by Reverend George Lansing Taylor
This article from the Auburn Daily Bulletin, December 16, 1873
was contributed by John Duda.

In a recent issue of the New York Christian Advocate, the Rev. Geo. Lansing Taylor gives a charming description of a day spent on Chrysler’s Bluffs, in the vicinity of Little Sodus Bay, on Lake Ontario.

Mr. Taylor, who is a graceful poet and prose writer, as well as preacher, grew up from boyhood to manhood in the town of Sterling, in this county. Last October he spent several days amid the old scenes, giving one whole day to a ramble on the lake shore, among haunts of his boyhood. His description of the visit is a beautiful word-picture, and moreover possesses local interest, though we presume few of our readers were even aware so charming a locality lay within the borders of our county.

Mr. Taylor describes his adventures as follows :

On the morning of the 18th of October [1873], Jacob Chrysler, Esq., of Fair Haven, drove me in his buggy from Fair Haven, some five miles, by roads familiar to my memory, past well-known farms and old houses, past “M.Knight’s red school house,” whence several of my schoolmates  have eventually gone to college and into useful life, along the solitary road, and across the lonely bridge leading to “Chrysler’s Tract” past the farm my father bought from him and occupied in 1843-45; past his home of those days when 1 carried the cool water jug to the harvesters, or roamed by the lake in summer, and coasted a mile to and from school on four feet of snow in the winter; past all these, through the solemn hemlock woods, down to the shore, and there left me alone for a day with the great lake.

The sun shone mildly, there was breeze enough to enliven the lake, and the waves tossed their multitudinous white hands on high, as though to welcome the wanderer back, and rolled their foam to my feet and their anthem through my soul, as 1 took my way homeward, under overhanging bluffs, and along the broad pebbly beach; strayed back from the shore over the sandy and fragrant “Juniper Pond;” roamed two miles inland through the primeval forest, along the trail of the lumberman and wood-cutter, to the “forks” of Sodus Creek, startling a great old owl, but finding that the lofty pine with the well known eagle’s nest, at the forks, had bowed before the remorseless ax and was no more; shook acres of floating turf on the cranberry marsh; and at last, when I had carried all its approaches, and completely recut in my mind the setting for its scene, I took deliberately the well known path along its rising brink to the towering summit of “Big Bluff,” the olympus of my boyhood, the mountain landmark of the shore for miles. Every rod of that path seemed familiar, though I had not trodden it for almost thirty years. At every opening through the trees, the lake scene widened and brightened, and the precipice grew higher and more dizzy, until, finally, I emerged from the woods upon the narrow, grassy verge of the highest plateau, and the full grandeur of the scene burst upon my sight.

The bluff is the remaining hemisphere of a hill tbree hundred feet high and a mile long, composed of firmly cemented “hardpan,” almost as hard as solid rock, but capable of erosion by the waves, rains and frosts which in the wear of centuries, have cut away its former and unknown front, and left it one of the most picturesque of cliffs. Nothing else gives such forms as the wearing away of hardpan. The whole face of the cliff is carved into mighty escarpments, standing up in lofty knife like projecting points and ridges, some of them a hundred feet long and high, and as thin and sharp as the slimmest church steeple—too sharp for the crows to light upon them.

Between these are deep gullies and dark chasms cut by the rain torrents, so narrow at the bottom that a man can barely fall into them, smooth and polished like stone, and running down steep to the very surface below. At intervals long narrow capes or teeth, like teeth from a huge jaw, project a hundred feet from the level summit of the precipice; with green grass, stunted bushes, and wild flowers growing on them. I went out on one that overhung the white foam three hundred feet below. For many feet backward and downward it was not six feet in thickness, and it ended in a perpendicular or overhanging edge, sharp as a knife, going sheer down to the narrow pebble beach which skirts the bluff, and can only be traveled in still weather. In a northern gale the waves dash with fury against the bluff, and the bleaching ribs of proud ships that strew the shore attest the result.

On this Pisgah [biblical Hebrew Piṣgāh, literally peak, height, cliff, the name of the peak from which Moses saw the promised land, Deuteronomy 3:27] I spent an entranced two hours, alone with God and the great bluff. Under me as I lay was its carpet of green velvet; over me, stunted and gnarled, were the hardy hickory veterans and the iron-like hornbeam (iron wood), the only trees able at that height to resist the lake winds when unprotected by the united strength of the forest.

Before me stretched the boundless bosom of the Ontario, a fresh-water sea, of an intense ultramarine blue, flecked with pearly whitecaps, with the gleaming sails of a dozen great schooners and ships in sight, and the far-circling shore of the great bight of the lake bending inward to Little Sodus Bay. From below, the murmur of the surf died out, inaudibly mingling with the sighing wind. Above me bent the vast blue arch of a cloudless heaven, flooded and luminous with palpitant billows of supernal noon; and drifting majestically on motionless wings a great bald eagle, (born, perhaps, in the nest I watched in boyhood,) steered his steady flight so low over my head that I caught the sun-flash from his dazzling eye, which seemed almost to hail the boy of thirty years before. I stood on the dizzy brink, sat on the grassy knolls, lay under the whispering trees, gazed over the sparkling sail-flown ocean below and up into the almost answering deep above.

All my past life, with its storms, loves, aspirations, possibilities and realities rushed across my mind.

Every step of the path along which a mysterious Providence had led me, victor or vanquished, seemed illuminated. And then a voice from all nature around me—nature true and sympathetic to her humble child—and a personal loving voice out of the glad deep above, whispered a calm unutterable through my soul; a calm of fullness, like that of slow rivers at freshet, or the tide’s full flow before it ebbs back to the sea. In that calm, a new strength and benediction came upon me, and I gratefully blessed God that I had lived, for, poor as my life bad been in comparison of its aspirations, I yet felt thankful for the little it had yielded and the measureless it had received; and, in solemn prayer and purpose. I implored help from the All-Inspirer to make the future worthier than the past.

