wrjii v«r a^ 
 
 o 
 
 > Xf ' / f • > 
 
 ^^^-'^ •'.v^ ^.— '» "-...^ 
 
 %a3MNa]WV^ '^(?Aav{ian-^'^ '^6'Aavaani^ 
 
 
 
 (i^ 
 
 ^WEUNIVERS/A 
 
 <ril33NVS01^ 
 
 o 
 
 "^/saMiNOJUV 
 
 ^OFCAIIFO/?^ 
 
 ,\V\EUN1VER% 
 
 ^lOSANCElf/^ 
 
 O 
 
 ^^AavnaiH^^ ^TiijoNvsoi^ %a3AiNnmv 
 
 > 
 
 ^. 
 
 v^lOSANCElfXy. 
 
 
 5^lUBRARYa^ 
 
 "^/sa^AiNnjW^ %oji]V3JO^ 
 
 
 ^' 
 
 .NlOSANCElfj> 
 o 
 
 %il3AINll-3W^ 
 
 aOFCAIIF0% ^OFCAllFOff^ 
 
 ^OAtivaan-^^^ 
 
 "^^^Aavaan-i^ 
 
 >- 
 
 
 ^<!/0jnVDJO^ 
 
 ^WEUNIVERS/A 
 
 <rji33Nvsm^ 
 
 ^•lOSAfJCElfj> 
 o 
 
 "^/^il^AINa 3V\V 
 
 f\c.rAiicnr>. 
 
 .ut.iiiii\/cnr/^ 
 
 . inc.diirci r«
 
 ''audiivjju' 
 
 jjijjNVbur 
 
 '/iajAiNiijn> 
 
 IFO%^ ^OFCAilFO/?^ 
 
 
 .^WEUNIVEBSyA 
 
 o 
 
 <ril3QNVSm^ %a3AINIl-3W^ 
 
 a 
 
 ^lOSANCElfx^ 
 
 O 
 
 ^^UIBRARYQc;^ ^^HIBRARYQr^ 
 
 "^AiiaMNaiuv^ ^.i/ojnvjjo'^ ^.!/ojnv3jo^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 5 
 
 vvlOSANCElfjv, 
 o 
 
 ^^OFCAIIFO/?,^ 
 
 ^OFCAIIFO/?^ 
 
 %a3AiNniy\v^ '^^OAavaaiH^ "^^JAbvaaiu^^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 . ^WE■UNIVERS•//, 
 
 ^lOSANCElfX/ 
 o 
 
 '^.!/0Jl]VJJO'^ <rji30NVS01^'^ %a3AINn3UV 
 
 ^^.OFCAIIFOftiA 
 
 
 .^WEUNIVER% 
 
 C3 
 
 ^10SANCEI^> 
 
 O 
 
 r^ ae 
 
 "^/saaAiNa-iWV 
 
 v5,lOSANCElfj-;> 
 
 ^nNHIBRARYQ^;^ ^^^HIBRARYQ^ 
 
 '^<!/0JllVDJO'^ '^<!/0dllV3JO'^
 
 NIAGARA.
 
 THE FALLS 
 
 OF 
 
 NIAGARA 
 
 WITH SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTERS ON 
 
 THE OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS 
 OF THE WORLD. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE W. HOLLEY. 
 
 GlSattl) SriluBtrattong. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 
 
 714 BROADWAY. 
 1883.
 
 Copyright, 1882, by George W. Holley.
 
 
 OF 
 MY DEPARTED FRIENDS, 
 
 PETER A. PORTER 
 
 AND 
 
 JOEL R. ROBINSON^ 
 
 Eijt fotnifr, 
 
 ANSWERING THE SUMMONS TO THE BATTLE-FIELD, 
 GAVE HIS LIFE FOR HIS COUNTRY. 
 
 Ei)t latttr 
 
 OFTEN RISKED HIS OWN LIFE IN SAVING 
 THE LIVES OF OTHERS. 
 
 GEORGE W. HOLLEY. 
 
 973133
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface xiii 
 
 Part I. — History. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 First French expedition — Jacques Cartier — He first hears of the great 
 Cataract — Champ'.ain — Route to China — La Salle — Father Henne- 
 pin's first and second visits to the Falls i 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 Baron La Hontan's description of the Falls — ^L Charlevoix's letter to 
 Madame Maintenon — Number of the Falls — Geological indications — 
 Great projection of the rock in Father Hennepin's time — Cave of the 
 Winds — Rainbows 
 
 9 
 
 CHAPTER HL 
 
 The name Niagara — The musical dialect of the Hurons — Niagara one 
 of the oldest of Indian names — Description of the River, the Falls, 
 and the surrounding country 15 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Niagara a tribal name — Other names given to the tribe — The Niagaras 
 a superior race — The true pronunciation of Indian words 19
 
 vni CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 The lower Niagara — Fort Niagara — Fort Mississauga — Niagara vil- 
 lage — Lewiston — Portage around the Falls — The first railroad in the 
 United States — Fort Schlosser — The ambuscade at Devil's Hole — 
 La Salle's vessel, the Griffin — The Niagara frontier 25 
 
 Part II. — Geology. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 America the old world — Geologically recent origin of the Falls — Evi- 
 dence thereof — Captain Williams's surveys for a ship-canal — Former 
 extent of Lake Michigan — Its outlet into the Illinois River — The 
 Niagara Barrier — How broken through — The birth of Niagara 32 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Composition of the terrace cut through — Why retrocession is possible — 
 Three sections from Lewiston to the Falls — Devil's Hole — The 
 Medina group — Recession long checked — The Whirlpool — The nar- 
 rowest part of the river — The mirror — Depth of the water in the 
 Chasm — Former grand Fall 42 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Recession above the present position of the Falls — The Falls will be 
 higher as they recede — Reason Why — Professor Tyndall's predic- 
 tion — Present and former accumulations of rock — Terrific power of 
 the elements — Ice and ice bridges — Remarkable geognosy of the lake 
 region 50 
 
 Part III. 
 Local History and Incidents. 
 
 chapter ix. 
 
 Forty years since — Niagara in winter — Frozen spray — Ice foliage and 
 ice apples — Ice moss — Frozen fog — Ice islands — Ice statues — 
 Sleigh-riding on the American Rapids — Boys coasting on them — Ice 
 gorges 62
 
 CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER X. PAGE 
 
 Judge Porter — General Porter — Goat Island — Origin of its name — 
 Early dates found cut in the bark of trees and in the rock — Professor 
 Kalm's wonderful story — Bridges to the Island — Method of construc- 
 tion — Red Jacket — Anecdotes — Grand Island — Major Noah and the 
 New Jerusalem — The Stone Tower — The Biddle stairs — Sam Patch — 
 Depth of water on the Horseshoe — Ships sent over the Falls 71 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Joel R. Robinson, the first and last navigator of the Rapids — Rescue 
 of Chapin — Rescue of Allen — He takes the Maid of the Mist through 
 the Whirlpool — His companions — Effect upon Robinson — Biograph- 
 ical notice — His grave unmarked 85 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A fisherman and a bear in a canoe — Frightful experience with floating ice — 
 Early farming on the Niagara — Fruit-growing — The original forest — 
 Testimony of the trees — The first hotel — General Whitney — Cataract 
 House — Distinguished visitors — Carriage road down the Canadian 
 bank — Ontario House — Clifton House — The Museum — Table and 
 Termination Rocks — Burning Spring — Lundy's Lane — Battle Anec- 
 dotes g6 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Incidents — Fall of Table Rock — Remarkable phenomenon in the river 
 — Driving and lumbering on the Rapids — Points of the compass at 
 the Falls — A first view of the Falls commonly disappointing — Lunar 
 bow — Golden spray — Gull Island and the gulls — The highest water 
 ever known at the Falls — The Hermit of the Falls 108 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Avery's descent of the Falls — The fatal practical joke — Death of Miss 
 Rugg — Swans — Eagles — Crows — Ducks over the Falls — Why dogs 
 have survived the descent 118 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Wedding tourists at the Falls — Bridges to the Moss Islands — Railway 
 at the Ferry — List of persons who have been carried over the Falls — 
 Other accidents 125
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The first Suspension Bridge — The Railway Suspension Bridge — Extraor- 
 dinary vibration given to the Railway Bridge by the fall of a mass of 
 rock — De Veaux College — The Lewiston Suspension Bridge — The 
 Suspension Bridge at the Falls 137 
 
 CHAPTER XVH. 
 
 Blondin and his "ascensions" — Visit of the Prince of Wales — Grand 
 illumination of the Falls — The steamer Caroline — The Water-power 
 of Niagara — Lord Dufferin and the plan of an international park. . . . 144 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Poetry in the Table Rock albums — Poems by Colonel Porter, Willis G. 
 Clark, Lord Morpeth, Jose Maria Heredia, A. S. Ridgely, Mrs. Sigour- 
 ney, and J. G. C. Brainard 153 
 
 Part IV. 
 Other Famous Cataracts of the World. 
 
 chapter xix. 
 
 Yosemite — Vernal — Nevada — Yellowstone — Shoshone — St. Maurice 
 — Montmorency 164 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Tequendama — Kaiteeur — Paulo Affonso — Keel-fos — Riunkan-fos — 
 Sarp-fos — Staubbach — Zambesi or Victoria — Murchison — Cavery — 
 Schaffhausen 171 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Famous rapids and cascades — Niagara — Amazon — Orinoco — Parana 
 
 — Nile — Livingstone 1 79
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Niagara Falls from the Canadian Side Frontispiece. 
 
 The Horseshoe Fall from Goat Island Opposite page 6 
 
 Luna Fall and Island in Winter 
 
 " " 17 
 
 The Rapids above the Falls 
 
 " " 22 
 
 The Youngest Inhabitant 
 
 Mouth of the Chasm and Brock's Monument.. .. " " 29 
 
 Niagara Falls from Below ' 54 
 
 Great Icicles under the American Fali 
 
 66 
 Winter Foliage 
 
 Ice Bridge and Frost Freaks 
 
 Coasting below the American Fall " /O 
 
 " " 76 
 
 Second Moss Island Bridge 
 
 86 
 Joel R. Robinson 
 
 The Maid of the Mist in the Whirlpooi " " 9i 
 
 " " 97 
 
 Fisher and the Bear 
 
 ™ Ti a « 109 
 
 Fall of Table Rock 
 
 Rock of Ages and Whirlwind Bridge " " "4 
 
 The Three Sisters or Moss Islands " " '25 
 
 How the Suspension Bridge was Begun " " i37
 
 xii 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Blondin Crossing the Niagara Opposite page 145 
 
 Indian Women Selling Bead-work 
 
 YosEMiTE Falls 
 
 Bridal Veil Fall 
 
 Vernal Falls 
 
 Nevada Falls 
 
 Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. 
 Upper Falls of the Yellowstone. 
 
 The Staubbach, Switzerland 
 
 Victoria Falls, Zambesi 
 
 148 
 164 
 166 
 168 
 171 
 172 
 
 174 
 176 
 178 
 
 Map of the Niagara Region
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE writer, having resided in the village of Niagara 
 Falls for more than a third of a century, has had 
 opportunity to become thoroughly acquainted with the 
 locality, and to study it with constantly increasing 
 interest and admiration. Long observation enables him 
 to offer some new suggestions in regard to the geological 
 age of the Falls, their retrocession, and the causes which 
 have been potent in producing it; and also to demon- 
 strate the existence of a barrier or dam that was once 
 the shore of an immense fresh-water sea, which reached 
 from Niagara to Lake Michigan, and emptied its waters 
 into the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Whoever undertakes to write comprehensively on 
 this subject will soon become aware of the weakness of 
 exclamation points and adjectives, and the almost irre-
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 sistible temptation to indulge in a style of composition 
 which he cannot maintain, and should not if he could. 
 So far as the writer, yielding to the inspiration of his 
 theme, and in opposition to all resolutions to the con- 
 trary, may have trespassed in this direction, he bares 
 and bows his head to the severest treatment that the 
 critic may adopt. His labor has been one of love, and 
 in giving its results to the public he regrets that it is 
 not more worthy of the subject. 
 
 As it is hoped that the work may be useful to 
 future visitors to the Falls, and also possess some 
 interest for those who have visited them, it seemed 
 desirable to avoid the introduction of notes and the 
 citation of authorities. For this reason several para- 
 graphs are placed in the text which would otherwise 
 have been introduced in notes. This is especially true 
 of the chapters of local history. 
 
 The writer is especially indebted to the Hon. Or- 
 samus H. Marshall, of Buffalo, for a copy of his 
 admirable " Historical Sketches," and for access to his 
 library of American history. The Documentary History 
 and Colonial Documents of the State of New York, 
 "The Relations of the Jesuits," the works of other 
 early French missionaries, travelers, and adventurers, 
 made familiar to the public by the indefatigable labors 
 of Shea and Parkman, have all helped to make the 
 writer's task comparatively an easy one.
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 Several years ago, the body of this work, which has 
 since been revised and considerably enlarged, was pub- 
 lished in a small volume, that has long been out of 
 print. Believing that the interest of the volume would 
 be enhanced for the reader if he were able to con- 
 trast Niagara Falls with other famous falls, cataracts, 
 and rapids, the writer has added chapters, describing the 
 most noted of these in all parts of the world. 
 
 G. W. H. 
 
 Niagara Falls, N. Y. 
 
 September, 1882.
 
 PART I.— HISTORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 First French expedition— Jacques Cartier — He first hears of the great Cata- 
 ract — Champlain — Route to China — La Salle — Father Hennepin's first 
 and second visits to the Falls. 
 
 IN 1534. Jacques Cartier, a shrewd, enterprising, and 
 adventurous sailor, made his first voyage across the 
 Atlantic, touching at Newfoundland, and exploring the 
 coast to the west and south of it. The two vessels of 
 Cartier, called ships by the historians of the period, were 
 each of only forty tons burden. 
 
 On the return of Cartier to France, so favorable was 
 his report of the results of the expedition, that Francis I. 
 commissioned him, the year following, for another voy- 
 age, and in May, 1535, after impressive religious cere- 
 monies, he sailed with three vessels thoroughly equipped. 
 The record of this second voyage of Cartier, by Lescarbot, 
 contains the first historical notice of the cataract of 
 Niagara. The navigator, in answer to his inquiries con- 
 cerning the source of the St. Lawrence, " was told that,
 
 2 NIAGARA. 
 
 after ascending many leagues among rapids and water- 
 falls, he would reach a lake one hundred and forty or 
 fifty leagues broad, at the western extremity of which 
 the waters were wholesome and the winters mild ; that 
 a river emptied into it from the south, which had its 
 source in the country of the Iroquois ; that beyond the 
 lake he would find a cataract and portage, then another 
 lake about equal to the former, which they had never 
 explored." 
 
 In 1603, a company of merchants in Rouen obtained 
 the necessary authority for a new expedition to the St. 
 Lawrence, which they placed under the direction of 
 Samuel Champlain, an able, discreet, and resolute com- 
 mander. On a map published in 161 3 he indicated the 
 position of the cataract, calling it merely a water-fall 
 (saut d'eau), and describing it as being " so very high 
 that many kinds of fish are stunned in its descent." It 
 does not appear by the record that he ever saw the Falls. 
 
 During the sixty years that elapsed between the 
 establishment of the French settlements by Champlain 
 and the expedition of La Salle and Hennepin, there can 
 be little doubt that the great cataract was repeatedly 
 visited by French traders and adventurers. Many of the 
 earlier travelers to the region of the St. Lawrence 
 believed that China could be reached by an overland 
 journey across the northern part of the continent. 
 Father Vimont informs us (" Relations of the Jesuits," 
 1642-3) that the Jesuit Raymbault "designed to go to 
 China across the American wilderness, but God sent him 
 on the road to heaven." As he died at the Saut Ste.
 
 HISTORY. 3 
 
 Marie in 1641, he must have passed to the north of the 
 Falls without seeing them. In 1648, the Jesuit father 
 Ragueneau, in a letter to the Superior of the Mission, at 
 Paris, says: "North of the Eries is a great lake, about 
 two hundred leagues in circumference, called Erie, formed 
 by the discharge of the mer-douce or Lake Huron, and 
 which falls into a third lake, called Ontario, over a 
 cataract of frightful height." 
 
 In some important manuscripts relating to the earliest 
 expeditions of the French into Canada, — discovered a 
 few years ago, and now in the possession of M. Pierre 
 Margry, of Paris, — occurs a description of the Falls com- 
 municated by the Indians to Father Gallinee, one of the 
 two Sulpician priests who accompanied La Salle in his 
 first visit to the Senecas, in 1669. He seems to have 
 been more indifferent to the charms of Nature than 
 Father Raymbault, since he crossed the Niagara River 
 near its mouth, and within hearing of its falling waters, 
 yet did not turn aside to see the cataract. In his journal 
 he says : " We found a river one-eighth of a league 
 broad and extremely rapid, forming the outlet of Lake 
 Erie and emptying into Lake Ontario. The depth of 
 the river is, at this place, extraordinary, for, on sounding 
 close by the shore, we found fifteen or sixteen fathoms 
 of water. This outlet (the Niagara River) is forty 
 leagues long, and has, from ten to twelve leagues above 
 Lake Ontario, one of the finest cataracts in the world; 
 for all the Indians of whom I have inquired about it say 
 that the river falls at that place from a rock higher than 
 the tallest pines — that is, about two hundred feet. In
 
 4 NIAGARA. 
 
 fact, we heard it from the place where we were, although 
 from ten to twelve leagues distant, but the fall gives such 
 a momentum to the water that its velocity prevented our 
 ascending the current by rowing, except with great 
 difficulty. At a quarter of a league from the outlet, 
 where we were, it grows narrower, and its channel is 
 confined between two very high, steep, rocky banks, 
 inducing the belief that the navigation would be very 
 difficult quite up to the cataract. As to the river above 
 the Falls, the current very often sucks into this gulf, 
 from a great distance above, deer and stags, elk and 
 roebucks, which, in attempting to swim the river, suffer 
 themselves to be drawn so far down-stream that they are 
 compelled to descend the Falls, and are overwhelmed in 
 its frightful abyss. 
 
 " Our desire to reach the little village called Ganas- 
 toque Sonontona (between the west end of Lake Ontario 
 and Grand River) prevented our going to view that 
 wonder. * * * j ^jij leave you to judge if that must 
 not be a fine cataract, in which all the water of the large 
 river (St. Lawrence) * * * falls from a height of two 
 hundred feet, with a noise that is heard not only at the 
 place where we were, — ten or twelve leagues distant, — 
 but also from the other side of Lake Ontario, opposite its 
 mouth" (Toronto, forty miles distant). 
 
 Of the rattlesnakes on the mountain ridges he says: 
 "There are many in this place as large as your arm, and 
 six or seven feet long, and entirely black." 
 
 From Ganastoque Sonontona the party separated, the 
 two priests, with their guides and attendants, designing
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 to move to the west, along the north shore of Lake Erie, 
 and La Salle apparently to return to Montreal, but in 
 reality, as is supposed, to prosecute by a more southerly 
 route the grand ambition of his Hfe — the discovery of the 
 Mississippi River — a purpose which he executed with 
 even more than the "bigot's zeal," and literally, as it 
 proved in the end, with the "martyr's constancy," for he 
 was assassinated on the plains of Texas, some few years 
 after, while endeavoring to secure to France the benefits 
 of his great discovery. 
 
 After separating from his companions at the Indian 
 village, he probably returned to Lake Ontario and the 
 Niagara River, which he crossed, no doubt, on his way to 
 some of the Iroquois villages, in search of a guide and 
 attendants to assist him in his explorations. It may be 
 assumed that he visited the Falls at this time, but his 
 journal of this expedition has never been found. 
 
