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
past the spring at the mouth of the river, seven miles below where
he made his fatal leap. It had passed over two falls of 125 feet
combined, yet was not much injured. A black handkerchief taken from
his neck while on the scaffold, and tied about the body, was still
there. He is stated to have had perfect command of himself while in
the air; and, says the journalist already quoted, "had he not been
given to habits of intoxication, he might have astonished the world,
perhaps for years, with the greatest feats ever performed by man."

The Genesee river waters one of the finest tracts of land in the state
of New York. Its alluvial flats are extensive, and very fertile. These
are either natural prairies, or Indian clearings, (of which, however,
the present Indians have no tradition,) and lying, to an extent of
many thousand acres, between the villages of Genesee, Moscow, and
Mount Morris, which now crown the declivities of their surrounding
uplands; and, contrasting their smooth verdure with the shaggy hills
that bound the horizon, and their occasional clumps of spreading
trees, with the tall and naked relics of the forest, nothing can