village. As he travelled along, he was surprised to find the country so well settled. The houses were so frequent that the traveller was seldom out of sight of one, and every few miles there was an inn. Lands were all taken up for a mile or so on either side of the road. He constantly met parties journeying westward and from inquiry found that a family of seven could travel in their own wagon at the rate of twenty miles a day, making the journey of six hundred miles from Connecticut to Cleveland at an expense of seventy dollars. The emigrants would carry their own provisions but would stop at the inns to feed their horses and eat their food. In the course of one day’s journey, he met more than twenty families thus proceeding westward. Stage fares would have made the trip much more expensive. By law these fares could not exceed seven cents a mile, and no fees to drivers were expected. Stage travel was at this time made inconvenient by the number of companies operating only on short sections of the road. Each proprietor took up payment for his own portion of the way,--half a dollar here, seventy-five cents there,--and turned the traveller out of his vehicle when he came to the end of his stretch to wait with what patience he could summon till the next stage appeared.