 The first description of the Falls by an eye-witness is 
 that of Father Hennepin, so well known to those con- 
 versant with our early history. He saw it for the first 
 time in the winter of 1678-9, and his exaggerated account 
 of it is accompanied by a sketch which in its principal 
 features is undoubtedly correct, though its perspective 
 and proportions are quite otherwise. He says: "Betwixt 
 the lakes Ontario and Erie there is a vast and prodigious 
 cadence of water, which falls down in a surprising and 
 astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not 
 afford its parallel. Tis true that Italy and Switzerland 
 boast of some such things, but we may well say they are 
 sorry patterns when compared with this of which we now 
 la
 
 6 NIAGARA. 
 
 speak. * * * Jt l^the river] is so rapid above the 
 descent, that it violently hurries down the wild beasts 
 while endeavoring to pass it, * * * they not being 
 able to withstand the force of its current, which inevitably 
 casts them headlong above six hundred feet high. This 
 wonderful downfall is composed of two great streams of 
 water and two falls, with an isle sloping along the middle 
 of it. The waters which fall from this horrible precipice 
 do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imagi- 
 nable, making an outrageous noise, more terrible than 
 that of thunder; for, when the wind blows out of the 
 south, their dismal roaring may be heard more than 
 fifteen leagues off. 
 
 " The river Niagara having thrown itself down this 
 incredible precipice, continues its impetuous course for 
 two leagues together to the great rock, above mentioned 
 [in another chapter as lying at the foot of the mountain 
 at Lewiston], with inexpressible rapidity. * * « 
 From the great Fall unto this rock, which is to the west 
 of the river, the two brinks of it are so prodigiously high, 
 that it would make one tremble to look steadily upon the 
 water rolling along with a rapidity not to be imagined." 
 
 On his return from the West, in the summer of 1681, 
 the Father informs us that he " spent half a day in con- 
 sidering the wonders of that prodigious cascade." Refer- 
 ring to the spray, he says: "The rebounding of these 
 waters is so great that a sort of cloud arises from the 
 foam of it, which is seen hanging over this abyss even at 
 noon-day." Of the river, he says: " From the mouth of 
 Lake Erie to the Falls are reckoned six leagues. * * *
 
 The Horseshoe P'all, from (ioat Island. 
 
 opposite pag^e 6.
 
 HISTORY. 7 
 
 The lands which lie on both sides of it to the east and 
 west are all level from the Lake Erie to the great Fall." 
 At the end of the six leagues "it meets with a small 
 sloping island, about half a quarter of a league long and 
 near three hundred feet broad, as well as one can guess 
 by the eye. From the end, then, of this island it is that 
 these two great falls of water, as also the third, throw 
 themselves, after a most surprising manner, down into 
 the dreadful gulph, six hundred feet and more in depth." 
 On the Canadian side, he says: " One may go down as far 
 as the bottom of this terrible gulph. The author of this 
 discovery was down there, the more narrowly to observe 
 the fall of these prodigious cascades. From there we 
 could discover a spot of ground which lay under the fall 
 of water which is to the east [American Fall] big enough 
 for four coaches to drive abreast without being wet ; but 
 because the ground * * * where the first fall 
 empties itself into the gulph is very steep and almost 
 perpendicular, it is impossible for a man to get down on 
 that side, into the place where the four coaches may go 
 abreast, or to make his way through such a quantity of 
 water as falls toward the gulph, so that it is very prob- 
 able that to this dry place it is that the rattlesnakes 
 retire, by certain passages which they find under- 
 ground." 
 
 Finding no Indians living at the Falls, he suggests a 
 probable reason therefor: "I have often heard talk of 
 the Cataracts of the Nile, which make people deaf that 
 live near them. I know not if the Iroquois who formerly 
 lived near this fall * * * withdrew themselves
 
 8 NIAGARA. 
 
 from its neighborhood lest they should likewise become 
 deaf, or out of the continual fear they were in of the 
 rattlesnakes, which are very common in this place. * * * 
 Be it as it will, these dangerous creatures are to be met 
 with as far as the Lake Frontenac [Ontario], on the 
 south side ; and it is reasonable to presume that the 
 horrid noise of the Fall and the fear of these poisonous 
 serpents might oblige the savages to seek out a more 
 commodious habitation." In the view of the Falls 
 accompanying his description, a large rock is represented 
 as standing on the edge of the Table Rock. This rock is 
 mentioned by Kalm, a Swedish naturalist, who visited 
 the Falls in 1750, as having disappeared a few years 
 before that date. Father Hennepin's reference to the 
 animals drawn into the current and going over the Falls, 
 and to the rattlesnakes, indicates unmistakably his pre- 
 vious acquaintance with Father Gallinees's narrative.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Baron La Hontan's description of the Falls — M. Charlevoix's letter to 
 Madame Maintenon — Number of the Falls — Geological indications — 
 Great projection of the rock in Father Hennepin's time — Cave of the 
 Winds — Rainbows. 
 
 EVEN more exaggerated than Father Hennepin's is 
 the next account of the Falls which has come 
 down to us, and which was written by Baron La 
 Hontan, in the autumn of 1687. Fear of an attack from 
 the Iroquois, the relentless enemies of the French, made 
 his visit short and unsatisfactory. He says: "As for the 
 water-fall of Niagara, 'tis seven or eight hundred feet 
 high, and half a league wide. Toward the middle of it 
 we descry an island, that leans toward the precipice, as 
 if it were ready to fall." Concerning the beasts and fish 
 drawn over the precipice, he says they " serve for food" 
 for the Iroquois, who "take 'em out of the water with their 
 canoes"; and also that "between the surface of the 
 water, that shelves off prodigiously, and the foot of the 
 precipice, three men may cross in abreast, without further 
 damage than a sprinkling of some few drops of water." 
 Father Hennepin, it will be remembered, makes this 
 space broad enough for four coaches, instead of three men. 
 From the Baron's declaration as to the manner in 
 which the Indians captured the game which went over
 
 lO NIAGARA. 
 
 the Falls, it would seem that the bark canoe of the 
 Indian was the precursor of the white man's skiff and 
 yawl, that serve as a ferry below the Falls. And the 
 timid traveler of the present day, who hesitates about 
 crossing in this latter craft, will probably pronounce the 
 Indian foolhardy for venturing on those turbulent waters 
 in his light canoe, whereas, in skillful hands, it is pecul- 
 iarly fitted for such navigation. 
 
 A more correct estimate of the cataract than either of 
 the preceding is that of M. Charlevoix, sent to Madame 
 Maintenon, in 1721. After referring to the inaccurate 
 accounts of Hennepin and La Hontan, he says: " For my 
 own part, after having examined it on all sides, where it 
 could be viewed to the greatest advantage, I am inclined 
 to think we cannot allow it [the height] less than one 
 hundred and forty or fifty feet." As to its figure, "it is 
 in the shape of a horseshoe, and it is about four hundred 
 paces in circumference. It is divided in two exactly in 
 the center by a very narrow island, half a quarter of a 
 league long." In relation to the noise of the falling 
 water, he says: "You can scarce hear it at M. de 
 Joncaire's [Fort Schlosser], and what you hear in this 
 place [Lewiston] may possibly be the whirlpools, caused 
 by the rocks which fill up the bed of the river as far 
 as this." 
 
 Neither Baron La Hontan nor M. Charlevoix speaks 
 of the number of water-falls. But Father Hennepin, 
 it will be remembered, mentions three,' two of which 
 were to the south and west of Goat Island. And the 
 Rev. Abbe Picquet, who visited the place in 175 1,
 
 
 
 '^^fesaj^l 
 
 Luna Fall and Island in Winter. 
 
 Opposite page ii.
 
 HISTORY. I i 
 
 seventy years after Father Hennepin, says (Documentary 
 History, I., p. 283): "This cascade is as prodigious by 
 reason of its height and the quantity of water which falls 
 there, as on account of the variety of its falls, which are 
 to the number of six principal ones divided by a small 
 island, leaving three to the north and three to the south. 
 They produce of themselves a singular symmetry and 
 wonderful effect." 
 
 The geological indications are that Goat Island once 
 embraced all the small islands lying near it, and also 
 that it covered the whole of the rocky bar which 
 stretches up stream some hundred and fifty rods above 
 the head of the present island. At that period, from the 
 depressions now visible in the rocky bed of the river, 
 it would seem probable that the water cut channels 
 through the modern drift corresponding with these 
 depressions. In that case there would then have been a 
 third fall in the American channel, north of Goat Island, 
 lying between Luna Island and a small island then lying 
 just north of the Little Horseshoe, and stretching up 
 toward Chapin's Island. On the south side of Goat 
 Island, there would have been a fall between its southern 
 shore and an island then situated about two hundred 
 feet farther south. 
 
 The highest point in the American Fall, the salient 
 and beautiful projection near the shore at Prospect 
 Park, is upheld by a more substantial foundation than is 
 revealed at any other accessible portion of the face of 
 the precipice. This is made manifest on entering the 
 "Shadow-of-the-Rock," where the spectator sees a mass-
 
 12 NIAGARA. 
 
 ive wall of thoroughly indurated limestone, disposed in 
 regular layers more than two feet in thickness, with faces 
 as smooth as if dressed with the chisel. Passing in front 
 of this, across the American Fall, under the Horseshoe 
 and Table Rock, there must have been formerly a broad 
 cleft of soft, friable limestone, to the disintegration and 
 removal of which was due the great overhanging of the 
 upper strata noticed by Father Hennepin and Baron 
 La Hontan. 
 
 For three miles above the Falls, the course of the 
 river is almost due west. But after leaving the precipice 
 it makes an acute angle with its former direction, and 
 thence runs north-east to the railway suspension bridge. 
 The formation of the rapids — one of the most beautiful 
 features of the scene — is due to this change of direction. 
 At no point below its present position could there have 
 been such a prelude — musical as well as motional — to 
 the great cataract. And when these rapids shall have 
 disappeared in the receding flood it is not probable that 
 there will be other rapids that can equal them in length, 
 breadth, beauty, and power. 
 
 The declivity in the lower channel through the gorge 
 is ninety feet; but on the surface of the upper banks 
 there is a rise of more than one hundred feet in the same 
 direction — that is, down the river. Hence, when the 
 Falls were at Lewiston they were more than two hundred 
 and fifty feet high. Now the greatest descent is one 
 hundred and sixty-eight feet, the diminution being the 
 result of retrocession in the line of the dip — from north- 
 east to south-west — in the bed-rock. It is owing to this
 
 HISTORY. 13 
 
 dip that the surface of the water on the American side is 
 ten feet higher than it is on the Canadian. The con- 
 tinuous column of water, however, is longest in the center 
 of the Horseshoe, because of the fallen rock and debris 
 lying at the foot of the other*portions of the Fall. At 
 this time the upward slope of the bed-rock is such that — 
 if it shall prove to be sufficiently hard — the Falls, after 
 receding four miles farther, will be two hundred and 
 twenty feet high. 
 
 It is evident from the descriptions of Father Henne- 
 pin and of Baron La Hontan, that the upper stratum 
 of rock over which the water falls must have projected 
 beyond the face of the rock below much farther than it 
 now does. The large masses of fallen rock lying at the 
 foot of the American and Horse-shoe Falls are evidence 
 of this fact. Travelers still go behind the sheet on the 
 Canadian side, and into and through the Cave of the 
 Winds, on the American side. But they do not expect to 
 keep dry in so doing, nor to sun themselves on the rocks 
 below, like the " rattlesnakes " of former days. Never- 
 theless, there is no more exciting nor exhilarating excur- 
 sion to be made at the Falls than that through the Cave 
 of the Winds. 
 
 Nowhere else are the prismatic hues exhibited in such 
 wonderful variety, nor in such surpassing brilliancy and 
 beauty. And although a rainbow is not a spraybow, it 
 may be admitted that a spraybow is a rainbow, formed of 
 drops of water, large or small. So here rainbow dust and 
 shattered rainbows are scattered around ; rainbow bars 
 and arches, horizontal and perpendicular, are flashing and
 
 14 NIAGARA. 
 
 forming, breaking and reforming, around and above the 
 visitor in the most fantastic and deHghtful confusion of 
 form and effect. And if his fancy prompts him, he may 
 arrange himself as a portrait, at half or full length, in an 
 annular bow. The enamored Strephon may literally place 
 his charming Delia in a living, sparkling rainbow-frame, 
 flecked all over with diamonds and pearls.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The name Niagara — The musical dialect of the Hurons — Niagara one of the 
 oldest of Indian names — Description of the river, the Falls, and the sur- 
 rounding country. 
 
 THERE is in some words a mystic power which it is 
 not easy to analyze or define ; they fascinate the 
 ear even of those who do not understand their mean- 
 ing. The very sound of them as they are enunciated by 
 the human voice touches a chord to which the heart 
 instinctively responds. So it is with the name of the great 
 cataract. No one can hear it correctly pronounced with- 
 out being charmed with its rhythmical beauty, or without 
 feeling confident of its poetical aptness and significance 
 in the dialect from which it was derived. 
 
 And although we have no means of determining the 
 correctness of any of the fanciful or poetical interpreta- 
 tions which have been given of the word, still we cannot 
 doubt that it must have had a peculiar force and justness 
 with those who first applied it. Baron La Hontan, who 
 spent several years among the Indians, noticed the remark- 
 able fact concerning their language that it had no labials. 
 " Nevertheless," he says, " the language of the Hurons ap- 
 pears very beautiful, and the sound of it perfectly charm- 
 ing, although, in speaking it, they never close their lips."
 
 1 6 NIAGARA. 
 
 The most voluminous and among the earliest existing" 
 records connected with the River St. Lawrence, and the 
 great lakes which it drains, are the well-known "Relations 
 of the Jesuits," so called, comprising a yearly account of 
 the labors of the Missionary Fathers sent out by the Col- 
 lege at Paris to Christianize the Indians. In 1615, they 
 established their mission at Quebec, and from thence 
 extended their operations westward. In 1626, they 
 reached the large and powerful tribe of Indians which 
 occupied the splendid domain which may be described 
 with proximate accuracy as bounded by a line commenc- 
 ing at a point on the southerly shore of Lake Ontario, 
 about thirty miles west of the mouth of the Genesee 
 River, and running thence parallel to that river to a point 
 due west from Avon ; thence nearly due west to Buf- 
 falo ; thence along the north shore of Lake Erie to the 
 Detroit River ; thence up that river to a point directly west 
 from the west end of Lake Ontario ; thence east to that 
 lake, and finally along the southern shore of it to the place 
 of beginning. 
 
 The oldest and most notable name in all this territory 
 is Niagara, as would naturally be inferred, when we con- 
 sider the varied and wonderful features of the mighty river 
 which flows across this country. Taking leave of Lake 
 Erie, its clear waters gradually spread themselves out in 
 a broad, bright channel, over a plain, open country, hav- 
 ing a slight declivity, just sufficient to make a gentle cur- 
 rent, thereby adding the living beauty and force of motion 
 to the broad expanse of a lake-like surface, that surface 
 itself diversified and relieved by the pleasant islands, large
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^^' " 
 
 ■=<«■' 
 The Rapids above the F'alls. 
 
 Opposite page 17.
 
 HISTORY. 17 
 
 and small, which are scattered over it. Eddying into 
 every quiet bay, coquetting with every salient angle, 
 moving to the melody of its own murmurs, it flows on 
 serenely and musically. 
 
 But after a time this holiday journey is interrupted. 
 A fearful change takes place. The careless waters are 
 hurried down a long and sharp descent, over the rough, 
 denuded, bowlder-studded bed-rock of the stream. Break- 
 ing and bounding, surging and resurging, flashing and 
 foaming, rushing fiercely upon some huge bowlder, recoil- 
 ing an instant, then madly leaping entirely over it, rush- 
 ing on to others huger still, then breaking wildly around 
 them, the troubled waters hurry on until, culminating in 
 their sublimest aspect, they plunge sheer downward in the 
 grandest of cataracts. 
 
 And now the scene and the effect it produces on the 
 beholder both change. The rapids are beautiful ; the 
 falls are grand ; those are exhilarating, these are inspiring; 
 those are noisy, turbulent, fickle ; these are calm, resist- 
 less, inexorable. 
 
 After the water has made the final plunge over the 
 precipice the cataract acquires its most impressive charac- 
 teristics ; the majestic monotone, the bow, the cloud, 
 which is its veil by night, its crowning glory and beauty 
 by day. The combinations of grandeur and beauty have 
 reached their climax in the fall, the foam, the voice, the 
 spray, the bow. 
 
 The chasm of the river from the Falls to Lewis- 
 ton will be sufficiently described in treating of the geol- 
 ogy of the district. From Lewiston to Lake Ontario, 
 2
 
 1 8 NIAGARA. 
 
 seven miles, the waters of the river flow on through 
 an elevated and fertile plain, in a strong, calm, majestic 
 current, smiling with dimples and reversed in occasional 
 eddies, but neither broken by rapids nor impeded by 
 islands. Finally it is lost in the lake, after passing an 
 immense bar formed by the enormous mass of sediment- 
 ary matter carried down by its own current. The land- 
 scape, as seen from the top of the terrace above Lewiston, 
 is one of the finest and most extensive of its peculiar 
 character which can be found on the continent, all its 
 features being such as appertain to a broad, open country. 
 The visitor at Niagara, as he looks at the Falls, will 
 have a profounder appreciation of their magnitude by 
 considering that it requires the water drainage of a 
 quarter of a continent to sustain them, and that the 
 remoter springs, which send to them their constant trib- 
 ute, are more than twelve hundred miles distant.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Niagara a tribal name — Other names given to the tribe — The Niagaras a 
 superior race — The true pronunciation of Indian words. 
 
 THE name Niagara has been so thoroughly identified 
 with the river and the Falls that the question 
 whether it was also the name of an Indian nation or tribe 
 has been quite neglected. It is proposed now to give 
 the question some consideration, assuming, at once, its 
 affirmative to be true. This, it is believed, we shall be 
 justified in doing by every principle of analogy. We 
 know that it was a general practice of the Indians who 
 occupied this region of country, so abounding in lakes 
 and rivers, to give the name of the nation or tribe to, or 
 to name them after, the most prominent bodies and 
 courses of water found in their territory. Such was the 
 fact with the Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas, Onondagas, 
 and Hurons, the tribal name of each being perpetuated 
 both in a lake and a river. The Mohawks, the warrior 
 tribe of the Six Nations, having no noted lake within 
 their boundaries, left a perpetual memorial of themselves 
 in the name of a beautiful river. The unwarlike Eries, 
 too, though finally exterminated by their more power- 
 ful and aggressive neighbors, the Iroquois, are still 
 remembered in the lake which bears their name.
 
 20 NIAGARA. 
 
 With the Niagaras the river and the cataract were the 
 most notable and impressive features of their territory. 
 Their principal village bore the same name ; and when we 
 recall the proverbial vanity of the race, we can hardly 
 doubt that this must also have been their tribal name. 
 That it should have been perpetuated in reference to the 
 village, the river, and the falls, and that the use of it, in 
 reference to the tribe, should have lapsed, can be readily 
 understood when we recollect that they had two substi- 
 tutes for the tribal name. One of these substitutes is 
 explained at page 70 of the "Relations" of 1641, 
 in a passage which we translate as follows : " Our Hurons 
 call the Neuter Nation Attojianderonks, as though they 
 would say a people of a little different language : for 
 as to those nations that speak a language of which 
 they understand nothing, they call them Attoiiankes, 
 whatever nation they may be, or as though they spoke 
 of strangers. They of the Neuter Nation in turn, 
 and for the same reason, call our Hurons Attoiian- 
 deronks." 
 
 Thus it would seem that this was a mere title of con- 
 venience used to indicate a certain fact, namely, a differ- 
 ence of language. The other substitute by which the 
 nation was best known among their white brethren will 
 be understood by an extract from a letter contained in the 
 same "Relations," and written from St. Mary's Mission 
 on the river Severn, by Father Lalement. In it he gives 
 an account of a journey made by the Fathers Jean de 
 Brebeuf and Joseph Marie Chaumont to the country of 
 the Neicter Nation, as the Niagaras were called by the
 
 HISTORY. 2 1 
 
 Hurons on the north and the Iroquois on the south of 
 them, learning it, as they did, from the French. The 
 letter says: "Our French, who first discovered this 
 people, named them the Neuter Nation, and not without 
 reason, for their country being the ordinary passage by 
 land, between some of the Iroquois nations and the 
 Hurons, who are sworn enemies, they remained at peace 
 with both ; so that in times past the Hurons and the 
 Iroquois, meeting in the same wigwam or village of that 
 nation, were both in safety while they remained. There 
 are some things in which they differ from our Hurons. 
 They are larger, stronger, and better formed. They 
 also entertain a great affection for the dead. * * * 
 The Sonontonheronons [Senecas], one of the Iroquois 
 nations the nearest to and most dreaded by the Hurons, 
 are not more than a day's journey distant from the east- 
 ernmost village of the Neuter Nation, named Onguiaahra 
 [Niagara], of the same name as the river." 
 
