"The valley of the Mohawk, through which we crept the whole sunshine day, is beautiful from beginning to end; fertile, soft, rich and occassionally approaching sublimity and grandeur in its rocks and hanging woods. We had a lovely day and a soft blessed sunset ... where the curved and wooded shores on either side recede, leaving a broad smooth basin with one of the most exquisite effects of light and colour I ever remember to have seen over the water and through the sky." (Diefendorf, Historic Mohawk, as quoted in The Wedding of the Waters, Bernstein, 2005 [W. W. Norton])