It commences at the head of Onondaga Lake, having
a broad surface where the main part of our city stands, and moderate
hill-side boundaries, until we pass two miles south of the city
bounds, where the bed of the basin begins to narrow away and the
hills on either side to be more abrupt and higher. It continues
to decrease in width, until it terminates against Tully Hill, a
distance of fourteen miles from the lake. Its beauty of wild
scenery is perhaps in greatest perfection in that part known as the
Indian Reservation--still held by the Onondaga tribe--somewhat
south of the centre of the valley. Two main roads lead up the
valley, one at the base of the hills on either side; and riding
along either of them in a pleasant day, an admirer of nature's
wild grandeur has ample occasion of admiration. The gentle slope,
rising way back and up as if touching the clouds, and the more
abrupt and ragged, shrub-covered, not less high hills, miniature
mountains, with every now and then a ravine down which the water
leaps playfully along till it reaches the plateau below and into
the little creek on its way to the ocean--is a landscape of beauty
not easily described.
Just now this valley is the scene of an excitement, in the finding
of a supposed petrifaction of a human being--a giant. The point
of interest is on the south side of the valley, opposite and just
beyond the little village of Cardiff, in the town of Lafayette--
twelve miles from this city, on a farm belonging to Mr.
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