 It would seem, then, that this name, Neuter Nation, 
 as applied to this tribe, was an appellation used merely 
 to indicate a peculiarity of its location, or of the rela- 
 tion in which it stood to the hostile tribes living to 
 the north and south of it. The Indians, it is needless 
 to say, were not philologists, and seem not to have 
 objected to the names applied to them, nor to have 
 criticised the erroneous pronunciation of words of their 
 own dialects. 
 
 In the extract given above, the name of our river first 
 appears in type. Its orthography will be noted as pe- 
 culiar. It is one of forty different ways of spelling the 
 2a
 
 22 NIAGARA. 
 
 name, thirty-nine of which are given in the index volume 
 of the Colonial History of New York, and the fortieth, 
 the most pertinent to our present purpose, in Drake's 
 "Book of the Indians," seventh edition. Prefixed to 
 "Book First" is a "Table of the Principal Tribes," in 
 which we find the following: 
 
 " Nicariagas, once about Michilimakinak ; joined the 
 Iroquois in 1723." 
 
 M. Charlevoix, apparently using the facts stated in 
 one of Lalement's letters and quoting also a portion 
 of its language, says : " A people larger, stronger, and 
 better formed than any other savages, and who lived 
 south of the Huron country, were visited by the 
 Jesuits, who preached to them the Kingdom of God. 
 They were called the Neuter Nation, because they took 
 no part in the wars which desolated the country. 
 But in the end they could not themselves escape entire 
 destruction. To avoid the fury of the Iroquois, they 
 finally joined them against the Hurons, but gained nothing 
 by the union." Later, he says they were destroyed 
 about the year 1643. But we have before observed that 
 Father Raugeneau states that their destruction occurred 
 in 165 I. The tribe mentioned by Drake was probably a 
 remnant that escaped in the final overthrow of their nation 
 in this last-named year, and sought refuge at Mackinaw, 
 among the Hurons, who had previously retreated to this 
 almost inaccessible locality, in order, also, to escape from the 
 all-conquering Iroquois. After the lapse of nearly three- 
 quarters of a century, when the hostility of the latter had 
 subsided, and they had themselves been weakened and
 
 
 Opposite page 
 
 The Youngest Inhabitant.
 
 HISTORY. 23 
 
 subdued by the whites, the wretched remnant of the 
 Niagaras, with that strong love of home so characteristic 
 of the Indian, returned to their native hunting-grounds, 
 where they remained for a few years, and then joined their 
 conquerors in that mournful procession of their race 
 toward the setting sun. If there were a Nemesis for 
 nations as well as for individuals, it would be fearful to 
 contemplate the time when the Anglo-Saxon should be 
 called on to pay the "long arrears" of the Indians' 
 "bloody debt." 
 
 Returning to the orthography of our name, we find 
 on Sanson's map of Canada, published in Paris in 1657, 
 that it is shortened into " Oniagra," and on Coronelli's 
 map of the same region, published in Paris in 1688, it 
 crystallizes into Niagara. There is also on this map a 
 village located on or near the site of Buffalo, designated 
 as follows : " Kah-kou-a-go-gah, a destroyed nation^ 
 This name bears a closer resemblance to the true one 
 than several of the forty to which we have just referred, 
 and if it be reduced to Kahkwa it would still be only 
 a corrupt abbreviation of Niagara. 
 
 More than fifty years ago, while leisurely traveling 
 through western New York, the writer well remembers 
 how his youthful ears were charmed with the flowing 
 cadences of the better class of Indians, as they intoned 
 rather than spoke the beautiful names which their 
 ancestors had given to different localities. Every vowel 
 was fully sounded. 
 
 O-N-E-I-D-A was then Oh-ne-i-dah; C-A-Y-U-G-A 
 was Kah-yu-gah; G-E-N-E-S-E-E was Gen-e-se-e;
 
 24 NIAGARA. 
 
 C-A-N-A-N-D-A-I-G-U-A was Kan-nan-dar-quah, 
 and N-I-A-G-A-R-A was Ni-ah-gah-rah. 
 
 In regard to the name, the pronunciation nearest to 
 the original which it may be possible to perpetuate is Ni- 
 ag-a-rah ; the accent on the second syllable, the vowel in 
 the first pronounced as in the word nigh; the a in the 
 third and fourth syllables but slightly abbreviated from 
 the long a in far, and that in the second syllable but 
 slightly aspirated.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The lower Niagara — Fort Niagara — Fort Mississauga — Niagara Village — 
 Lewiston — Portage around the Falls — The first railroad in the United 
 States — Fort Schlosser — The ambuscade at Devil's Hole — La Salle's 
 vessel, the Griffin — The Niagara frontier. 
 
 FROM the earliest visit of the French missionaries 
 and voyageurs to the lake region, the banks of the 
 lower Niagara were to them a favorite locality. Very- 
 early they were cleared of the grand forest which covered 
 them, and the genial, fertile, and easily worked soil, en- 
 riched by the deep vegetable mold that had been accu- 
 mulating upon it for centuries, produced in lavish abun- 
 dance wheat, maize, garden vegetables, and fruits, large 
 and small. " On the 6th day of December, 1678," says 
 Marshall, " La Salle, in his brigantine of ten tons, doubled 
 the point where Fort Niagara now stands, and anchored 
 in the sheltered waters of the river. The prosecution of 
 his bold enterprise at that inclement season, involving the 
 exploration of a vast and unknown country, in vessels 
 built on the way, indicates the indomitable energy and 
 self-reliance of the intrepid discoverer. His crew con- 
 sisted of sixteen persons, under the immediate command of 
 the Sieur de la Motte. The grateful Franciscans chanted 
 ' Te Deicm laudam7is ' as they entered the noble river. 
 The strains of that ancient hymn of the Church, as they
 
 26 NIAGARA. 
 
 rose from the deck of the adventurous bark, and echoed 
 from shore and forest, must have startled the watchful 
 Senecas with the unusual sound, as they gazed upon 
 their strange visitors. Never before had white men, so 
 far as history tells us, ascended the river." 
 
 La Salle rested here for a time, but no defensive work 
 was constructed until 1687, when the Marquis De Non- 
 ville, returning from his famous expedition against the 
 Senecas, fortified it, after the fashion of the time, with 
 palisades and ditches. The small garrison of one hundred 
 men which he left were obliged to abandon it the follow- 
 ing season, after partially destroying it. By consent of 
 the Iroquois it was reconstructed in stone in 1725-6. 
 
 Opposite to Fort Niagara, which is on the Ameri- 
 can side at the mouth of the river, are Fort Missis- 
 sauga and the village of Niagara, formerly Newark, on 
 the Canadian side. The village was captured by the 
 English in 1759, and occupied for a time by Sir 
 William Johnson, who completed here his treaty with 
 the Indians by which they released to him the land 
 on both sides of the river. The first Provincial Par- 
 liament was held here in 1792, under the authority of 
 Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe. In the same year the place 
 was visited by the father of Queen Victoria. The pioneer 
 newspaper of the Province was published here in 1795, and 
 although it ceased soon after to be the seat of government, 
 which was removed to York (now Toronto), still it was a 
 thriving village of about five thousand inhabitants until 
 the completion of the Welland canal, which entirely di- 
 verted its trade and commerce, and left it to the uninter- 
 rupted quiet of a rural town. Several Americans have
 
 HISTORY. 27 
 
 purchased dwellings in the place for summer occupation. 
 A mile above was Fort George, now a ruin. 
 
 Seven miles above the mouth of the river, at the head 
 of navigation, nestling at the foot of the so-called mount- 
 ain, is Lewiston, named in 1805 in honor of Governor 
 Lewis, of New York. Here, in 1678, La Salle " con- 
 structed a cabin of palisades to serve as a magazine or 
 storehouse." And this was the commencement of the 
 portage to the river above the Falls, which passed over 
 nearly the same route as the present road from Lewiston, 
 which is still called the Portage Road. Here, too, the 
 first railway in the United States was constructed. True, 
 it was built of wood, and was called a tram-way. But a 
 car was run upon it to transport goods up and down the 
 mountain The motion of the car was regulated by a 
 windlass, and it was supported on runners instead of 
 wheels. This was a very good arrangement for getting 
 freight down the hill, but not so good for getting it up. 
 But the wages of labor were low in every sense, since 
 many of the Indians, demoralized by the use of those 
 two most pestilent drugs, rum and tobacco, would do 
 a day's work for a pint of the former and a plug of the 
 latter. 
 
 The upper terminus of this portage was for many 
 years merely an open landing-place for canoes and boats. 
 In 1750, the French constructed a strong stockade-work 
 on the bank of the river, above their barracks and store- 
 houses. This they called Fort du Portage. It was burnt, 
 in 1759, by Chabert Joncaire, who was in command of it 
 when the British commenced the formidable and fatal 
 campaign of that year against the French. After Fort
 
 28 NIAGARA. 
 
 Niagara was surrendered to Sir William Johnson, Joncaire 
 retired with his small garrison to the station on Chippewa 
 Creek. 
 
 In less than two years the work was rebuilt in a much 
 more substantial manner by Captain Joseph Schlosser, a 
 German who served in the British army in that campaign. 
 It had the outline of a tolerably regular fortification, with 
 rude bastions and connecting curtains, surrounded by a 
 somewhat formidable ditch. The interior plateau was a 
 little elevated and surrounded by an earth embankment 
 piled against the inner side of the palisades, over which its 
 defenders could fire with great effect. 
 
 When the writer first saw its remains, the outlines and 
 ditches of the work were distinct. Only some slight 
 inequalities in the surface now indicate its site. Captain 
 Schlosser was afterward promoted to the rank of colonel, 
 and died in the fort. An oak slab, on which his name 
 was cut, was standing at his grave just above the fort as 
 late as the year 1808. 
 
 Some sixty rods below is still standing what is believed 
 to be the first civilized chimney built in this part of the 
 country. It is a large and most substantial stone struct- 
 ure, around which the French built their barracks. These 
 were burnt by Joncaire on his retreat. A large dwelling- 
 house was built to it by the English, which afforded shel- 
 ter for many different occupants until it was burnt in 181 3. 
 Its last occupant, before it was destroyed, kept it as a 
 tavern, which became a favorite place for festive and holi- 
 day gatherings. What hath been may be again. When the 
 Falls shall have receded two miles, the brides and grooms
 
 Mouth of tht C hasm, and Brock s Monument. 
 
 Opposite page 29.
 
 HISTORY. 29 
 
 of that age will find their Cataract House near the site of 
 old Fort Schlosser. 
 
 To the west of this old stone chimney stand the few 
 surviving trees of the first apple orchard set out in this 
 region. As early as 1796, it is described as being a "well- 
 fenced orchard, containing 1 200 trees." Not fifty are now 
 standing. 
 
 Across the river from Lewiston is Queenston, so named 
 in honor of Queen Charlotte. The battle which bears its 
 name was fought on the 13th of October, 18 13, between 
 the American and British armies. The former crossed the 
 river, made the attack, and carried the heights. The com- 
 mander of the British forces, General Brock, and one of 
 his aids, Colonel McDonald, were killed. The British 
 were reenforced, and the American militia refusing to cross 
 over to aid the Americans, the latter were obliged to 
 return across the river, leaving a number of prisoners in 
 the hands of the enemy. Some years afterward, the Colo- 
 nial Parliament caused a fine monument to be erected on 
 the heights to the memory of General Brock. It presents 
 a conspicuous and imposing appearance from the terrace 
 below. 
 
 Two miles and a quarter above Lewiston is the Devil's 
 Hole, famous as the scene of a short supplementary cam- 
 paign, made against the English, by the Seneca Indians, 
 in 1763. Though doubtless instigated by French traders, 
 it was a purely Indian enterprise, gotten up among 
 themselves, and commanded by Farmer's Brother, one of 
 the Seneca chiefs, who was a fighter as well as an orator. It 
 was one of the best planned and most successfully exe-
 
 30 NIAGARA. 
 
 cuted military stratagems ever recorded. It was calculated 
 upon the nicest balancing of facts and probabilities, and 
 executed with unrivaled thoroughness and celerity. 
 
 It was known to the Indians that the English were in 
 the habit, almost daily, of sending supply trains, under 
 escort, from Fort Niagara to Fort Schlosser. After unload- 
 ing at the latter post, they returned to the former. They 
 knew also that there was a smaller supporting force of one 
 or two companies at Lewiston, which could join the escort 
 from Fort Niagara, in case of an extra valuable train, and 
 that the whole force at both places was not large enough 
 to furnish an escort of more than four hundred men; they 
 knew that the narrow pass at the Devil's Hole was the 
 best point to place the ambuscade ; also that when the 
 train went up they could see whether its escort was large or 
 small, and so they would know whether they should con- 
 centrate their force to attack the larger escort, or divide 
 it and attack the train and small escort first and the reliev- 
 ing force afterward. They conjectured that the train would 
 have a small escort ; but if it should have a large one, so 
 much the better, as there would be a larger number in 
 a small space for their balls to riddle. They conjectured 
 also that, if the escort were small, the firing on the first 
 attack would be heard by the soldiers at Lewiston, and 
 that they would hurry to the relief of their comrades, 
 not dreaming of danger before they should reach them. 
 
 The fatal result demonstrated the correctness of their 
 reasoning. They made a double ambuscade : one for the 
 train and escort, the other for the relieving force ; and 
 they destroyed them both, only three of the first escaping 
 and eight of the latter. This event occurred on the 14th
 
 HISTORY. 3 1 
 
 of September, 1773. John Stedman commanded the 
 supply train. At the first fire of the Indians, seeing the 
 fatal snare, he wheeled his horse at once, and, spurring 
 him through a gauntlet of bullets, reached Schlosser in 
 safety. A wounded soldier concealed himself in the 
 bushes, and the drummer-boy lodged in a tree as he 
 fell down the bank. Eight of the relieving force escaped 
 to Fort Niagara to tell the story of their defeat. 
 
 Three miles above Schlosser is Cayuga Creek, near 
 the mouth of which La Salle built the Griffin, a vessel of 
 sixty tons burden, the first civilized craft that floated on 
 the upper lakes, and the pioneer of an inland commerce 
 of unrivaled growth and value. She reached Green Bay 
 safely, but on her return voyage foundered with all en 
 board in Lake Huron. 
 
 The French also built some small vessels on Navy 
 Island. The reenforcements sent from Venango for the 
 French, during the siege of Fort Niagara by Sir William 
 Johnson, in 1759, were landed on this island. To the 
 east of it there is a large deep basin, formed at the foot 
 of the channel, between Grand and Buckhorn islands. 
 The upper part of this channel being narrow, the basin 
 appears like a bay. In this bay the French burnt and 
 sunk the two vessels, as is supposed, which brought 
 down the Venango reenforcements ; hence the name 
 "Burnt Ship Bay." The writer has seen the ribs and 
 timbers of these vessels beneath the water, and caught 
 many fine perch which had their haunts near them. The 
 Niagara frontier was the theater of great activity during 
 the War of 18 12.
 
 PART II.— GEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 America the old world — Geologically recent origin of the Falls — Evidence 
 thereof — Captain Williams's surveys for a ship canal — Former extent of 
 Lake Michigan — Its outlet into the Illinois River — The Niagara barrier 
 — How broken through — The birth of Niagara. 
 
 IF Professor Agassiz and Elie De Beaumont are cor- 
 rect in their geological reading, America is the old 
 world rather than the new, and the northern portion of 
 it, stretching from Lake Huron eastward to Labrador and 
 northward toward the Arctic, was the first to be lifted into 
 the genial light of the sun. And Professor Lyell has re- 
 course to the vast stellar spaces for a standard by which 
 to estimate " the interval of time which divides the human 
 epoch from the origin of the coralline limestone over 
 which the Niagara is precipitated at the Falls." "The 
 Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas," he continues, "have 
 not only begun to exist as lofty mountain chains, but the 
 solid materials of which they are composed have been 
 slowly elaborated beneath the sea within the stupendous 
 interval of ages here alluded to." 
 
 A little more than thirty years ago, Professor Agassiz
 
 GEOLOGY. 33 
 
 made a tour to the Upper Lakes with a class of students, 
 for the purpose of giving them practical lessons in 
 geology and other branches of natural science. The 
 day was devoted to outdoor examinations of different 
 localities, and in the evening was given a familiar lecture 
 expository of the day's work. One of the places thus 
 visited was Niagara, and it was the writer's good- 
 fortune to be able to listen to the instructive lecture which 
 followed the examination. Professor Agassiz concurs 
 with other geologists in the opinion that the Falls were 
 once at Lewiston, and one of the most interesting portions 
 of the lecture was his animated description of the retroces- 
 sion of the Falls, traced step by step back to their present 
 position. From this oral exposition, from other high geo- 
 logical authorities, and from personal observation extend- 
 ing through a quarter of a century, the writer has derived 
 the facts herein presented. 
 
 There can be no doubt that at a comparatively recent 
 geological period the Falls of Niagara had no existence. 
 It may suffice to mention two facts which are conclusive 
 on this point. Dr. Houghton, geologist of the State of 
 Michigan, stated in his report that the elevation of Lake 
 Michigan above tide-water is five hundred and seventy- 
 eight feet. That of Lake Erie, as shown by the surveys 
 of the Erie Canal, is five hundred and sixty-eight feet, the 
 clifTerence of level between the two being ten feet. The 
 fall or descent in the Niagara River from Lake Erie to 
 Gill Creek, a few rods above the site of old Fort Schlosser, 
 is twenty feet. Hence we learn that the surface of the 
 water in Lake Michigan is thirty feet higher than that 
 3
 
 34 NIAGARA. 
 
 of the Niagara River near the mouth of Gill Creek. If, 
 therefore, we find anywhere below the Falls a barrier 
 drawn across this river that is more than thirty feet high, 
 its water would thereby be set back to Lake Michigan. 
 A moderate elevation above this thirty feet would serve 
 as a safe shore-line for still water. 
 
 The existence of this barrier has been demonstrated. 
 In the year 1835, t>y direction of the War Department, 
 Captain W. G. Williams, of the United States Topograph- 
 ical Engineers, surveyed three routes for a canal around 
 Niagara Falls. The first of these routes was run from the 
 river nearly in a straight line to the head of Bloody Run, 
 and thence a portion of the way over the terrace laid bare 
 by the rapid subsidence of the water after the barrier had 
 been broken through. The second route, commencing at 
 the same point with the first, — the old Schlosser Store- 
 house, just above Gill Creek, — was run up the valley of 
 the creek, through the ridge above Lewiston, at a slight 
 depression in the general line of the hill, and thence to 
 Lake Ontario by two difierent routes. The highest point 
 in the ridge was found to be sixty feet above the surface 
 of the water in the river at the starting point. Here, then, 
 is found the requisite barrier — a dam thirty feet higher 
 than the water in Lake Michigan, and having a base, as 
 will be seen by reference to the map, of two and a half 
 miles in breadth. This was its breadth at the time of the 
 survey. But a careful observance of the topography of 
 the banks on both sides of the river will show that it must 
 have been originally not less than twice that breadth, and 
 that the depressions now existing are the results of the 
 denudation caused by the removal of the barrier.
 
 GEOLOGY. 35 
 
 While this barrier was unbroken, Lake Erie as extended 
 would have covered all land that was not twenty-six feet 
 higher than the present level of the river at old Schlosser 
 landing, since the water there is sixteen feet below the 
 level of Lake Erie. It is not difficult to trace this barrier 
 on a good map. From old Fort Grey it stretches east- 
 ward a short distance past Batavia, and thence turns to 
 the south through Wyoming into Cattaraugus County. 
 In the latter county it forms the summit level of the 
 Genesee Valley Canal. This summit is a swamp sixteen 
 hundred and twenty-three feet above tide water, and the 
 water runs from it northerly through the Genesee River 
 into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and southerly, through the 
 Alleghany, into the Gulf of Mexico, while within a short 
 distance rises Cattaraugus Creek which flows west into 
 Lake Erie. 
 
