The Alexandria Herald

Extract of a letter to the Editors of the Herald, dated

"Mercer, (Penn.) Nov. 3.

"My journey thus far has been solitary, and unproductive of anecdote or circumstance to embellish a letter. My route from Sunbury to Franklin on the Alleghany river, lay through a country (with the exception of Penn's and Buffalo valleys) of sparse population, and unpromising aspect. After passing the abovementioned river, the soil began to show better, till it opened on a rich and delightful country, well watered by French, Oil, and Brokenstraw creeks and other tributary streams of the Alleghany. A great number of mills whose waters are constantly employed in slitting the immense white pines which line their margins, and extend to a considerable distance through the country. Thence to Erie, the road passes through a level and handsome tract of land.

"The town of Erie is elegantly situated on the bank of the lake, or rather the basin formed by Presqu'isle, and is about five miles below the isthmus of that peninsula. The basin is curved, allowing the basin to spread three miles across at the extreme bend, and narrowing to half that distance at the point a mile below the town, where a bar overlaps another from the shore, leaving a narrow and difficult navigable passage between them into the harbor. The bank is elevated about sixty feet above the level of the water, and from the part opposite the point, presents a beautiful view of the lake, the Canadian shore of which is not discernible by the naked eye. At this spot is a block-house, in which garrison duty is performed. Near it stands the old block house (now converted into a barn) in which the gallant major-general Wayne breathed his last. On viewing the spot of earth which had been the temporary depository of the remains of that American hero, a sigh of sensibility for the fate of human greatness involuntarily escaped me. But Wayne lives in the grateful remembrance of his surviving countrymen. The ground is now enclosed for cultivation; and though no cypress is planted to notify to strangers the sacred spot, a few poppies have stationed themselves around the cavity, yet apparent, as if to designate the funereal use to which it had been devoted.

"Lake Erie has of late exhibited one of those unexplained phenomena of nature which the philosophic mind has often to encounter. For three years and a half it continued rising gently and regularly till it reached between three and four feet above its customary height, and is now subsiding. During the progress of this swell, it cut through the isthmus; but as the lake sinks, the new channel is filling up again. The peninsula is uninhabited by any domestic animal, human or brutal. Its surface is covered with sand heaps, stagnant ponds, scraggy pines, oak shrubs, and cranberry bushes; the fruit of the latter is of good quality, and I believe the only product of Presqu'isle of any value. I had an opportunity of testing its goodness in sauce.

"Waterford, formerly Leboeuf, is situated on a navigable branch of French creek, fifteen miles south of Erie. A portage of that distance along an elegant dry turnpike road, connects the lakes with the Atlantic ocean.

Our Exchange with London has considerably fallen,