Canandaigua Lake [pp. 548-552]

548CANA~TDAIGUA LAKE [NOVEMBER 11,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL DIXON.
AN avenue, one hundred and thirty feet broad, walled in with
elms and maples, and roofed half by their autumn leafery and
half by the sky, stretches straight down two miles of gentle slope
into a still lake, with the blue hills beyond.
On either side lies the village Canandaigua, its name aptly borrowed from the quiet, green water resting at its feet. It is in the
western half of the New-York Lake District-a wealthy village, as its
lake is wealthy in quiet beauty; an old village, too, though somewhat
younger than the lake, and like the latter, above all, in the marked
half-sleepiness of its general appearance, which neither the bustling
of the market nor the locomotive's screaming and roaring ever get
the better of; a stately old place, formal in look, and, withal, having
a good deal of energy and warmth slumbering in it-great if aroused,
but difficult to stir.
It lives, in fact, mostly in the past, and has hard work (or would
have hard work if it tried) to keep up with the hurrying present.
Proud of what it has been, an old man among youth, sluggishly yielding to the outward pressure of changing times, ever noted for its
wealth and the refinement of its people, it is hard for the old aristocrat to see any virtue in the levelling improvements of the age.
Settled in 1789, its first building was a storehouse on the lakeshore.
As early as 1795 the village was noted for its beautiful location
and tasteful "houses of joiner's work, prettily painted, with small
courts in front, surrounded by neat railings;" moreover, it boasted
two inns, "a best and a second best." Some of the settlers came
from Schenectady by water as far as the head of navigation in the
Canandaigua outlet, and, in one instance, pushed their boats through
to the lake.
In early years at Canandaigua, says the record, the forests afforded a plenty of venison, and the lake and small streams a plenty
of fish. The hills on either side of the lake abounded with deer,
which were easily driven into the water and caught.
Some hunters would kill from eighty to a hundred in a single season, and the Indians generally brought venison to the village to barter for flour or bread. In all the earliest years, the Cayugas, Oneidas,
Onondagas, and Senecas, received their annuities at the village, which
made it the place of the annual gathering of those nations, and the
centre of the Indian trade. To this day, it is said, the Senecas visit
the native hills on the lake-shore, and there perform the religious rites
of their fathers in their fathers4 temples. But the whole country
around has a history far older than this white man's chronicle.
Old traditions haunt every hill, and shelter in every glen, and old
names stay forever linked to the new life in their old homes. The
old life is gone, but our sympathy with Nature is ever the same; and
the tired man who spends a month of rest along the shores and on
the bosom of this little lake will join hands in spirit with the Sehneh-kah who knew it long ago, and called it Cah-nan-dah-gwah, the
Sleeping Beauty.
It lies among some six towns, with six ill-assorted names-only
one of them, Cah-nlan-dah-gwah, borrowed from itself. Next to this
lie Gorham and South Bristol, with the deep lake between them.
South of Gorham, on the east shore, lies Middlesex, another English adoption, probably at second hand; and close to its rugged Saxon
548
CA-rAY1DAIG UbA LAKE.
[NOVEMBER 11,