 The gradual rise of the Niagara barrier as it extends 
 to the east was demonstrated by the surveys of Captain 
 Williams. By the Gill Creek line to Lewiston he found its 
 elevation above the river, as has been stated, to be sixty 
 feet. By the Cayuga Creek line to Pekin it was sixty- 
 four feet, and by the Tonawanda Creek line to Lockport 
 it was eighty-four feet, as is also shown by the surveys of 
 the Erie Canal. 
 
 To the west the barrier extends from Brock's Monu- 
 ment to the ridge which bounds the westerly side of the 
 valley of the Chippewa Creek, and thence around the 
 head of Lake Ontario into the Simcoe Hills. 
 
 At that period all the islands in the Niagara River 
 valley were submerged. The lower sections of the valleys 
 of the Chippewa, Cayuga, Tonawanda, and Buffalo creeks
 
 S6 NIAGARA. 
 
 were also submerged. The site of Buffalo was, probably, 
 a small island, and many other similar islands were scat- 
 tered over the broad expanse of water. 
 
 And this brings us to our second cardinal fact. Lake 
 Michigan, having absorbed or spread over all the vast 
 water-links in the great chain between Superior and 
 Ontario, was the most stupendous body of fresh water 
 on the globe. Its drainage was to the south, through the 
 valleys of the Des Plaines, Kankakee, Illinois, and Missis- 
 sippi rivers, into the Gulf of Mexico. The evidence of 
 this fact is abundant. The survey of the Illinois Central 
 Railroad shows that the surface of Lake Michigan is three 
 hundred feet above the line of low water in the Ohio 
 River at Cairo, where it joins the Mississippi. It also 
 shows that the low-water line of the Kankakee, where 
 the railroad crosses it, is eleven feet above the surface of 
 the lake. This river, which forms the north-eastern 
 branch of the Illinois, rises in the State of Indiana, near 
 South Bend, two miles from the St. Joseph. From its 
 very commencement at its head-springs it is a shallow 
 channel in the middle of a swamp, — called on the maps 
 the "Kankakee Pond," — nearly a hundred miles long, 
 and from two to five miles wide. On its north side, in 
 Porter County, is a broad cove, with a small stream in 
 the midst of it, which reaches up due north to within a 
 stone's-throw of the south branch of the East Calumick 
 River, which empties into the south-west corner of Lake 
 Michigan. 
 
 More than thirty years ago, while traveling by stage 
 from Logansport, Indiana, to Chicago, the writer was 
 told by a fellow-passenger that it was not an unusual
 
 GEOLOGY. 37 
 
 thing, on the occurrence of a strong north wind during 
 the spring floods, to cross with boats from this branch of 
 the East Calumick into the Kankakee Pond through this 
 cove. We have not been able to obtain any authentic 
 topographical survey which shows the elevation that 
 must be overcome in order to effect this meeting of the 
 waters. 
 
 Again : The river Des Plaines rises near the northern 
 line of the State of Illinois, and running south parallel 
 with the lake shore, at its junction with the Kankakee 
 forms the Illinois. The Des Plaines is only ten miles west 
 of Chicago. One of its eastern tributaries rises very near 
 the head-waters of the south branch of the Chicago 
 River, and often, when flooded by heavy rains, its waters 
 flow over into the lake. At this point, also, the Jesuits 
 and the early settlers were in the habit of crossing in 
 their boats to the Des Plaines, and thence into the Illinois. 
 The writer was informed by Colonel William A. Bird, the 
 last Surveyor-in-Chief of the Boundary Commission, that 
 when the party was at Mackinaw, in the spring of 1820, 
 Mr. Ramsey Crooks, the adventurous and enterprising 
 agent of John Jacob Astor, came up to that place from 
 Joliet on the Illinois in one of the big canoes so gener- 
 ally used at that day for navigating the lakes, and that 
 Mr. Crooks informed them that he crossed from the Des 
 Plaines into Lake Michigan without taking his canoe out 
 of the water. The deep cut in the Illinois and Michigan 
 Canal, recently excavated by the city of Chicago in order 
 to improve its sewer drainage, is quite uniform at its up- 
 per surface, and is sixteen to eighteen feet deep for a dis- 
 tance of twenty-six miles. The bottom of this cut is six 
 3a
 
 38 NIAGARA. 
 
 feet below the lowest water- mark ever noted in the lake. 
 At the point where the deep cut reaches the Des Plaines, 
 it is ten feet lower than the bottom of the river. It is 
 sixteen miles further down before the bottom of the cut 
 and the river coincide with each other. Nearly the whole 
 of this distance it is necessary to maintain a guard-bank, 
 to protect the canal from the inundations of the river. 
 Here we find there is a dam, only about twelve feet high, 
 that once separated the waters of the lake from those of 
 the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 There were, therefore, two courses through which the 
 waters of Lake Michigan could once have passed into the 
 Illinois — the first through the Des Plaines, and the second 
 from the head-springs of the East Calumick into the 
 great north cove of the Kankakee Pond. When we con- 
 sider the immense drainage which must have been dis- 
 charged through these channels into the valley of the 
 Illinois, we can well understand the gigantic proportions 
 of that valley when compared with the stream which now 
 flows through it. The perpendicular and water-worn 
 sides of Starved Rock, below Ottawa, attest the magni- 
 tude of the lake-like floods which must once have dashed 
 around them. 
 
 Having established the existence of the Niagara bar- 
 rier, it remains to analyze its structure, and then to search 
 out the agencies by which it was broken down. First, 
 in regard to its organization. An examination of the 
 locality reveals the fact that the portion of the ridge 
 lying between old Fort Grey and Brock's Monument was 
 of a peculiar character. At the former point the hard, 
 compact clay had in it but a slight mixture of gray loam
 
 GEOLOGY. 39 
 
 and sand. At the latter point, fine gravel was plentifully 
 mingled with this loam. This latter mass, being quite 
 porous, would rapidly become saturated with water, and 
 its component parts be easily separated. The decliv- 
 ity of the high, hard, clay bank, down to the rock at 
 the edge of the precipice, is abrupt on the American 
 side, while on the opposite side the ascent toward 
 Brock's Monument and above is gradual. This forma- 
 tion extends upward about one mile and a half, when the 
 gravel and loam disappear, and the hard clay succeeds 
 and continues upward with a gradual downward slope 
 nearly to the Falls. 
 
 This upper drift was about twenty feet thick, and rested 
 on a laminated stratum of the Niagara limestone. This 
 stratum, though quite compact, and having its seams 
 closely jointed, was not so thoroughly indurated as the 
 lower strata of the Niagara group, and its thin plates 
 were more easily displaced and broken up. The depres- 
 sion marked in the sixth mile of the profile referred to 
 was evidently cut out by the waters of Fish Creek, after 
 the barrier had been removed, since the land near the 
 head-waters of this stream is higher than at the point 
 where the line runs through the ridge. It is also notice- 
 able that the ridge, at this point, approaches the brink of 
 the escarpment more nearly than at any other, and the 
 sharp declivity of its northern face is clearly shown on 
 the profile in the accompanying map. 
 
 Within the last century there have been two, and per- 
 haps more, large tidal waves on the Great Lakes. There 
 have also been many severe gales, which have inundated 
 the low lands around their shores, and attacked, with de-
 
 40 NIAGARA. 
 
 structive effect, their higher banks. One of these gales 
 is mentioned in another place. It came from about two 
 points north of west, and, as noted, raised the water six 
 feet on the rapids above the Falls. In the narrow por- 
 tions of the river above, it must have elevated the water 
 still more. Of course a much higher rise would have 
 been produced by the force of such a gale acting upon 
 the vastly increased surface of the larger lake. 
 
 The first serious impression upon the Niagara barrier 
 must have been made by these two mighty forces. By 
 them, undoubtedly, was made the first breach over its 
 top, thus commencing that slow but sure denudation 
 which finally reached the rock below. And by their aid 
 even the rock itself was removed. 
 
 Here, then, is the composition and structure of our 
 dam. It is thirty feet high, with a base two and a half 
 miles certainly, and probably five, in width. How to 
 break through it is the problem to be solved by the great 
 inland sea which laves it, so that the water may flow 
 onward and downward to the Atlantic. 
 
 Fortunately we have, all along the shores of our inland 
 lakes, an annual demonstration of the method by which 
 such problems are solved. A constant abrasion of their 
 banks is produced by the action of water, frost, and ice. 
 And these are the resistless elements which, by their 
 persistent and powerful action during the lapse of ages, 
 excavated a channel for the waters of the Niagara. The 
 gradual upward slope of the rock and the thick upper 
 drift broke the force of the huge waves that were oc- 
 casionally dashed upon them. Their position could not
 
 GEOLOGY. 41 
 
 have been more favorable to resist attack. It was a 
 Malakoff of earth on a foundation of rock. Little by httle 
 the refluent waves carried back portions of the crumbled 
 mass, and deposited them in the neighboring depres- 
 sions. Slowly, wearily, desultorily, the erosion and des- 
 quamation went on. At last the upper drift was broken 
 down, and its crumbled remains were swept from the 
 rock. 
 
 Then the insidious forces of heat and cold, sun and 
 frost became potent. The thin laminae of limestone were 
 loosened by the frost, broken up and disintegrated. At 
 last a thin sheet of water was driven through the gorge by 
 some fierce gale. •• The steep declivity of the counterscarp 
 was then fatally attacked, and after a time its perpen- 
 dicular face was laid bare. Thenceforth the elements had 
 the top and one end of the rocky mass to work on, and 
 they worked at a tremendous advantage. The breaking 
 up and disintegration of the rock went on. It was gradu- 
 ally crumbled into sand, which was washed off by the 
 rains or swept away by the winds. Finally a channel 
 was excavated, of which the bottom was lower than the 
 surface of the great lake above ; the sparkling waters 
 rushed in, dashed over the precipice, and Niagara was 
 born. 
 
 As the water worked its way over the precipice 
 gradually, so it would gradually excavate its channel 
 to Lake Ontario, and it is not probable that any great 
 inundation of the lower terrace could have occurred.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Composition of the terrace cut through — Why retrocession is possible — 
 Three sections from Lewiston to the Falls — Devil's Hole — The Medina 
 group — Recession long checked — The Whirlpool — The narrowest part 
 of the river — The mirror — Depth of the water in the chasm — Former 
 grand Fall. 
 
 THE water having laid bare the face of the mountain 
 barrier from top to bottom, we are enabled to exam- 
 ine the composition of the mass through which it slowly 
 cut its way. After removing the thin plates of the upper 
 stratum, as we descend, according to Professor Hall, we 
 find: 
 
 1. Niagara limestone — compact and geodiferous. 
 
 2. Soft argillo-calcareous shale. 
 
 - 3. Compact gray limestone. 
 
 - 4. Thin layers of green shale. 
 
 5. Gray and mottled sandstone, constituting with 
 those below the Medina group. 
 
 6. Red shale and marl, with thin courses of sandstone 
 near the top. 
 
 7. Gray quartzose sandstone. 
 
 8. Red shaly sandstone and marl. 
 
 Before reaching the Whirlpool the mass becomes, 
 practically, resolved into numbers three, four, and five,
 
 GEOLOGY. 43 
 
 the limestone, as a general rule, growing thicker and 
 harder, and the shale also, as we follow up the stream. 
 
 The reason why retrocession of the Falls is possible 
 is found in the occurrence of the shale noted above as 
 underlying the rock. It is a species of indurated clay, 
 harder or softer according to the pressure to which it 
 may have been subjected. When protected from the 
 action of the elements it; retains its hardness, but when 
 exposed to them it gradually softens and crumbles away. 
 After a time the superstratum of rock, which is full of 
 cracks and seams, is undermined and precipitated into 
 the chasm below. If the stratum of shale lies at or near 
 the bottom of the channel below the Falls, it will be 
 measurably protected from the action of the elements. 
 In this case retrocession will necessarily be very gradual. 
 If above the Falls the shale projects upward from the 
 channel below, then in proportion to the elevation and 
 thickness of its stratum will be the ease and rapidity of 
 disintegration and retrocession. The shale furnishes, 
 therefore, a good standard by which to determine the 
 comparative rapidity with which the retrocession has been 
 accomplished at different points. 
 
 From the base of the escarpment at Lewiston up 
 the narrow bend in the channel above Devil's Hole, a 
 distance of four and a quarter miles, the shale varies in 
 thickness above the water, from one hundred and thirty 
 feet at the commencement of the gorge, to one hundred 
 and ten feet at the upper extremity of the bend. Here, 
 although there is very little upward curve in the lime- 
 stone, there is yet a decided curve upward in the Medina
 
 44 NIAGARA. 
 
 group, noticed above, composed mainly of a hard, red 
 sandstone. It projects across the chasm, and also ex- 
 tends upward to near the neck of the Whirlpool, where 
 it dips suddenly downward. The two strata of shale, 
 becoming apparently united, follow its dip and also 
 extend upward until they reach their maximum elevation 
 near the middle of the Whirlpool. Thence the shale 
 gradually dips again to the Railway Suspension Bridge, 
 three-quarters of a mile above. For the remaining one 
 and a half miles from this bridge to the present site of 
 the Falls the dip is downward. We may then divide 
 this reach of the Niagara River into three sections : 
 
 First. From Lewiston to the upper end of the Bend 
 above Devil's Hole. 
 
 Second. Thence to the head of the rapid above the 
 Railway Suspension Bridge. 
 
 Third. Thence to the present site of the Falls. 
 
 We are now prepared to consider these sections 
 with reference to the retrocession of the fall of water. 
 Through the first section the shale, as before noted, 
 lying much above the water surface, and the superposed 
 limestone being rather soft and thinner than at any point 
 above, the retreat was probably quite uniform and com- 
 paratively rapid, about the same progress being made 
 in each of the many centuries required to accomplish its 
 whole length. Professor James Hall, in his able and 
 interesting Report on the Geology of the Fourth District 
 of the State of New York, suggests the probability of 
 there having been three distinct Falls, one below the 
 other, for some distance up-stream, when the retrocession 
 first began. The average width of this section between
 
 GEOLOGY. 45 
 
 the banks is one thousand feet. About one mile below 
 its upper extremity is " Devil's Hole," a side-chasm 
 cut out of the American bank of the river by a small 
 stream called " Bloody Run," which, in heavy rains, 
 forms a torrent. The "Hole" has been made by the 
 detrition and washing out of the shale and the fall of the 
 overlying rock. A short distance above, on the Cana- 
 dian side, lies Foster's Glen, a singular and extensive 
 lateral excavation left dry by the receding flood. The 
 cliff at its upper end is bare and water-worn, showing 
 that the arc or curve of the Falls must have been greater 
 here than at any point below. 
 
 Near the upper end of this section there is a rocky 
 cape, which juts out from the Canadian bank, and reaches 
 nearly two-thirds of the distance across the chasm. At 
 this point the great Fall met with a more obstinate and 
 longer continued resistance than at any other, for the 
 reason that the fine, firm sandstone belonging to the 
 Medina group, as has been stated, here projects across 
 the channel of the river, and, forming a part of its bed, 
 rises upward several feet above the surface of the water. 
 And here this hard, compact rock held the cataract for 
 many centuries. The crooked channel which incessant 
 friction and hammering finally cut through that rock is 
 the narrowest in the river, being only two hundred and 
 ninety-two feet wide, and the fierce rush of the water 
 through the narrow, rock-ribbed gorge is almost appall- 
 ing to the beholder. The average width between the 
 banks of this section is about nine hundred feet. 
 
 In the second section is found the Whirlpool, one of 
 the most interesting and attractive portions of the river.
 
 46 • NIAGARA. 
 
 The large basin in which it Hes was cut out much more 
 rapidly than any other part of the chasm. And this for 
 the reason that, in addition to the thick stratum of shale, 
 there was, underlying the channel, a large pocket, and 
 probably, also, a broad seam or cleavage, filled with gravel 
 and pebbles. Indeed, there is a broad and very ancient 
 cleavage in the rock-wall on the Canadian side, extending 
 from near the top of the bank to an unknown depth below. 
 Its course can be traced from the north side of the pool 
 some distance in a north-westerly direction. Of course 
 the resistless power of the falling water was not long 
 restrained by these feeble barriers, and here the broadest 
 and deepest notch of any given century was made. The 
 name. Whirlpool, is not quite accurate, since the body of 
 water to which it is applied is rather a large eddy, in 
 which small whirlpools are constantly forming and break- 
 ing. The spectator cannot realize the tremendous power 
 exerted by these pools, unless there is some object float- 
 ing upon the surface by which it may be demonstrated. 
 Logs from broken rafts are frequently carried over the 
 Falls, and, when they reach this eddy, tree-trunks from 
 two to three feet in diameter and fifty feet long, after a few 
 preliminary and stately gyrations, are drawn down end- 
 wise, submerged for awhile and then ejected with great 
 force, to resume again their devious way in the resistless 
 current. And they will often be kept in this monotonous 
 round from four to six weeks before escaping to the rapids 
 below. 
 
 The cleft in the bed-rock which forms the outlet 
 of the basin is one of the narrowest parts of the river.
 
 GEOLOGY. 47 
 
 being only four hundred feet in width. Standing on one 
 side of this gorge, and considering that the whole volume 
 of the water in the river is rushing through it, the specta- 
 tor witnesses a manifestation of physical force which 
 makes a more vivid impression upon his mind than even 
 the great Fall itself No extravagant attempt at fine 
 writing, no studied and elaborate description, can exag- 
 gerate the wonderful beauty and fascination of this pool. 
 It is separated from the habitations of men, at a dis- 
 tance from any highway, and lies secluded in the midst 
 of a small tract of wood which has fortunately been pre- 
 served around it, in which the dark and pale greens of 
 stately pines and cedars predominate. Within the basin 
 the waters are rushing onward, plunging downward, leap- 
 ing upward, combing over at the top in beautiful waves 
 and ruffles of dazzling whiteness, shaded down through 
 all the opalescent tints to the deep emerald at their base. 
 It is ever varying, never presenting the same aspect in 
 any two consecutive moments, and the beholder is lost in 
 admiration as he comprehends more and more the many- 
 sided and varied beauties of the matchless scene. No one 
 visiting the Whirlpool should fail to go down the bank to 
 the water's edge. On a bright summer morning, after a 
 night shower has laid the dust, cleansed and brightened the 
 foliage of shrub and tree, purified and glorified the atmos- 
 phere, there are few more inviting and charming views. 
 
 The remaining portion of this section is the Whirlpool 
 rapid, a beautiful curve, reaching up just above the Rail- 
 way Suspension Bridge. It was the most tumultuous and 
 dangerous portion of the voyage once made by the Maid
 
 48 NIAGARA. 
 
 of the Mist. The water is in a perpetual tumult, a perfect 
 embodiment of the spirit of unrest. Owing to the rapid- 
 ity of the descent and the narrowness of the curve, the 
 water is forced into a broken ridge in the center of the 
 channel. There, in its wild tumult, it is tossed up into 
 fanciful cones and mounds, which are crowned with a 
 flashing coronal of liquid gems by the isolated drops and 
 delicate spray thrown off from the whirling mass, and 
 rising sometimes to the height of thirty feet. Standing 
 on the bridge and looking down-stream, the spectator will 
 see near by, on the American shore, a very good illustra- 
 tion of the manner in which the shale, there cropping 
 out above the surface of the water, is worn away, leaving 
 the superposed rock projecting beyond it. 
 
 In the third and last section the shale continues its 
 downward dip, and at several places entirely disappears. 
 The rock lying upon it is quite compact, and some of it 
 very hard. The deep water into which the falling water 
 was formerly received partially protected the shale, so 
 that many centuries must have elapsed before the excava- 
 tion of this section was completed. Its average width is 
 eleven hundred feet. 
 
 Sixty rods below the American Fall is the upper Sus- 
 pension Bridge. From this bridge, looking downward, no 
 one can fail to be impressed with the serene and quiet 
 beauty of the mirror below, reflecting from the surface 
 of its emerald and apparently unfathomable depths life- 
 size and life-like images of surrounding objects. The calm, 
 majestic, unbroken current is in striking contrast with the 
 fall and foam and chopping sea above.
 
