DE WITT CLINTON. HIS PRIVATE CANAL JOURNAL - 18 10. Part 3. [August 4th] . . . . We arrived in the evening at Buffalo, or New Amsterdam, and put up at Landon's tavern, where we were indifferently accommodated in every respect. The young gentlemen had preceded us, and enjoyed the best accommodations. August 5th, Sunday. Buffalo village contains from thirty to forty houses, the court-house of Niagara County, built by the Holland Land Company, several stores and taverns, and a Post office. It is place of great resort. All persons that travel to the Western States and Ohio, from the Eastern States, and all that visit the Falls of Niagara, come this way. A half-acre lot sells from $100 to $250. Buffalo Creek runs in from the East, between the village and the lake. It is a deep stream, about ten rods wide, and has a large bar at its mouth. It is navigable about five miles. Large oil stones are found at the Indian saw mill, twelve miles up the Buffalo Creek, strongly impregnated with Seneca oil; also large petrified clam shells, on the eighteen mile creek. There are five lawyers and no church in this village. The great desideratum in the land of the Holland Company, is the want of water. We saw on the ridge several dry mills. Windmills must be used for grain. The population of their lands doubled in a year. The chief seat of the Seneca's is about four miles from Buffalo. Lake Erie abounds with excellent and various fish: 1. White Fish. -The head and mouth exactly like our shad, and so is the fish generally. It is superior in flavor. 2. Herring. - Thicker through the body, and nearly the same length as those on the sea-coast. Much like the Nova Scotia herring. 3. Sheep's Head. - Like ours, but no teeth; a hard, dry fish. 4. Black or Oswego Bass. - Like our black fish. Bass is a Dutch word, and signifies perch. 5. Rock Bass. - Like our sea bass. 6. White Bass. - In shape like our white perch, but rather longer. The tall resembles that of the streaked bass, and it has stripes on its sides. 7. Sturgeon, - is the largest fish in the lake. They have no dorsal fin, and are not so large as those in the Hudson. In respect to shape they are rather similar, and have the same habit of vaulting. At the time the French possessed Niagara, the commander of that fort took four live sturgeon from Ontario Lake, and put them in lake Erie. Lake Erie before had none; now it and all the upper lakes have plenty of them. This was told Mr. Wigton by the captain of a sloop that sails on [L]ake Erie. 8. Sunfish. 9. Muscalunga, or pickerel; a fine fish. 10. Pike. 11. Very large snapping turtle. No shad go up the Mississippi. Now and then a meagre herring is caught at Pittsburgh, which has struggled 2,200 miles against a strong current. The streaked bass or rock fish go above Albany after the sturgeon's spawn, and subsist principally on it. The superior flavor and excellence of Atlantic sheeps-head may be owing to its delicious food of clams and muscles, on the coast. The sturgeon of the lake have no scales. At the Niagara Falls, eels have ascended the rocks forty or fifty feet, but cannot get up, and are not to be found above, or in lake Erie. Eels have communication with the sea, and perhaps generate there. In a pond above the Passaic Falls, no eels have been seen until within a few years, and they have found a communication round the Falls. In the fall, eel-weirs are placed with their mouths up against the current, and in the spring the reverse. In the fall they go to the sea, and in the spring return. The only small fish in lake Erie, are the muscle and cray fish. Dr. Mitchell's notice, that sea-fish, such as sturgeon, are shut by the falls from the ocean, and have become naturalized to fresh water, is ridiculous; 1. They can escape by vaulting over the falls. 2. By the Illinois in the spring, down the Mississippi. 3. The above story explains how they came into the lake. We rode on the beach of the lake, from Buffalo to Black Rock. There is an upper and a lower landing here, about a mile apart. At the latter is the village, the ground of which belongs to the State; and it has been laid out in lots, which have not been as yet sold. A ferry and tavern are kept at the upper landing, by F. Miller, and a store by Porter, Barton & Co. Bird Island is a mile above the upper landing; the channel runs on each side of it; it derives its name from the number of birds which formerly crowded on it. It is nothing but a collection of large calcarious and silicious rocks. A store built on it by Porter, Barton & Co., was swept off by the ice. A block has been sunk here by them, on the North side of the island, (by which it is protected from the ice), to receive and lade vessels, and it will answer for any burthen. It cost $2,000. Vessels can come up the Rapids to it, with 100 barrels of salt, but have to leave the remainder of their lading for another trip. A vessel with salt can push up against the current, from Fort Schlosser to Black Rock, twenty miles, in one day. To remedy the communication here, it is proposed to cut a canal round the Rapids, from Bird Island to the lower landing. Mr. Geddes says that the Rapid in one place here is six and three quarters miles an hour, as tested by actual observation. In one place it is five miles; and the boatmen say in one place seven miles, and that the general current is three miles per hour. Lake Erie is four feet seven inches above the level of Niagara River, below these rapids. (The above was published in the March 2004 edition of "Fortress Niagara," the Newsletter-Journal of the Old Fort Niagara Association, editor Harry M. DeBan, pgs. 9-14. Permission to post it has been granted. To view the entire journal on line go to http://www.history.rochester.edu/canal/bib/campbell/Chap06.html. )