Then, gathering the last summer wild flowers, I descended to the shore and roamed onward along the beach, under some hemlock-clad bluffs, among groves where, here and there, a shrub was dyed with the wounded Summer’s crimson blood; between musical breakers, bright with the slanting sun, on my right and broad, silent marshes on the left, until I passed the last bluff between me and the bay, crossed the wide outlet of Sodus Creek in an ancient skiff, and walked, fasting, but not footsore nor weary, beneath the last September sunset’s banners of amber and flame, up a fine new avenue two miles long, along the bay-shore to Fair Haven village, and found a waiting chair at the supper-table of my hospitable host, who had returned before night and expected me.

I had enjoyed one of the finest early-autumn rambles of my life, and found, to my gratification, that the hitherto uncelebrated scenes which had inspired my childhood suffered not by contrast with better-known and far-famed scenery beheld in subsequent years. I shall visit those bluffs and shores again.

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Retracing George Lansing Taylor’s Footsteps

On August 5, 2022 John Duda, Kyle Meddaugh and Robert Kolsters retraced Taylor’s footsteps, walking from McIntyre Bluff to Fair Haven Beach in search of “the well known path along its rising brink to the towering summit.”

We started out in the early morning while it was relatively cool, though so heavy in the air was the humidity it seemed hazily visible. We followed the same roads Jacob Chrysler had taken in “his buggy from Fair Haven, some five miles, by roads familiar to my memory, past well-known farms and old houses, past McKnight’s red school house,” then Taylor’s childhood home, the site of the Chrysler farmhouse, and on to the lake.

The land George Taylor’s father, Harmon Taylor, purchased from Chrysler can be seen on this map.

We paused at the top of the bluff to survey the shoreline we would follow and then proceeded “through the solemn hemlock woods, down to the shore.”

We continued at lake level “under overhanging bluffs, and along the broad pebbly beach”

On the day Taylor made this trek, “the sun shone mildly, there was breeze enough to enliven the lake, and the waves tossed their multitudinous white hands on high, as though to welcome the wanderer back, and rolled their foam to my feet and their anthem through my soul.” Though we passed signs of habitation, we saw no one the entire day and it seems neither had he. The overcast sky and tranquil waters lent a quiet reverence to imagining his solo trip along the shore.

“…along the broad pebbly beach, I strayed back from the shore over the sandy and fragrant Juniper Pond.”

“…inland through the primeval forest, along the trail of the lumberman and wood-cutter…”

“…along the trail of the lumberman and wood-cutter, to the forks of Sodus Creek…”  (Now called Sterling Creek.) At this point, we chose not to try and reach the fork in the creek as there was no clear path around the soy fields.

“I took deliberately the well known path along its rising brink to the towering summit of “Big Bluff,” the olympus of my boyhood, the mountain landmark of the shore for miles. Every rod of that path seemed familiar, though I had not trodden it for almost thirty years..” 

We did not find the well known path of 150 years ago. So, we headed up toward the bluff where the undergrowth through the woods was traversable.

I noticed how the fallen trees, in various stages of decay, eventually disappear into the forest floor.

 

At every opening through the trees, the lake scene widened and brightened, and the precipice grew higher and more dizzy, until, finally, I emerged from the woods upon the narrow, grassy verge of the highest plateau, and the full grandeur of the scene burst upon my sight.

The view of Little Sodus Bay, the piers and the shoreline beyond took several moments to breath in.

The bluff is… composed of firmly cemented “hardpan,” almost as hard as solid rock, but capable of erosion by the waves, rains and frosts which in the wear of centuries, have cut away its former and unknown front, and left it one of the most picturesque of cliffs. Nothing else gives such forms as the wearing away of hardpan. The whole face of the cliff is carved into mighty escarpments, standing up in lofty knife like projecting points and ridges, some of them a hundred feet long and high, and as thin and sharp as the slimmest church steeple—too sharp for the crows to light upon them. 

A “glacial erratic” is a solid bolder carried south by the Laurentide Ice Sheet as it formed over this area of North America during the last ice age. The picture above shows an erratic lodged in the hardpan bluff.

Between these are deep gullies and dark chasms cut by the rain torrents, so narrow at the bottom that a man can barely fall into them, smooth and polished like stone, and running down steep to the very surface below. At intervals long narrow capes or teeth, like teeth from a huge jaw, project a hundred feet from the level summit of the precipice; with green grass, stunted bushes, and wild flowers growing on them.

I went out on one that overhung the white foam three hundred feet below. For many feet backward and downward it was not six feet in thickness, and it ended in a perpendicular or overhanging edge, sharp as a knife, going sheer down to the narrow pebble beach which skirts the bluff, and can only be traveled in still weather. In a northern gale the waves dash with fury against the bluff, and the bleaching ribs of proud ships that strew the shore attest the result.

From below, the murmur of the surf died out, inaudibly mingling with the sighing wind… And drifting majestically on motionless wings a great bald eagle, steered his steady flight so low over my head that I caught the sun-flash from his dazzling eye…

As if Taylor had sent them to us on queue, these two eagles came gliding by – one more surreal moment in reenacting this hike.

I stood on the dizzy brink, sat on the grassy knolls, lay under the whispering trees, gazed over the sparkling sail-flown ocean below…

We made our way down the western edge of the bluff and took some time to explore what remains of Afterglow, the name of the James Needham’s summer home that once faced the sunset from the side of the bluff.

Continuing down to the beach and around the back side of the State Park bluff, we found ourselves back in Fair Haven.