 GEOLOGY. 49 
 
 The greatest depth of the water in mid-channel between 
 the two Suspension Bridges, as ascertained by measuring, 
 is two hundred feet. But it must be borne in mind that 
 this is the depth of the water flowing above the immense 
 mass of rock, stones, and gravel which has fallen into the 
 channel. The bottom of the chasm, therefore, must be 
 more than a hundred feet lower, since the fallen rocks, 
 having tumbled down promiscuously, must occupy much 
 more space than they did in their original bed. There 
 are isolated points, as at the Whirlpool and Devil's Hole, 
 where the river is wider than in any part of this section, 
 but the depth is less. Taking into consideration both 
 depth and width, this is the finest part of the chasm. 
 And for this reason chiefly, when the great cataract was 
 at a point about one hundred rods below the upper 
 bridge, it must have presented its sublimest aspect. The 
 secondary bank on each side of the river is here high 
 and firm, whereby the whole mass of water must have 
 been concentrated into a single channel of greater depth 
 at the top of the Fall than it could have had at any other 
 point. And here the mighty column exerted its most 
 terrific force, rolling over the precipice in one broad, 
 vertical curve, water falling into water, and lifting up, per- 
 petually, that snowy veil of mist and spray which con- 
 stitutes at any point its crowning beauty.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Recession above the present position of the Falls — Tlie Falls will be 
 higher as they recede — Reason why — Professor Tyndall's prediction — 
 Present and former accumulations of rock — Terrific power of the 
 elements — Ice and ice bridges — Remarkable geognosy of the lake 
 region. 
 
 THERE is probably little foundation for the appre- 
 hension which has been expressed that the recession 
 of the chasm will ultimately reach Lake Erie and lower 
 its level, or that the bed of the river will be worn into an 
 inclined plane by gradual detrition, thus changing the 
 perpendicular Fall into a tumultuous rapid. And for 
 these reasons : The contour or arc of the Fall in 
 its present location is much greater than it could have 
 been at any point below. Consequently a much smaller 
 body of water, less effective in force, is passed over any 
 given portion of the precipice, the current being also 
 divided by Goat and Luna islands. Also, the river 
 bed increases in width above the Fall until it reaches 
 Grand Island, which, being twelve miles in length by 
 eight in width, divides the river into two broad channels, 
 thus still further diminishing the weight and force of the 
 falling water. The average width of the channel from 
 Lewiston upward is one thousand feet. The present
 
 GEOLOGY. 5 1 
 
 curve formed by the Falls and islands is four thousand two 
 hundred feet. Of course the water concentrated in mass 
 and force below the present Falls must have proved 
 vastly more effective in disintegrating and breaking down 
 the shale and limestone than it possibly can be at any 
 point above. After receding half a mile further the curve 
 will be more than a mile in extent, and hold this length 
 for two additional miles, provided the water shall cover 
 the bed-rock from shore to shore. 
 
 In reference to this recession, Professor Tyndall, in 
 the closing paragraph of a lecture on Niagara, delivered 
 before the Royal Institute, after his return to England, 
 says : " In conclusion, we may say a word regarding the 
 proximate future of Niagara. At the rate of excavation 
 assigned to it by Sir Charles Lyell, namely, a foot a year, 
 five thousand years will carry the Horseshoe Fall far 
 higher than Goat Island. As the gorge recedes * * * 
 it will totally drain the American branch of the river, the 
 channel of which will in due time become cultivatable 
 land. * * * To those who visit Niagara five millen- 
 niums hence, I leave the verification of this prediction." 
 In his "Travels in the United States," in 1 841-2, vol. i, 
 page 27, Sir Charles Lyell says: "Mr. Bakewell calcu- 
 lated that, in the forty years preceding 1830, the Niagara 
 had been going back at the rate of about a yard annually, 
 but I conceive that one foot per year would be a more 
 probable conjecture." 
 
 Thus it appears that the rate suggested was the result 
 of a conjecture founded on a guess. From certain oral and 
 written statements which we have been able to collect,
 
 52 NIAGARA. 
 
 we have made an estimate of the time which was required 
 to excavate the present chasm-channel from Lewiston 
 upward. During the last hundred and seventy-five years 
 certain masses of rock have been known to fall from the 
 water-covered surface of the cataract, and a statement as 
 to the surface-measure of each mass was made. In using 
 these data it is supposed that each break extended to the 
 bottom of the precipice, although the whole mass did 
 not fall at once. Of course, the substructure must have 
 worn out before the superstructure could have gone 
 down. Father Hennepin says that the projection of the 
 rock on the American side was so great that "four 
 coaches" could "drive abreast" beneath it. Seven years 
 later, Baron La Hontan, referring to the Canadian side, 
 says "three men" could "cross in abreast." We cannot 
 assign less than twenty-four feet to the four coaches 
 moving abreast. The projection on the Canadian side 
 has diminished but little, whereas the overhang on the 
 American side has almost entirely fallen, as is abundantly 
 shown by the huge pile of large bowlders now lying at 
 the foot of the precipice. Authentic accounts of similar 
 abrasions are the following: In 1818, a mass one hundred 
 and sixty feet long by sixty feet wide ; and later in the 
 same year a huge mass, the top surface of which was 
 estimated at half an acre. If this estimate was correct, it 
 would show an abrasion equivalent to nearly one foot of 
 the whole surface of the Canadian Fall. In 1829 two other 
 masses, equal to the first that fell in 1818, went down. 
 In 1850 there fell a smaller mass, about fifty feet long 
 and ten feet wide. In 1852, a triangular mass fell, which
 
 GEOLOGY. 53 
 
 was about six hundred feet long, extending south from 
 Goat Island beyond the Terrapin Tower,, and having an 
 average width of twenty feet. Here we have approximate 
 data on which to base our calculations. In addition 
 to these, it is supposed that there have been unob- 
 served abrasions by piecemeal that equaled all the others. 
 Combining these minor masses into one grand mass and 
 omitting fractions, the result is a bowlder containing some- 
 thing more than twelve million cubic feet of rock. If this 
 were spread over a surface one thousand feet wide and one 
 hundred and sixty feet deep — about the average width 
 and depth of the Falls below the ferry — it would make a 
 block about seventy-eight feet thick. This, for one hun- 
 dred and seventy-five years, is a little over five inches 
 a year. At this rate, to cut back six miles — the pres- 
 ent length of the chasm — would require nearly sixty 
 thousand years, or ten thousand years for a single mile, 
 a mere shadow of time compared with the age of the 
 coralline limestone over which the water flows. So, if 
 this estimate is reasonably correct, two millenniums will 
 be exhausted before Professor Tyndall's prophecy can be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 As to the "entire drainage of the American branch" 
 of the river, we must be incredulous when we consider the 
 fact that the bottom of that branch, two and a half miles 
 above the Falls, is thirty-two feet higher than the upper 
 surface of the water where it goes over the cliff, and that 
 there is a continuous channel the whole distance varying 
 from twelve to twenty feet in depth ; and the further fact 
 that, in the great syncope of the water which occurred in 
 4a
 
 54 NIAGARA. 
 
 1848, the topography, so to speak, of the river bottom 
 was clearly revealed. It showed that the water was so 
 divided, half a mile above the rapids, as to form a huge 
 Y, through both branches of which it flowed over the 
 precipice below, thus showing that nothing but an entire 
 stoppage of the water can leave the American channel 
 dry. But even if this part of Professor Tyndall's pre- 
 diction should be verified, it is to be feared that his 
 "vision" of "cultivatable land" in the case supposed 
 will prove to be visionary. "To complete my knowledge," 
 says Professor Tyndall, "it was necessary to see the 
 Fall from the river below it, and long negotiations were 
 necessary to secure the means of doing so. The only 
 boat fit for the undertaking had been laid up for the 
 winter, but this difficulty * * * was overcome." Two 
 oarsmen were obtained. The elder assumed command, 
 and "hugged" the cross- freshets instead of striking 
 out into the smoother water. I asked him why he did 
 so ; he replied that they were directed outward and not 
 downward." If Professor Tyndall had been at Niagara 
 during the summer season, he would have had the oppor- 
 tunity, daily, of seeing the Fall "from below," and of 
 going up or down the river on any day in a boat. All 
 the boats (four) at the ferry are "fit for the undertaking," 
 and all of them are, very properly, "laid up in the 
 winter," since they would be crushed by the ice if left in 
 the water. The oarsmen do not consider themselves very 
 shrewd because they have discovered that it is easier to 
 row across a current than to row against it. The party 
 had an exciting and, according to Professor Tyndall's
 
 Opposite page 54. Niagara Falls, from Below.
 
 GEOLOGY. 55 
 
 account, a perilous trip. It is an exciting trip to a 
 stranger, but the writer has made it so frequently that it 
 has ceased to be a novelty. 
 
 "We reached," he says, "the Cave [of the Winds] and 
 entered it, first by a wooden way carried over the bowl- 
 ders, and then along a narrow ledge to the point eaten 
 deepest into the shale." He also speaks of the "blinding 
 hurricane of spray hurled against" him. This last cir- 
 cumstance, probably, prevented him from noticing the 
 fact that no shale is visible in the Cave of the Winds. Its 
 wall from the top downward, some distance beneath the 
 place where he stood, is formed entirely of the Niagara 
 limestone. But it is checkered by many seams, and is 
 easily abraded by the elements. 
 
 Long-continued observation of the locality enables the 
 writer to offer still other reasons why the Fall will never 
 dwindle down to a rapid. As has already been noticed, 
 the course of the river above the present Falls is a little 
 south of west, so that it flows across the trend of the bed- 
 rock. Hence, as the Falls recede there can be no diminu- 
 tion in their altitude resulting from the dip of this rock. 
 On the contrary, there is a rise of fifty feet to the head of 
 the present rapids, and a further rise of twenty feet to the 
 level of Lake Erie. During 187 1-2, the bed of the river 
 from Buffalo to Cayuga Creek was thoroughly examined 
 for the purpose of locating pjers for railway bridges over 
 the stream. The greatest depth at which they found the 
 rock — just below Black Rock dam — was forty-five feet. 
 Generally the rock was found to be only twenty to twenty- 
 five feet below the surface of the water.
 
 56 NIAGARA. 
 
 About five miles above the present Falls there is, in 
 the bottom of the river, a shelf of rock stretching, in 
 nearly a straight line, across the channel to Grand Island, 
 and having, apparently, a perpendicular face about six- 
 teen inches deep. Its presence is indicated by a short 
 but decided curve in the surface of the water above it, 
 the water itself varying in depth from eleven to sixteen 
 feet. The shelf above referred to extends under Grand 
 Island and across the Canadian channel of the river, under 
 which, however, its face is no longer perpendicular. If 
 the Falls were at this point, they would be fifty-five feet 
 higher than they are now, supposing the bed-rock to be 
 firm. Now, by excavations made during the year 1870 
 for the new railway from the Suspension Bridge to 
 Buffalo, the surface rock was found to be compact and 
 hard, much of it unusually so. As a general rule it is 
 well known that the greater the depth at which any given 
 kind of rock lies below the surface, and the greater the 
 depth to which it is penetrated, the more compact and 
 hard it will be found to be. The rock which was found 
 to be so hard, in excavating for the railway, lies within 
 six feet of the surface. The deepest water in the Niagara 
 River, between the Falls and Buffalo, is twenty-five feet. 
 At this point, then, it would seem that the shale of the 
 Niagara group must be at such a depth that the top of it 
 is below the surface of the water at the bottom of the 
 present fall. Hence, being protected from the disin- 
 tegrating action of the atmosphere, and the incessant 
 chiseling of the dashing spray, it would make a firm foun- 
 dation for the hard limestone- which would form the per-
 
 GEOLOGY. 57 
 
 pendicular ledge over which the water would fall. Sup- 
 posing the bottom of the channel below this fall to have 
 the same declivity as that for a mile below the present 
 fall, the then cataract would be, as has been before 
 stated, fifty- five feet higher than the present one. If we 
 should allow fifty feet for a soft-surface limestone, full of 
 cleavages and seams which might be easily broken down, 
 still the new fall would be five feet higher than the old 
 one. But, so far as can now be discovered, there is no 
 geological necessity, so to speak, for making any such 
 allowance. In the new cataract the American Fall would 
 still be the higher, and its line across the channel nearly 
 straight. The Canadian Fall would undoubtedly present 
 a curve, but more gradual and uniform than the present 
 horseshoe. 
 
 But there might possibly occur one new feature in the 
 chasm-channel of the river as the result of future re- 
 cession. That would be the presence in that channel of 
 rocky islands, similar to that which has already formed 
 just below the American Fall. The points at which 
 these islands would be likely to form are those where the 
 indurated rock of either the Medina or the Niagara group 
 lies near the surface of the water. This probably was the 
 case at the narrow bend below the Whirlpool, before 
 noticed, and from thence up to the outlet of the pool. 
 After considering what must have occurred in the last 
 case, we may form some opinion concerning the proba- 
 bilities in reference to the first. 
 
 We can hardly resist the conclusion that masses of 
 fallen rock must have accumulated below the Whirlpool
 
 58 NIAGARA. 
 
 as we now see them under the American Fall. But if so, 
 where are they ? The answer to this question brings us 
 to the consideration of the most remarkable phenomenon 
 connected with this wonderful river. To the beholder it 
 is matter of astonishment what can have become of the 
 great mass of earth, rock, gravel, and bowlders, large and 
 small, which once filled the immense chasm that lies below 
 him. He learns that the water for a mile below the Falls 
 is two hundred feet deep, and flows over a mass of fallen 
 rock and stone of great depth lying below it ; he sees a 
 chasm of nearly double these dimensions, more than half 
 of which was once filled with solid rock ; he beholds the 
 large quantities which have already fallen, which are still 
 defiant, still breasting the ceaseless hammering of the de- 
 scending flood. For centuries past this process has been 
 going on, until a chasm seven miles long, a thousand feet 
 wide, and, including the secondary banks, more than four 
 hundred feet deep, has been excavated, and the material 
 which filled it entirely removed. How ? By what ? 
 Frost was the agent, ice was his delver, water his car- 
 rier, and the basin of Lake Ontario his dumping-ground. 
 Although there is little Hkelihood that islands similar to 
 Goat Island have existed in the channel from Lewiston 
 upward, still it is probable that, when the Fall receded 
 from the rocky cape below the Whirlpool up to the pool, 
 it left masses of rock, large and small, lying on the rocky 
 floor and projecting above the surface of the water. As 
 there were no islands above, there were no broken, tumul- 
 tuous rapids. As has been before remarked, the water 
 poured over in one broad, deep, resistless flood. When
 
 GEOLOGY. 59 
 
 frozen by the intense cold of winter, the great cakes of ice 
 would descend with crushing force on these rocks. The 
 smaller ones would be broken, pulverized, and swept down- 
 stream, the channel for the water would be enlarged 
 gradually, and the larger masses thus partially undermined. 
 Then the spray and dashing water would freeze and the 
 ice accumulate upon them until they were toppled over. 
 Then the falling ice would recommence its chipping 
 labors, and with every piece of ice knocked off, a portion 
 of the rock would go with it. Finally, as the cold contin- 
 ued, the master force, the mightiest of mechanical powers, 
 would be brought into action. The vast quantities of ice 
 pouring over the precipice would freeze together, agglom- 
 erate, and form an ice-bridge. The roof being formed, the 
 succeeding cakes of ice would be drawn under, and, raising 
 it, be frozen to it. This process goes on. Every piece 
 of rock above and below the surface is embraced in a re- 
 lentless icy grip. Millions of tons are frozen fast together. 
 The water and ice continue to plunge over the precipice. 
 The principle of the hydrostatic press is made effective. 
 Then commences a crushing and grinding process which 
 is perfectly terrific. Under the resistless pressure brought 
 to bear upon it, the huge mass moves half an inch in one 
 direction, and an hundred cubic feet of rock are crushed to 
 powder. There is a pause. Then again the immense 
 structure moves half an inch another way, and once more 
 the crumbling atoms attest its awful power. This goes 
 on for weeks continuously. Finally the temperature 
 changes. The sunlight becomes potent ; the ice ceases 
 to form ; the warm rays loosen the grip of the ice-bridge
 
 6o NIAGARA. 
 
 along the borders of the chasm below. The water be- 
 comes more abundant ; the bridge rises, bringing in its 
 icy grasp whatever it had attached itself to beneath ; it 
 breaks up into masses of different dimensions : each mass 
 starts downward with the growing current, breaking down 
 or filing off everything with which it comes in contact. 
 Fearful sounds come up from the hidden depths, from 
 the mills which are slowly pulverizing the massive rock. 
 The smaller bits and finer particles, after filling the inter- 
 stices between the larger rocks in the bottom of the 
 chasm, are borne lakeward. The heavier portions make 
 a part of the journey this year ; they will make another 
 part next year, and another the next, being constantly 
 disintegrated and pulverized. 
 
 This work has been going on for many centuries. 
 The result is seen in the vast bar of unknown depth 
 which is spread over the bottom of Lake Ontario around 
 the mouth of the river. On the inner side of the bar the 
 water is from sixty to eighty feet deep, on the bar it is 
 twenty-five feet deep, and outside of it in the lake it 
 reaches a depth of six hundred feet. 
 
 And finally, to the force we have been considering, 
 more than to any other, it is probable that all the coming 
 generations of men will be indebted for a grand and per- 
 pendicular Fall somewhere between its present location 
 and Lake St. Clair ; for it must be remembered that the 
 bottom of Lake Erie is only fourteen feet lower than the 
 crest of the present Fall, and the bottom of Lake St. Clair 
 is sixty-two feet higher. It may also be considered that 
 the corniferous limestone of the Onondaga group — which
 
 Great Icicles under the American Fall. 
 
 Opposite page 60,
 
 ^••^"•■•■WfWl
 
 GEOLOGY. 6 1 
 
 succeeds the Niagara group as we approach Lake Erie — 
 is more competent to maintain a perpendicular face than 
 is the hmestone of the latter group. 
 
 We may here appropriately notice a remarkable feat- 
 ure in the geognosy of the earth's surface from Lake 
 Huron to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We have before 
 stated that the elevation of that lake above tide- water is 
 five hundred and seventy-eight feet. But its depth, 
 according to Dr. Houghton, is one thousand feet. If 
 this statement is correct, the bottom of it is four hundred 
 and twenty-two feet below the sea-level. The elevation 
 of Lake St. Clair is five hundred and seventy feet. But 
 its depth is only twenty feet, leaving its bottom five hun- 
 dred and fifty feet above the sea-level. The elevation of 
 Lake Erie is five hundred and sixty-eight feet. But it is 
 only eighty-four feet deep, making it four hundred and 
 eighty-four feet above the sea-level. From Lake Erie to 
 Lake Ontario there is a descent of three hundred and 
 thirty-six feet. But the latter lake is six hundred feet 
 deep, and its elevation two hundred and thirty-two feet. 
 Hence the bottom of it is three hundred and sixty-eight 
 feet below the sea-level. From the outlet of Lake Onta- 
 rio the St. Lawrence River flows eight hundred and twenty 
 miles to tide-water, falling two hundred and thirty-two 
 feet in this distance. The water from the springs at the 
 bottom of Lake Huron is compelled to climb a mountain 
 nine hundred and eighty feet high before it can start on 
 this long oceanward journey.
 
 PART III. 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Forty years since — Niagara in winter — Frozen spray — Ice foliage and 
 ice apples — Ice moss — Frozen fog — Ice islands — Ice statues — Sleigh- 
 riding on the American rapids — Boys coasting on them — Ice gorges. 
 
 IF the first white man who saw Niagara could have 
 been certain that he was the first to see it, and had 
 simply recorded the fact with whatever note or comment, 
 he would have secured for himself that species of immor- 
 tality which accrues to such as are connected with those 
 first and last events and things in which all men feel a 
 certain interest. But he failed to improve his oppor- 
 tunity, and Father Hennepin was the first, so far as 
 known, to profit by such neglect, and his somewhat 
 crude and exaggerated description of the Falls has been 
 often quoted and is well known. So long as " waters 
 flow and trees grow" it will continue to be read by 
 successive generations. The French missionaries and
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 6^^ 
 
 traders who followed him seem to have been too much 
 occupied in saving souls or in seeking for gold to spend 
 much time in contemplating the cataract, or to waste 
 much sentiment in writing about it. And so it happens 
 that, considering its fame, very little has been written, 
 or rather published, concerning it. 
 
 Seventy years ago, the few travelers who were drawn 
 to the vicinity by interest or curiosity were obliged to 
 approach it by Indian trails, or rude corduroy roads, 
 through dense and dark forests. Within the solitude 
 of their deep shadows, beneath their protecting arms, 
 was hidden one of the sublimest works of the phys- 
 ical creation. The scene was grand, impressive, almost 
 oppressive, not less sublime than the Alps or the 
 ocean, but more fascinating, more companionable, than 
 either. 
 
 Niagara we can take to our hearts. We realize its 
 majesty and its beauty, but we are never obliged to 
 challenge its power. Its surroundings and accessories 
 are calm and peaceful. Even in all the treacherous 
 and bloody warfare of savage Indians it was neutral 
 ground. It was a forest city of refuge for contending 
 tribes. The generous, noble, and peaceful Niagaras — a 
 people, according to M. Charlevoix, " larger, stronger, 
 and better formed than any other savages," and who 
 lived upon its borders — were called by the whites and 
 the neighboring tribes the Neuter Nation. 
 
 The crafty Hurons, the unwarlike Eries, the invin- 
 cible league formed by the six aggressive and con- 
 quering tribes composing the Iroquois confederacy, — the
 
 64 NIAGARA. 
 
 Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, 
 the Senecas, and the Tuscaroras, — all extinguished the 
 torch, buried the tomahawk, and smoked the calumet 
 when they came to the shores of the Niagara, and sat 
 down within sight of its incense cloud, and listened 
 to its perpetual anthem. In succeeding contests between 
 the whites, on two occasions only was nature's repose 
 here disturbed by the din of battle — first, in the run- 
 ning fight at Chippewa, and again at the obstinate and 
 bloody struggle of Lundy's Lane. 
 
 During the War of 1812, in which these actions 
 occurred, the dense forest which lay outside of the 
 old belt of French occupation was first extensively 
 and persistently attacked, the sunlight being let in 
 upon comfortable log-cabins and fruitful fields. The 
 Indian trail and corduroy "shake" were superseded 
 by more civilized and comfortable highways. Post 
 routes were opened and public conveyances established. 
 For many years, however, the two principal ways of 
 access to Niagara were by the Ridge road, from 
 the Genessee Falls — now Rochester — and the river 
 road on the Canadian side from Buffalo to Drum- 
 mondville. 
 
 Some forty years ago, and for many years thereafter, 
 Niagara was, emphatically, a pleasant and attractive 
 watering-place ; the town was quiet ; the accommo- 
 dations were comfortable ; the people were kind, con- 
 siderate, and attentive ; guides were civil, intelligent, 
 and truthful ; conveyances were good, and were in 
 charge of careful and respectable attendants ; com-
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 65 
 
 missions were unknown; "scalping" was left to the In- 
 dians ; nobody was annoyed or importuned ; the flowers 
 bloomed, the birds caroled, the full-leaved trees furnished 
 refreshing shade, and the air was balmy. Then the 
 lowing of cows in the street, the guttural note of the 
 swine, and the voice of the solicitor were not heard. 
 Elderly people came to stay for pleasant recreation and 
 quiet enjoyment; younger people to "bill and coo" and 
 dance. Now all that is changed. A contemporary 
 orator once described the moral status of a famous 
 stock-jobbing locality by saying that " ten thousand a 
 year is the Sermon on the Mount for Wall street." The 
 same gospel is popular at Niagara. 
 
 Whoso has seen Niagara only in summer has but 
 half seen it. In winter its beauties are not diminished, 
 while the accessories due to the season are numerous and 
 varied. After two or three weeks of intensely cold 
 weather many beautiful and fantastic scenes are presented 
 around the Falls. 
 
 The different varieties of stalactites and stalagmites 
 hanging from or apparently supporting the project- 
 ing rocks along the side walls of the deep chasm, 
 the ice islands which grow on the bars and around the 
 rocks in the river, the white caps and hoods which are 
 formed on the rocks below, the fanciful statuary and 
 statuesque forms which gather on and around the trees 
 and bushes, are all curious and interesting. Exceedingly 
 beautiful are the white vestments of frozen spray with 
 which everything in the immediate vicinity is robed 
 and shielded; and beautiful, too, are the clusters of ice 
 5
 
 66 NIAGARA. 
 
 apples which tip the extremities of the branches of the 
 evergreen trees. 
 
 There is something marvelous in the purity and 
 whiteness of congealed spray. One might think it to be 
 frozen sunHght. And when, by reason of an angle or a 
 curve, it is thrown into shadow, one sees where the 
 rainbow has been caught and frozen in. After a day of 
 sunshine which has been sufificiently warm to fill the 
 atmosphere with aqueous vapor, if a sharp, still, cold 
 night succeed, and if on this there break a clear, calm 
 morning, the scene presented is one of unique and 
 enchanting beauty. 
 
 The frozen spray on every boll, limb, and twig 
 of tree and shrub, on every stiffened blade of grass, 
 on every rigid stem and tendril of the vines, is 
 covered over with a fine white powder, a frosty bloom, 
 from which there springs a line of delicate frost- 
 spines, forming a perfect fringe of ice- moss, than which 
 nothing more fanciful nor more beautiful can be im- 
 agined. 
 
 Then, as the day advances, the increasing warmth 
 of the sun's rays dissolves this fairy frost-work and 
 spreads it like a delicate varnish over the solid spray, 
 giving it a brilliant polish rivaling the luster of the 
 rarest gems ; the mid-morning breeze sets in motion this 
 flashing, dazzling forest, which varies its color as the 
 sunlight-angle varies ; and finally, when the waxing 
 warmth and growing breeze loosen the hold of the 
 icy covering in the tree-tops, and it drops to the still 
 solid surface in the shade beneath, — the tiny particles
 
 opposite page 66. 
 
 Winter Foliage.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 6/ 
 
 with a silver tinkle and the larger pieces with the 
 sharp, rattling sound of the Castanet, — the ear is charmed 
 with a wild, dashing rataplan, while a scene of 
 strange enchantment challenges the admiration of the 
 spectator. 
 
 Even more beautiful and fairy-like, if possible, is the 
 garment of frozen fog with which all external objects are 
 adorned and etherealized when the spring advances and 
 the temperature of the water is raised. As the sharp, 
 still night wears on, the light mists begin to rise, and 
 when the morning breaks, the river is buried in a deep, 
 dense bank of fog. A gentle wave of air bears it 
 landward ; its progress is stayed by everything with 
 which it comes in contact, and as soon as its motion 
 is arrested it freezes sufficiently to adhere to whatever 
 it touches. So it grows upon itself, and all things are 
 soon covered half an inch in depth with a most deli- 
 cate and fragile white fringe of frozen fog. The morn- 
 ing sun dispels the mist, and in an hour the gay frost- 
 work vanishes. 
 
 The ice islands are sometimes extensive. In the 
 year 1856 the whole of the rocky bar above Goat 
 Island was covered with ice, piled together in a rough 
 heap, the lower end of which rested on Goat Island and 
 the three Moss Islands lying outside of it, all of which 
 were visited by different persons passing over this new 
 route. 
 
 The ice formed on the rocks below the American Fall, 
 stretched upward, reached the edge of the precipice just 
 north of the Little Horseshoe, continued up-stream above
 
 68 NIAGARA. 
 
 Chapin's Island, spread out laterally from that to Goat 
 Island on the south, and over nearly half of the American 
 rapids to the north. At the brow of the precipice it 
 accumulated upward until it formed a ridge some forty 
 feet high. About fifteen rods up-stream another ridge 
 was formed of half the height of the first. Every rock 
 projecting upward bore an immense ice-cap. Around 
 and between these mounds and caps horses were driven 
 to sleighs, albeit the course was not favorable for quick 
 time. The boys drew their sleds to the top of the large 
 mound, slid down it, up-stream, and nearly to the top of 
 the smaller hill. 
 
 On the lower or down-stream side, they would have 
 had a clear course to the water below, at the brink of 
 the Falls, and might have made "time" compared with 
 which Dexter's minimum would have seemed only a 
 funeral march. But with all Young America's passion 
 for speed, he declined to try this route. The writer 
 walked over the south end of Luna Island, above the tops 
 of the trees. 
 
 The ice-bridge of that year filled the whole chasm 
 from the Railway Suspension Bridge up past the American 
 Fall. When the ice broke up in the spring, such immense 
 quantities were carried down that a strong northerly wind 
 across Lake Ontario caused an ice-jam at Fort Niagara. 
 The ice accumulated and set back until it reached the 
 Whirlpool, and could be crossed at any point between the 
 Whirlpool and the Fort. It was lifted up about sixty feet 
 above the surface, and spread out over both shores, crush- 
 ing and destroying everything with which it came in
 
 Ice Bridge and Frost Freaks.
 
 LOCAL HLSTORY AND INCIDENTS. 69 
 
 contact. Many persons from different parts of the country- 
 visited the extraordinary scene. 
 
 At Lewiston the writer, with many others, saw a most 
 remarkable illustration of the terrific power of this hydro- 
 static press. Just below the village, on the American side, 
 there stood, about two rods from high-water mark, a sound, 
 thrifty, tough white-oak tree, perhaps a hundred years 
 old, and two feet in diameter. The ice, moved by the 
 water, struck it near the ground and pressed it outward 
 and upward, until it was actually pulled up by the roots 
 — or rather some of the roots were broken and others 
 were pulled out — and landed twenty feet farther away 
 from the chasm. 
 
 Those who watched the operation stated that, from 
 the time the ice touched the tree until it was landed on 
 the bank above, the motion of the ice could not be 
 detected by the eye. 
 
 Slowly, steadily, surely it pressed on. Suddenly there 
 would be an explosion, sharp and loud, when a root gave 
 way. No motion in the ice or tree could be discovered. 
 After a lapse of two or three hours another sharp crack 
 would give notice of another fracture. Thus the ice 
 pressed gradually on, and in ten hours the work was done. 
 A thousandth part of this force would pulverize a bowlder 
 of adamant. We need not wonder, therefore, that the 
 river Niagara keeps its channel clear. 
 
 In the ice-gorge of 1866 the ice was set back to the 
 
 upper end of the Whirlpool, over which it was twenty 
 
 feet deep. The Whirlpool rapid was subdued nearly to 
 
 an unbroken current, which all the way below to Lake 
 
 5a
 
 70 NIAGARA. 
 
 Ontario was reduced to a gentle flow of quiet waters. 
 Never was there a sublimer contest of the great forces of 
 nature. The frost laid its hand upon the raging torrent 
 and it was still. 
 
 The winter of 1875 was intensely cold. The singular 
 figures represented in the illustrations — the eagle, dog, 
 baboon, and others — are exact reproductions of the real 
 chance-work of the frost of that season. The long-con- 
 tinued prevalence of the south-west wind fastened to 
 every object facing it a border or apron of dazzling 
 whiteness, and more than five feet thick. The ice mount- 
 ain below the American Fall, reaching nearly to the top 
 of the precipice, was appropriated as a "coasting" course, 
 and furnished most exhilarating sport to the people 
 who used it. A large number of visitors came from all 
 directions, and, on the 22d of February, fifteen hundred 
 were assembled to see the extraordinary exhibition. 
 
 In the coldest winters, the ice-bridges cannot be less 
 than two hundred and fifty feet thick. The ice-bridge of 
 1875 formed on the 6th and 7th of May, was crossed on 
 the 8th, and broke up on the 14th — the only one ever 
 known in the river so late in the spring.
 
 Opposite page 70. Coasting below the American Fall.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Judge Porter — General Porter — Goat Island — Origin of its name — Early 
 dates found cut in the bark of trees and in the rock — Professor Kalm's 
 wonderful story - Bridges to the Island -Method of construction 
 — Red Jacket — Anecdotes - Grand Island— Major Noah and the New 
 Jerusalem —The Stone Tower — The Biddle Stairs — Sam Patch —Depth 
 of water on the Horseshoe — Ships sent over the Falls. 
 
 IN preparing this narrative, the writer has had the good 
 fortune to hsten to many recitals of facts and incidents 
 by the late Judge Augustus Porter and the late General 
 Peter B. Porter, whose names are intimately and honorably 
 connected with the more recent history, not only of this 
 particular locality but of the Empire State. 
 
 Judge Porter, after having spent several years in survey- 
 ing and lotting large portions of the territory of Western 
 New York and the Western Reserve in Ohio, came from 
 Canandaigua to Niagara Falls with his family in June, 
 1806, where he continued to live until his death, nearly 
 fifty years afterward. 
 
 General Porter settled as a lawyer at Canandaigua in 
 1795, removed to Black Rock in 18 10, and to Niagara 
 Falls in 1838. 
 
 In 1805, the two brothers became interested with 
 others in the purchase from the State of New York of
 
 72 NIAGARA. 
 
 four lots in the Mile Strip lying both above and below 
 the Falls. 
 
 A few years later, they purchased not only the interest 
 of their partners in these lots, but other lands at different 
 points along this strip. In 1814, they bought of Samuel 
 Sherwood a paper since named a float — an instrument 
 given by the State authorizing the bearer to locate two 
 hundred acres of any of the unsold or unappropriated 
 lands belonging to the State. This float they fortunately 
 anchored on Goat Island and the islands adjacent thereto 
 lying " immediately above and adjoining the Great 
 Falls." 
 
 The origin of the name of Goat Island is as follows : 
 Mr. John Stedman, who came into the country in 1760, 
 had cleared a portion of the upper end of the island, and 
 in the summer of 1779 he placed on it an aged and 
 dignified male goat. The following winter was very 
 severe, navigation to the island was impracticable, and 
 the goat fell a victim to the intense cold. Since which 
 the scene of his exile and death has been called Goat 
 Island. 
 
 By the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, December 24, 
 1 8 14, the boundary line between Great Britain and the 
 United States, on the Niagara frontier, was to run through 
 the deepest water along the river-courses and through the 
 center of the Great Lakes. As the deepest water, at this 
 point, is in the center of the Horseshoe Fall, the islands 
 in the river fell to the Americans. General Porter, acting 
 as Commissioner for the United States, proposed to call 
 the largest one Iris Island, and it was so printed on the
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 73 
 
 boundary maps. But the public adhered to the old name 
 of Goat Island. 
 
 One of the early chronicles states that the island con- 
 tained two hundred and fifty acres of land. At the pres- 
 ent time there are in it less than seventy. A strip some 
 ten rods wide by eighty rods long has been worn away 
 from the southern side of it since 1818, when Judge 
 Porter made the first road around it. 
 
 The earliest date he found on the island was 1765, 
 carved on a beech-tree. The earliest date cut in the rock 
 on the main-land was 1645. Human bones and arrow- 
 heads were found on the island. The Indians went to it 
 with their canoes, which they paddled up and down in 
 the comparatively quiet water lying on the rocky bar 
 which extends upward nearly a mile above the head of 
 the island. 
 
 Notwithstanding this fact, the Swedish naturalist, 
 Kalm, who visited the place in 1750, relates a fabulous 
 story of two Indians who, on a hunting excursion above 
 the Falls, drank too freely from " two bottles of French 
 brandy" which they brought from Fort Niagara; be- 
 coming drowsy, they laid themselves down in the bottom 
 of their canoe for a nap. 
 
 The canoe swung oft" shore and floated down-stream. 
 Nearing the rapids, the noise awakened one of them, 
 who had apparently been more fortunate in learning 
 the English language from the French than most of his 
 tribe, for, seeing their perilous situation, he exclaimed : 
 "We are gone!" But the two plied their paddles with 
 such aboriginal vigor that they succeeded in landing on
 
 74 NIAGARA. 
 
 Goat Island. From the sequel it would seem that they 
 must have destroyed or lost their canoe. Finding no 
 houses of refreshment, nor cairns of stores left by former 
 explorers, and most naturally getting hungry, they con- 
 cluded it would be desirable to get back to the fort — a 
 wish more easily expressed than accomplished. 
 
 But it was necessary for them to "do or die." So, as 
 the story runs, they stripped the bark from the basswood 
 trees, and with it made a ladder long enough to reach 
 from a tree standing on the edge of the precipice at the 
 foot of the island down to the water below. 
 
 After dropping their ladder they followed it down- 
 ward. Reaching the water, and being good swimmers, 
 they plunged in with great glee, expecting to be able to 
 swim across to the opposite shore, which they could 
 easily climb. But the counter current forced them back 
 to the island. 
 
 After being a good deal bruised on the rocks, they 
 were compelled to abandon the attempt to cross, and then 
 returned up their ladder to the island. There, after much 
 whooping, they attracted the notice of other Indians on 
 the shore. These reported the situation at the fort, and 
 the commandant sent up a party of whites and Indians 
 to rescue them. They brought with them four light pike- 
 poles. Going to a point opposite the head of the island, 
 they exchanged salutations with the new Crusoes, and 
 began preparations for their rescue. Two Indians volun- 
 teered to undertake the task. "They took leave of all 
 their friends as if they were going to their death." Each 
 Indian rescuer, according to the wondrous fable, took two
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 75 
 
 pike-poles and waded across the channel to the island, 
 gave each of the Crusoes a pike-pole, and then the four 
 waded back to the main-land, where they were joyfully 
 received by their anxious, waiting friends, after having 
 been " nine days on the island." 
 
 Remembering that the water in mid-channel is twelve 
 feet deep, with a twelve-mile current, we must concede 
 this to be the most marvelous of all aquatic achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 In 18 17 Judge Porter built the first bridge to Goat 
 Island, about forty rods above the present bridge. In 
 the following spring the large cakes of ice from the river 
 above, not being sufficiently broken up by the short 
 stretch of rapids over which they passed, struck the 
 bridge with terrific force, and carried away the greater 
 part of it. With the courage and enterprise of a New- 
 Englander, the next season he constructed another bridge 
 farther down, on the present site, rightly judging that the 
 ice would be so much broken up before reaching it as to 
 be harmless. 
 
 That bridge, with constant repairs and one almost 
 entire renewal, stood firm in its place until the year 1856, 
 when it was removed to make room for the present iron 
 bridge. The old piers were much enlarged and strength- 
 ened, and also raised about three feet higher to receive 
 the new bridge. As nearly every stranger inquires how 
 the first bridge was carried over the turbulent waters, a 
 brief description of the process may be acceptable. First, 
 a strong bulkhead was built in the shallow water next to 
 the shore ; a solid backing was put in behind this, and
 
 ^6 NIAGARA. 
 
 the upper surface properly graded and well floored with 
 plank. Strong rollers were placed parallel with the stream 
 and fastened to the floor. In the old forest then standing 
 near by were many noble oaks, of different sizes and 
 great length. A number of these were felled and hewed 
 "tapering," as it was termed, so that, when finished, they 
 were about eighteen inches square at the butt, fifteen at 
 the top, and eighty feet long. Through the small ends 
 were bored large auger-holes. These sticks were placed, 
 as required, on the rollers, at right angles to the stream, 
 the small ends over the water, and the shore ends heavily 
 weighted down. 
 
 The first stick being properly placed, levers were 
 applied to the rollers and the stick was run out until the 
 small end reached an eddy in the water. Then another 
 similar stick was run out in like manner, parallel to the first, 
 and about six feet from it. A few light, strong planks 
 were placed across and made fast. Two men were pro- 
 vided each with strong, iron-pointed pike-staffs, each staff 
 having in its upper end a hole, through which was drawn 
 some ten feet of new rope. Thus provided, they walked 
 out on the timbers, drove their iron pikes down among 
 the stones, and tied them fast to the timbers. Thus the 
 whole problem was solved. Around these pike-staffs the 
 first pier was built and filled with stone. Then other 
 timbers were run out, all were planked over, and the first 
 span was completed. The other spans were laid in the 
 same way. 
 
 The great Indian chief and orator, Red Jacket, occa- 
 sionally visited Judge and General Porter — the latter
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND LMCIDENTS. JJ 
 
 then living at Black Rock. Judge Porter told this 
 anecdote of the chief: He visited the Falls while the 
 mechanics were stretching the timbers across the rapids 
 for the second bridge. He sat for a long time on a pile 
 of plank, watching their operations. His mind seemed 
 to be busy both with the past and the present, reflecting 
 upon the vast territory his race once possessed, and 
 intensely conscious of the fact that it was theirs no 
 longer. Apparently mortified, and vexed that its pale- 
 face owners should so successfully develop and improve 
 it, he rose from his seat, and, uttering the well-known 
 
 Indian guttural "Ugh, ugh!" he exclaimed: "D n 
 
 Yankee! d n Yankee ! " Then, gathering his blanket- 
 cloak around him, with his usual dignity and downcast 
 eyes, he slowly walked away, and never returned to the 
 spot. 
 
 Before parting with the distinguished chief, we will 
 repeat after General Porter two other anecdotes charac- 
 teristic of him. He lived not far from Buffalo, on the 
 Seneca Reservation, and frequently visited the late Gen- 
 eral Wadsworth, at Geneseo. Indeed, his visits grew to 
 be somewhat perplexing, for the great chief must be 
 entertained personally by the host of the establish- 
 ment. 
 
 Of course he was a "teetotaler" — only in one way. 
 When he got a glass of good liquor he drank the whole 
 of it. He was very fond of the rich apple-juice of the 
 Geneseo orchards. Having repeated his visits to General 
 Wadsworth, at one time, with rather inconvenient fre- 
 quency, and coming one day when the General saw that he
 
 yS NIAGARA. 
 
 had been drinking pretty freely somewhere else, his host 
 concluded he would not offer him the usual refreshments. 
 In due time, therefore, Red Jacket rose and excused him- 
 self As he was leaving the room the orator said, " General, 
 hear!" "Well, what. Red Jacket?" To which he replied 
 with great gravity : " General, when I get home to mj- 
 people, and they ask me how your cider tasted, what 
 shall I tell them ? " Of course he got the cider. 
 
 His determined and constant opposition to the sale of 
 the lands belonging to the Indians is well known. At 
 the council held at Buffalo Creek, in i8ii,he was se- 
 lected by the Indians to answer the proposition of a New 
 York land company to buy more land. The Indians 
 refused to sell, although, as usual, the company only 
 wanted "a small tract." To illustrate the system, after 
 the speech-making was over. Red Jacket placed half a 
 dozen Indians on a log, which lay near by. They did 
 not sit very close together, but had plenty of room. He 
 then took a white man who wanted "a small tract," and 
 making the Indians at one end " move up," he put the 
 white man beside them. Then he brought another " small- 
 tract" white man, and making the aborigines "move 
 up " once more, the Indian on the end was obliged to rise 
 from the log. He repeated this process until but one 
 of the original occupants was left on the log. Then sud- 
 denly he shoved him off, put a white man in his place, 
 and turning to the land agent said : " See what one 
 small tract means; white man all, Indian nothing.'" 
 
 Colonel William L. Stone, in his " Life of Red Jacket," 
 relates the following: In 1816, after Red Jacket took up
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 79 
 
 his residence on Buffalo Creek, east of the city, a young 
 French count travehng through the country made a brief 
 stay at Buffalo, whence he sent a request to the sachem 
 to visit him at his hotel. 
 
 Red Jacket, in reply, informed the young nobleman 
 that if he wished to see the old chief he would give him 
 a welcome greeting at his cabin. The count sent again 
 to say that he was much fatigued by his journey of four 
 thousand miles, which he had made for the purpose of 
 seeing the celebrated Indian orator, Red Jacket, and 
 thought it strange that he should not be willing to come 
 four miles to meet him. But the proud and shrewd old 
 chief replied that he thought it still more strange, after 
 the count had traveled so great a distance for that pur- 
 pose, that he should halt only a few miles from the 
 home of the man he had come so far to see. The 
 count finally visited the sachem at his house, and 
 was much pleased with the dignity and wisdom of 
 his savage host. The point of etiquette having been 
 satisfactorily settled, the chief accepted an invitation to 
 dinner, and was no doubt able to tell his people how the 
 count's "cider" tasted. 
 
 In 1 8 19, when the boundary commissioners ran the 
 line through the Niagara River, Grand Island fell to the 
 United States, under the rule that that line should be in 
 the center of the main channel. To ascertain this, accu- 
 rate measurements were made, by which it was found that 
 1 2,802,750 cubic feet of water passed through the Canadian 
 channel, and 8,540,080 through the American channel. 
 To test the accuracy of these measurements, the quantity
 
 80 NIAGARA. 
 
 passing in the narrow channel at Black Rock was deter- 
 mined by the same method, and was found to be 
 21,549,590 cubic feet, thus substantially corroborating the 
 first two measurements. 
 
 The Indian name of Grand Island is Owanunga. In 
 1825, Mr. M. M. Noah, a politician of the last generation, 
 took some preliminary steps for reestablishing the lost 
 nationality of the Jews upon this island, where a New 
 Jerusalem was to be founded. Assuming the title of 
 " Judge of Israel," he appeared at Buffalo in September 
 for the purpose of founding the new nation and city. A 
 meeting was held in old St. Paul's Church, at which, 
 with the aid of a militia company, martial music, and 
 masonic rites, the remarkable initiatory proceedings took 
 place. 
 
 The self-constituted judge presented himself arrayed 
 in gorgeous robes of office, consisting of a rich black cloth 
 tunic, covered by a capacious mantle of crimson silk trim- 
 med with ermine, and having a richly embossed golden 
 medal hanging from his neck. After what, in the account 
 published in his own paper of the day's proceedings, he 
 called " impressive and unique ceremonies," he read a 
 proclamation to "all the Jews throughout the world," in- 
 forming them "that an Asylum was prepared and offered 
 to them," and that he did "revive, renew, and establish 
 (in the Lord's name), the government of the Jewish 
 nation, * * * confirming and perpetuating all our 
 rights and privileges, our rank and power, among the 
 nations of the earth as they existed and were recognized 
 under the government of the Judges." He also ordered
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 8 1 
 
 a census to be taken of all the Hebrews in the world, and 
 levied a capitation tax of three shekels — about one dol- 
 lar and sixty cents — " to pay the expenses of re-organiz- 
 ing the government and assisting emigrants." He had 
 prepared a " foundation stone," which was afterward 
 erected on the site of the new city, and which bore the 
 following inscription: 
 
 " Hear, O Israel, the Lord 
 is our God — the Lord is one." 
 
 "ARARAT, 
 
 A CITY OF REFUGE FOR THE JEWS, 
 
 FOUNDED BY MORDECAI MANUEL NOAH, 
 
 IN THE MONTH OF TISRI 5586 — SEPT. 1825, 
 
 IN THE FIFTIETH YEAR OF 
 
 AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE." 
 
 After the meeting at St. Paul's, the " Judge " re- 
 turned at once to New York, and, like the great early 
 ruler of his nation, he only saw the land of promise, as 
 he never crossed to the island. 
 
 The strong round tower, called the Terrapin Tower, 
 which stood near Goat Island, not far from the precipice, 
 was built in 1833, of stones gathered in the vicinity. It 
 was forty-five feet high, and twelve feet in diameter at 
 the base. So much was said in 1873 about the growing 
 insecurity of the tower that it was taken down. 
 
 The Biddle Staircase was named for Mr. Nicholas 
 Biddle, of Philadelphia, who contributed a sum of money 
 6
 
 82 NIAGARA. 
 
 toward its construction. It was erected in 1829. The 
 shaft is eighty feet high and firmly fastened to the rock. 
 The stairs are spiral, winding round it from top to bot- 
 tom. Near the foot of these stairs, at the water's edge, 
 Samuel Patch, who wished to demonstrate to the world 
 that " some things could be done as well as others," set up 
 a ladder one hundred feet high, from which he made two 
 leaps into the water below. Going thence to Rochester, 
 he took another leap near the Genesee Falls, which 
 proved to be his last. 
 
 The depth of water on the Horseshoe Fall is a subject 
 of speculation with every visitor. It was correctly deter- 
 mined in 1827. In the autumn of that year, the ship Miclii- 
 gan, having been condemned as unseaworthy, was pur- 
 chased by a few persons, and sent over the Falls. Her hull 
 w^as eighteen feet deep. It filled going down the rapids, 
 and went over the Horseshoe Fall with some water above 
 the deck, indicating that there must have been at least 
 twenty feet of water above the rock. This voyage of the 
 Michigan was an event of the day. A glowing hand-bill, 
 charged with bold type and sensational tropes, announced 
 that " The Pirate Michigan, with a cargo of furious ani- 
 mals," would " pass the great rapids and the Falls of 
 Niagara," on the "eighth of September, 1827." She 
 would sail " through the white-tossing and deep-rolling 
 rapids of Niagara, and down its grand precipice into the 
 basin below." Entertainment was promised "for all who 
 may visit the Falls on the .present occasion, which will, 
 for its novelty and the remarkable spectacle it will present, 
 be unequaled in the annals of infernal navigation." Con-
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 83 
 
 sidering that the Falls could be reached only by road 
 conveyances, the gathering of people was very large. 
 The voyage was successfully made, and the " cargo of live 
 animals" duly deposited in the "basin below," except a 
 bear which left the ship near the center of the rapids and 
 swam ashore, but was recaptured. 
 
 Two enterprising individuals made arrangements to 
 supply the people assembled on the island with refresh- 
 ments. They had an ample spread of tables and an 
 abundant supply of provisions. As there was much de- 
 lay in getting the vessel down the river, the people got 
 impatient and hungry. They took their places at the 
 tables. When their appetites were nearly satisfied, notice 
 was given that the ship was coming, whereupon they 
 departed hurriedly, forgetting to leave the equivalent 
 half-dollar for the benefit of the purveyors. 
 
 In after years, one of the proprietors of this unex- 
 pected "free lunch" — the late General Whitney — estab- 
 lished here one of the best hotels in the country, and left 
 his heirs an ample fortune. 
 
 A few geese in the cargo were only badly confused 
 by their unusual plunge, and were afterward picked 
 up from boats. It was noticed as being a little singu- 
 lar that geese which went over the Falls in the Pirate 
 Michigan were for sale at extravagant prices all the 
 next season. 
 
 Another condemned vessel of about five hundred tons 
 burden, the Detroit, which had belonged to Commodore 
 Perry's victorious fleet, was sent down the rapids in 1841. 
 A large concourse of people assembled from all parts of
 
 84 NIAGARA. 
 
 the country to witness the spectacle. Her rolHng and 
 plunging in the rapids were fearful, until about midway 
 of them she stuck fast on a bar, where she lay until 
 knocked to pieces by the ice. From Baron La Hontan 
 we know that the Indians went on the water, just below 
 the Falls, in their canoes, to gather the game which had 
 been swept over them. For more than a hundred years 
 there has been a ferry of skiff and yawl boats at this 
 point, and in all that time not one serious accident has 
 happened.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Joel R. Robinson, the first and last navigator of the Rapids — Rescue of 
 Chapin — Rescue of Allen — He takes the Maid of the Mist through the 
 Whirlpool — His companions — Effect upon Robinson — Biographical 
 notice — His grave unmarked. 
 
 THE history of the navigation of the Rapids of Niagara 
 may be appropriately concluded in this chapter, 
 which is devoted to a notice of the remarkable man who 
 began it, who had no rival and has left no successor in it 
 — Joel R. Robinson. 
 
 In the summer of 1838, while some extensive repairs 
 were being made on the main bridge to Goat Island, a 
 mechanic named Chapin fell from the lower side of it into 
 the rapids, about ten rods from the Bath Island shore. 
 The swift current bore him toward the first small island 
 lying below the bridge. Knowing how to swim, he made 
 a desperate and successful effort to reach it. It is hardly 
 more than thirty feet square, and is covered with cedars 
 and hemlocks. Saved from drowning, he seemed likely 
 to fall a victim to starvation. All thoughts were then 
 turned to Robinson, and not in vain. He launched his 
 light red skiff from the foot of Bath Island, picked his 
 way cautiously and skillfully through the rapids to the 
 little island, took Chapin in and brought him safely to 
 6a
 
 86 NIAGARA. 
 
 the shore, much to the rehef of the spectators, who gave 
 expression to their appreciation of Robinson's service by 
 a moderate contribution. 
 
 In the summer of 1841, a Mr. Allen started for Chip- 
 pewa in a boat just before sunset. Being anxious to get 
 across before dark, he plied his oars with such vigor that 
 one of them broke when he was about opposite the middle 
 Sister. With the remaining oar he tried to make the 
 head of Goat Island. The current, however, set too 
 strongly toward the great Canadian Rapids, and his only 
 hope was to reach the outer Sister. Nearing this, and 
 not being able to run his boat upon it, he sprang out, 
 and, being a good swimmer, by a vigorous effort suc- 
 ceeded in getting ashore. Certain of having a lonely if 
 not an unpleasant night, and being the fortunate pos- 
 sessor of two stray matches, he lighted a fire and solaced 
 himself with his thoughts and his pipe. Next morning, 
 taking off his red flannel shirt, he raised a signal of dis- 
 tress. Toward noon the unusual smoke and the red flag 
 attracted attention. The situation was soon ascertained, 
 and Robinson informed of it. Not long after noon, 
 the little red skiff was carried across Goat Island and 
 launched in the channel just below the Moss Islands. 
 Robinson then pulled himself across to the foot of the 
 middle Sister, and tried in vain to find a point where he 
 could cross to the outer one. Approaching darkness 
 compelled him to suspend operations. He rowed back to 
 Goat Island, got some refreshments, returned to the 
 middle Sister, threw the food across to Allen, and then 
 left him to his second night of solitude. The next day
 
 Opixisite page 86. Jocl R. RobillSOIl.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 8/ 
 
 Robinson took with him two long, hght, strong cords, 
 with a properly shaped piece of lead weighing about a 
 pound. Tying the lead to one of the cords he threw it 
 across to Allen. Robinson fastened the other end of 
 Allen's cord to the bow of the skiff; then attaching his 
 own cord to the skiff also, he shoved it off. Allen drew 
 it to himself, got into it, pushed off, and Robinson drew 
 him to where he stood on the middle island. Then seat- 
 ing Allen in the stern of the skiff he returned across the 
 rapids to Goat Island, where both were assisted up the 
 bank by the spectators, and the little craft, too, which 
 seemed to be almost as much an object of curiosity with 
 the crowd as Robinson himself 
 
 This was the second person rescued by Robinson 
 from islands which had been considered wholly inacces- 
 sible. It is no exaggeration to say that there was not 
 another man in the country who could have saved 
 Chapin and Allen as he did. 
 
 In the summer of 1855 a canal-boat, with two men 
 and a dog in it, was discovered in the strong current near 
 Grass Island. The men, finding they could not save the 
 large boat, took to their small one and got ashore, 
 leaving the dog to his fate. The abandoned craft floated 
 down and lodged on the rocks on the south side of Goat 
 Island, and about twenty rods above the ledge over which 
 the rapids make the first perpendicular break. There 
 were left in the boat a watch, a gun, and some articles of 
 clothing. The owner offered Robinson a liberal salvage 
 if he would recover the property. Taking one of his 
 sons with him, he started the little red skiff from the
 
 88 NIAGARA. 
 
 head of the hydraulic canal, half a mile above the island, 
 shot across the American channel, and ran directly to the 
 boat. Holding the skiff to it himself, the young man got 
 on board and secured the valuables. The dog had es- 
 caped during the night. Leaving the canal-boat, Robinson 
 ran down the ledge between the second and third Moss 
 Islands, and thence to Goat Island. On going over the 
 ledge he had occasion to exercise that quickness of 
 apprehension and presence of mind for which he was so 
 noted. The water was rather lower than he had calcu- 
 lated, and on reaching the top of the ledge the bottom 
 of the skiff near the bow struck the rock. Instantly he 
 sprang to the stern, freed the skiff, and made the descent 
 safely. If the stern had swung athwart the current, the 
 skiff would certainly have been wrecked. 
 
 In the year 1846, a small steamer was built in the 
 eddy just above the Railway Suspension Bridge, to run up 
 to the Falls. She was very appropriately named The 
 Maid of the Mist. Her engine was rather weak, but she 
 safely accomplished the trip. As, however, she took 
 passengers aboard only from the Canadian side, she could 
 pay little more than expenses. In 1854 a larger, better 
 boat, with a more powerful engine, the new Maid of the 
 Mist, was put on the route, and as she took passengers 
 from both sides of the river, many thousands of per- 
 sons made the exciting and impressive voyage up to the 
 Falls. The admiration which the visitor felt as he passed 
 quietly along near the American Fall was changed into 
 awe when he began to feel the mighty pulse of the great 
 deep just below the tower, then swung round into the
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 89 
 
 white foam directly in front of the Horseshoe, and saw 
 the sky of waters falHng toward him. And he seemed to 
 be hfted on wings as he sailed swiftly down on the rushing 
 stream through a baptism of spray. To many persons 
 there was a fascination about it that induced them to 
 make the trip every time they had an opportunity to do 
 so. Owing to some change in her appointments, which 
 confined her to the Canadian shore for the reception of 
 passengers, she became unprofitable. Her owner, having 
 decided to leave the neighborhood, wished to sell her as 
 she lay at her dock. This he could not do, but he 
 received an offer of something more than half of her 
 cost, if he would deliver her at Niagara, opposite the 
 fort. This he decided to do, after consultation with 
 Robinson, who had acted as her captain and pilot on 
 her trips below the Falls. The boat required for her 
 navigation an engineer, who also acted as fireman, and a 
 pilot. 
 
 Mr. Robinson agreed to act as pilot for the fearful 
 voyage, and the engineer, Mr. Jones, consented to go 
 with him. A courageous machinist, Mr. Mclntyre, 
 volunteered to share the risk with them. They put her 
 in complete trim, removing from deck and hold all 
 superfluous articles. Notice was given of the time for 
 starting, and a large number of people assembled to see 
 the fearful plunge, no one expecting to see the crew 
 again alive after they should leave the dock. This 
 dock, as has been before stated, was just above the 
 Railway Suspension Bridge, at the place where she was 
 built, and where she was laid up in the winter — that.
 
 90 NIAGARA. 
 
 too, being the only place where she could lie without 
 danger of being crushed by the ice. Twenty rods below 
 this eddy the water plunges sharply down into the head 
 of the crooked, tumultuous rapid which we have before 
 noticed as reaching from the bridge to the Whirlpool. 
 At the Whirlpool, the danger of being drawn under was 
 most to be apprehended ; in the rapids, of being turned 
 over or knocked to pieces. From the Whirlpool to 
 Lewiston is one wild, turbulent rush and whirl of water, 
 without a square foot of smooth surface in the whole 
 distance. 
 
 About three o'clock in the afternoon of June 15, 
 1 86 1, the engineer took his place in the hold, and, 
 knowing that their flitting would be short at the best, 
 and might be only the preface to swift destruction, set 
 his steam- valve at the proper gauge, and awaited — not 
 without anxiety — the tinkling signal that should start 
 them on their flying voyage. Mclntyre joined Robinson 
 at the wheel on the upper deck. Self-possessed, and 
 with the calmness which results from undoubting courage 
 and confidence, yet with the humility which recognizes 
 all possibilities, with downcast eyes and firm hands, 
 Robinson took his place at the wheel and pulled the 
 starting bell. With a shriek from her whistle and a white 
 puff from her escape-pipe, to take leave, as it were, of 
 the multitude gathered on the shores and on the bridge, 
 the boat ran up the eddy a short distance, then swung 
 round to the right, cleared the smooth water, and shot 
 like an arrow into the rapid under the bridge. Robin- 
 son intended to take the inside curve of the rapid, but a
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 9 1 
 
 fierce cross-current carried him to the outer curve, and 
 when a third of the way down it a jet of water struck 
 against her rudder, a column dashed up under her star- 
 board side, heeled her over, carried away her smoke- 
 stack, started her overhang on that side, threw Robinson 
 flat on his back, and thrust Mclntyre against her star- 
 board wheel-house with such force as to break it through. 
 Every eye was fixed, every tongue was silent, and every 
 loooker-on breathed freer as she emerged from the fearful 
 baptism, shook her wounded sides, slid into the Whirlpool, 
 and for a moment rode again on an even keel. Robinson 
 rose at once, seized the helm, set her to the right of the 
 large pot in the pool, then turned her directly through 
 the neck of it. Thence, after receiving another drenching 
 from its combing waves, she dashed on without further 
 accident to the quiet bosom of the river below Lewiston. 
 
 Thus was accomplished one of the most remarkable 
 and perilous voyages ever made by men. The boat was 
 seventy-two feet long, with seventeen feet breadth of 
 beam and eight feet depth of hold, and carried an en- 
 gine of one hundred horse-power. In conversation with 
 Robinson after the voyage, he stated that the greater 
 part of it was like what he had always imagined must 
 be the swift sailing of a large bird in a downward flight ; 
 that when the accident occurred the boat seemed to be 
 struck from all directions at once ; that she trembled like 
 a fiddle-string, and felt as if she would crumble away and 
 drop into atoms; that both he and Mclntyre were hold- 
 ing to the wheel with all their strength, but produced no 
 more effect than they would if they had been two flies ;
 
 92 NIAGARA. 
 
 that he had no fear of striking the rocks, for he knew that 
 the strongest suction must be in the deepest channel, and 
 that the boat must remain in that. Finding that Mclntyre 
 was somewhat bewildered by excitement or by his fall, as 
 he rolled up by his side but did not rise, he quietly put his 
 foot on his breast, to keep him from rolling around the 
 deck, and thus finished the voyage. 
 
 Poor Jones, imprisoned beneath the hatches before 
 the glowing furnace, went down on his knees, as he re- 
 lated afterward, and although a more earnest prayer was 
 never uttered and few that were shorter, still it seemed to 
 him prodigiously long. To that prayer he thought they 
 owed their salvation. 
 
 The effect of this trip upon Robinson was decidedly 
 marked. As he lived only a few years afterward, his 
 death was commonly attributed to it. But this was in- 
 correct, since the disease which terminated his life was 
 contracted at New Orleans at a later day. " He was," 
 said Mrs. Robinson to the writer, " twenty years older 
 when he came home that day than when he went out." 
 He sank into his chair like a person overcome with weari- 
 ness. He decided to abandon the water, and advised his 
 sons to venture no more about the rapids. Both his man- 
 ner and appearance were changed. Calm and deliberate 
 before, he became thoughtful and serious afterward. He 
 had been borne, as it were, in the arms of a power so 
 mighty that its impress was stamped on his features and 
 on his mind. Through a slightly opened door he had 
 seen a vision which awed and subdued him. He became 
 reverent in a moment. He grew venerable in an hour.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 93 . 
 
 Yet he had a strange, almost irrepressible, desire to 
 make this voyage immediately after the steamer was put 
 on below the Falls. The wish was only increased when 
 the first Maid of the Mist was superseded by the new 
 and stancher one. He insisted that the voyage could 
 be made with safety, and that it might be made a good 
 pecuniary speculation. 
 
 He was a character— an original. Born on the banks 
 of the Connecticut, in the town of Springfield, Massachu- 
 setts, it was in the beautiful reach of water which skirts 
 that city that he acquired his love of aquatic sports and 
 exercises and his skill in them. He was nearly six feet in 
 stature, with light chesnut hair, blue eyes, and fair com- 
 plexion. He was a kind-hearted man, of equable temper, 
 few words, cool, deliberate, decided ; lithe as a Gaul and 
 gentle as a girl. It goes without saying that he was a 
 man of " undaunted courage." He had that calm, serene, 
 supreme equanimity of temperament which fear could not 
 reach nor disturb. He might have been, under right 
 conditions, a quiet, willing martyr, and at last he bore 
 patiently the wearying hours of slow decay which ended 
 his life. His love of nature and adventure was paramount 
 to his love of money, and although he was never pinched 
 with poverty, he never had abundance. 
 
 He loved the water, and was at home in it or on it, as 
 he was a capital swimmer and a skillful oarsman. ^Espe- 
 cially he delighted in the rapids of the Niagara. Kind and 
 compassionate as he was by nature, he was almost glad 
 when he heard that a fellow-creature was, in some way, 
 entangled in the rapids, since it would give him an ex-
 
 94 NIAGARA, 
 
 cuse, an opportunity, to work in them and to help him. 
 As he was not a boaster, he made no superfluous exhi- 
 bitions of his skill or courage, albeit he might occasionally 
 indulge — and be indulged — in some mirthful manifesta- 
 tion of his good-nature ; as when, on reaching Chapin's 
 refuge for his rescue, he waved from one of its tallest 
 cedars a green branch to the anxious spectators, as if to 
 assure and encourage them ; and when he returned with 
 his skiff half filled with cedar-sprigs, which he distributed 
 to the multitude, they raised his pet craft to their shoul- 
 ders, with both Chapin and himself in it, and bore them 
 in triumph through the village, while money tokens were 
 thrown into the boat to replace the green ones. 
 
 He never foolishly challenged the admiration of his 
 fellow-men. But when the emergency arose for the 
 proper exercise of his powers, when news came that 
 some one was in trouble in the river, then he went to 
 work with a calm and cheerful will which gave assurance 
 of the best results. Beneath his quiet deliberation of 
 manner there was concealed a wonderful vigor both of 
 resolution and nerve, as was amply shown by the dangers 
 which he faced, and by the bend in his withy oar as he 
 forced it through the water, and the feathery spray which 
 flashed from its blade when he lifted it to the surface. 
 
 In all fishing and sailing parties his presence was in- 
 dispensable for those who knew him. The most timid 
 child or woman no longer hesitated if Robinson was to go 
 with the party. His quick eye saw everything, and his 
 willing hand did all that it was necessary to do, to secure 
 the comfort and safety of the company.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 95 
 
 It is doubtful whether more than a very few of his 
 neighbors know where he lies, in an unmarked grave 
 in Oakwood Cemetery, near the rapids. Robinson went 
 forth on a turbulent, unreturning flood, where the slightest 
 hesitancy in thought or act would have proved instantly 
 fatal. Benevolent associations in different cities and coun- 
 tries bestow honor and rewards on those who, by unselfish 
 effort and a noble courage, save the life of a fellow-being. 
 This Robinson did repeatedly, yet no monument com- 
 memorates his worthy deeds.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A fisherman and a bear in a canoe — Frightful experience with floating ice — 
 Early farming on the Niagara — Fruit growing — The original forest 
 — Testimony of the trees — The first hotel — General Whitney — 
 Cataract House — Distinguished visitors — Carriage road down the 
 Canadian bank — Ontario House — Clifton House — The Museum — 
 Table and Termination Rocks — Burning Spring — Lundy's Lane — 
 Battle Anecdotes. 
 
 SOON after the War of 1812, a fisherman — whose 
 name we will call Fisher — on a certain day went 
 out upon the river, about three miles above the Fall ; 
 and while anchored and fishing from his canoe, he saw a 
 bear in the water making, very leisurely, for Navy Island. 
 Not understanding thoroughly the nature and habits of 
 the animal, thinking he would be a capital prize, and 
 having a spear in the canoe, he hoisted anchor and 
 started in pursuit. As the canoe drew near, the bear 
 turned to pay his respects to its occupant. Fisher, with 
 his spear, made a desperate thrust at him. Quicker 
 and more deftly than the most expert fencer could have 
 done it, the quadruped parried the blow, and, disarming his 
 assailant, knocked the spear more than ten feet from the 
 canoe. Fisher then seized a paddle and belabored the 
 bear over his head and on his paws, as he placed the 
 latter on the side of the canoe and drew himself in. The
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 9/ 
 
 now frightened fisherman, not knowing how to swim, was 
 in a most uncomfortable predicament. He felt greatly 
 relieved, therefore, when the animal deliberately sat him- 
 self down, facing him, in the bow of the canoe. Resolving 
 in his own mind that he would generously resign the 
 whole canoe to the creature as soon as he should reach 
 the land, he raised his paddle and began to pull vigor- 
 ously shoreward, especially as the rapids lay just 
 below him, and the Falls were roaring most omi- 
 nously. 
 
 Much to his surprise, as soon as he began to paddle 
 Bruin began to growl, and, as he repeated his stroke, the 
 occupant of the bow raised his note of disapproval an 
 octave higher, and at the same time made a motion as 
 if he would attack him. Fisher had no desire to culti- 
 vate a closer intimacy, and so stopped paddling. 
 
 Bruin serenely contemplated the landscape in the direc- 
 tion of the island. Fisher was also intensely interested in 
 the same scene, and still more intensely impressed with 
 their gradual approach to the rapids. He tried the pad- 
 dle again. But the tyrant of the quarter-deck again 
 emphatically objected, and as he was master of the 
 situation, and fully resolved not to resign the command 
 of the craft until the termination of the voyage, there was 
 no alternative but submission. Still, the rapids were 
 frightfully near and something must be done. He gave a 
 tremendous shout. But Bruin was not in a musical mood, 
 and vetoed that with as much emphasis as he had done 
 the paddling. Then he turned his eyes on Fisher quite 
 interestedly, as if he were calculating the best method of 
 7
 
 98 NIAGARA. 
 
 dissecting him. The situation was fast becoming some- 
 thing more than painful. Man and bear in opposite ends 
 of the canoe floating — not exactly double — but together 
 to inevitable destruction. But every suspense has an end. 
 The single shout, or something else, had called the atten- 
 tion of the neighbors to the canoe. They came to the 
 rescue, and an old settler, with a musket which he had 
 used in the War of 1812, fired a charge of buck-shot into 
 Bruin which induced him to take to the water, after 
 which he was soon taken, captive and dead, to the 
 shore. He weighed over three hundred pounds. 
 
 A son of the settler who shot the bear had a frightful 
 experience in the river many years afterward. He was 
 engaged in Canada in the business of buying saw-logs 
 for the American market. Coming from the woods down 
 to Chippewa one cold day in December, at a time when 
 considerable quantities of strong, thin cakes of ice were 
 floating in the river, he took a flat-bottom skiff" to row 
 across to his home. This he did without apprehension, 
 as he had been born and brought up on the banks of 
 the Niagara, understood it well, and was also a strong, 
 resolute man. 
 
 As he drew near the foot of Navy Island, intending 
 to take the chute between it and Buckhorn Island, 
 two large cakes between which he was sailing suddenly 
 closed together and cut the bottom of his skiff square 
 off". Just above the cake on which his bottomless skifi" 
 was then floating there was a second large cake, 
 at a little distance from it, and beyond this a strip 
 of water which washed the shore of Navy Island. In
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 99 
 
 less time than it has taken to write this, he sprang 
 upon the first piece of ice, ran across it with desperate 
 speed, cleared the first space of water at a single leap, 
 ran across the next cake of ice, jumped with all his 
 might, and landed in the icy water within a rod of the 
 shore, to which he swam. He was soon after warming 
 and drying himself before the rousing fire of the only 
 occupant of the island. 
 
 His father had a fine farm on the bank of the river, 
 which he cultivated with much care. But before the 
 drainage of the country was completed the land was 
 decidedly wet. A friend from the East who made him a 
 call foimd him plowing. The water stood in the bottom 
 of the furrows. But agriculture has been progressive since 
 those days. It is now almost a fine art instead of a mere 
 pursuit. And nowhere north of the equator is there a 
 climate and soil so genial and favorable for the growth 
 of certain kinds of fruit, especially the apple and the 
 peach, as are those of Niagara County. Many persons 
 claim that they can tell from the peculiar consistency of 
 the pulp, and by its flavor and bouquet, on which side of 
 the Genesee River an apple is grown. 
 
 It is said that the winter apples of Niagara are as well 
 known and as greatly prized above all others of their kind 
 on the docks of Liverpool, as is Sea Island cotton above 
 all other grades of that plant. The delicious little 
 russet known as the Ponwie Gris, with its fine aromatic 
 flavor when ripe, grows nowhere else to such perfection 
 as along the Niagara River. In 1825, at the grand 
 celebration held to commemorate the completion of the
 
 lOO NIAGARA. 
 
 Erie Canal, the late Judge Porter made the first ship- 
 ment east of apples raised in Niagara County. It con- 
 sisted of two barrels, one of which was sent to the 
 corporation of the city of Troy, and the other to that 
 of New York. They were duly received and honored. 
 From this small beginning the fruit trade has grown 
 to the yearly value of more than a million of dollars for 
 Niagara County alone. 
 
 With reference to the forest which once covered this 
 country, an erroneous impression prevails as to its 
 age. Poets and romancers have been in the habit of 
 speaking of these "primeval forests" as though they 
 might have been bushes when Nahor and Abraham were 
 infants. But this is a great error. Since the discovery 
 of the country only one tree has been found that was 
 eight hundred years old. This is mentioned by Sir 
 Charles Lyell as having grown out of one of the ancient 
 mounds near Marietta, Ohio. But the great majority of 
 them were not over three hundred years old. The testi- 
 mony of the trees concerning the past is not quite so 
 abundant as that of the rocks, but that of one tree grown 
 in central New York is of a remarkable character. It was a 
 white oak, which grew in the rich valley of the Clyde River, 
 about one mile west of Lyons" Court House, and was cut 
 down in the )'ear 1837. The body made a stick of tim- 
 ber eighty feet long, which before sawing was about five 
 feet in diameter. It was cut into short logs and sawed 
 up. From the center of the butt-log was sawed a piece 
 about eight by twelve inches. At the butt end of this 
 piece the saw laid bare, without marring them, some old
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. lOI 
 
 scars made by an ax or some other sharp instrument. 
 These scars were perfectly distinct and their character 
 equally unmistakable. They were made, apparently, 
 when the young tree was about six inches in diameter. 
 Outside of these scars there were counted four hundred 
 and sixty distinct rings, each ring marking with unerring 
 certainty one year's growth of the tree. It follows that 
 this chopping was done in 1374, or one hundred and 
 eighteen years before the first voyage of Columbus across 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 It has been questioned whether the rings shown in a 
 cross-section of a tree can be relied upon to determine 
 truly the number of years it has been growing. A singular 
 confirmation of the correctness of this method of counting 
 was furnished some years since. 
 
 In the latter part of the last century the late Judge 
 Porter surveyed a large tract of land lying east of the 
 Genesee River, known as "The Gore." Some thirty-five 
 years afterward it became necessary to resurvey one of 
 its lines, and recourse was had to the original surveys. 
 Most of the forest through which the first line had been 
 run was cleared off, and such trees as had been " blazed " 
 as line-trees had overgrown the scars. One tree was 
 found which was declared to be an original line-tree. On 
 cutting into it carefully the old "blaze " was brought to 
 light, and on counting the rings outside of it, they were 
 found to correspond with the number of years which had 
 elapsed since the first survey. 
 
 One of the three small buildings at Niagara which 
 escaped the flames of 18 14 was a log-cabin, about thirty 
 7a
 
 I02 NIAGARA. 
 
 by forty feet in its dimensions, that stood in the center of 
 the front of the International block. In the latter part of 
 1815 the inhabitants returned, and the late General P. 
 Whitney put a board addition to the log-house, and 
 opened the first hotel. From that has grown up the 
 present International. The immediate predecessor of the 
 International was the Eagle Tavern, which was, for some 
 years, in charge of a genial and popular landlord, the 
 late Mr. Hollis White. It was formed by the addition 
 to the old frame structure of a three-story brick building, 
 of moderate dimensions. Across the front of this addition 
 was a long, wide, old-fashioned stoop. This was well sup- 
 plied with comfortable arm-chairs, which furnished easy 
 rests for guests or neighbors, and were well patronized by 
 both, and especially during the summer season by the 
 genial humorists of the place. On the opposite side of 
 the street was a small house, a story and a half high, 
 belonging to Judge Porter, and to which he built an 
 addition. Then, as now, there were occasionally more 
 visitors than the hotel could accommodate, and the 
 neighbors assisted in entertaining them. Judge Porter 
 did this frequently, and among his guests were President 
 Monroe, Marshal Grouchy, General La Fayette, General 
 Brown, General Scott, Judge Spencer, and other distin- 
 guished strangers. 
 
 The first building erected on the ground where the 
 Cataract House now stands was of a later date — 1824 — 
 a frame house about fifty feet square. It was purchased 
 by General Whitney in 1826, and formed the nucleus of the 
 great pile which constitutes the present Cataract House.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. IO3 
 
 In 1829, the carriage road down the bank to the ferry 
 on the Canadian side was made. For several years pre- 
 vious the principal hotel at the Falls was also on that 
 side. It was called the Pavilion, and stood on the high 
 bank just above the Horseshoe Fall. It commanded a 
 grand view of the river above, and almost a bird's-eye 
 view of the Falls and the head of the chasm below. The 
 principal stage-route from Buffalo was likewise on that 
 side, and the register of the Pavilion contained the names 
 of most of the noted visitors of the period. But the erec- 
 tion of the Cataract House and the establishing of stage- 
 routes on the American side drew away much of its 
 patronage, and finally, on the completion of the first half 
 of the Clifton House, in 1833, it was quite abandoned. 
 A few years later the Ontario House was built, about 
 half-way between the Clifton and the Horseshoe Fall, 
 toward which it fronted. There was not sufficient busi- 
 ness to support it, and after standing unoccupied for 
 several years, it took fire and was burned to the ground. 
 
 The Clifton was greatly enlarged and improved by 
 Mr. S. Zimmerman in 1865. The Amusement Hall and 
 several cottages were built and gas-works erected. The 
 grounds were handsomely graded and adorned. 
 
 Near the site of Table Rock is the Museum, its val- 
 uable collection being the result of several years' labor 
 by its proprietor, Mr. Thomas Barnett. It contains sev- 
 eral thousand specimens from the animal and mineral 
 kingdoms, and the galleries are arranged to represent 
 a forest scene. 
 
 Just above the Museum the visitor steps upon what
 
 104 NIAGARA. 
 
 remains of the famous Table Rock. It was once a bare 
 rock pavement, about fifteen rods long and about five 
 rods wide, about fifty feet of its width projecting beyond 
 its base at the bottom of the limestone stratum nearly 
 one hundred feet below. Remembering this fact, we can 
 more readily credit the probable truth of the statement 
 made by Father Hennepin — which we have before 
 noticed — that the projection on the American side in 
 1682, when he returned from his first tour to the West, 
 was so great that four coaches could drive abreast under 
 it. On top of the debris below the bank lies the path by 
 which Termination Rock, under the western end of the 
 Horseshoe, is reached. It is a path which few neglect 
 to follow. 
 
 The Table itself has always been, and must continue 
 to be, a favorite resort for visitors. The combined view 
 of the Falls and the chasm below, as well as the rapids 
 above, is finer, more extensive, here than from any other 
 point. Moreover, the nearness to the great cataract is 
 more sensibly felt, the communion with it is deeper and 
 more intimate than it can be anywhere else. The view 
 from this point can be most pleasantly and satisfactorily 
 taken in the afternoon, when the spectator has the sun 
 behind him, and can look at his leisure and with unvexed 
 eyes at the brilliant scene before him. However long he 
 may tarry he will find new pleasure in each return to it. 
 
 Two miles above, following round the bend of the 
 Oxbow toward Chippewa, and down near the water's 
 edge, is the Burning Spring. The water is impregnated 
 with sulphureted hydrogen gas, and is in a constant state
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. IO5 
 
 of mild ebullition. The gas is perpetually rising to the 
 surface of the water, and when a lighted match is applied 
 it burns with an intermittent flame. If, however, a tub 
 with an iron tube in the center of its bottom is placed 
 over the spring, a constant stream of gas passes through 
 it. On being lighted it burns constantly, with a pale 
 blue, wavering flame, which possesses but little illuminat- 
 ing or heating power. The drive is a pleasant one, 
 affording a fine view of the Oxbow Rapids and islands 
 and the noble river above. 
 
 A mile and a quarter west of Table Rock is the 
 Lundy's Lane battle-ground. On the crown of the hill, 
 where the severest struggle occurred, are two rival 
 pagodas challenging the tourist's attention. From the 
 top of each he has a rare outlook over a broad level 
 plain, relieved on its northern horizon by the top of 
 Brock's Monument, and to the south-east by the city of 
 Buffalo and Lake Erie. 
 
 The obliging custodian of either tower will enlighten 
 his hearers with dextrous volubility, and, according as 
 he is certain of the nationality of his listeners, will the 
 Stars and Stripes wave in triumph, or the Cross of Saint 
 George float in glory, over the bloody and hard-fought 
 field. If he cannot feel sure of his listeners' habitat, 
 like Justice, he will hold an even balance and be blind 
 withal. 
 
 It was the writer's privilege to go over the field on a 
 pleasant June day with Generals Scott and Porter, and to 
 learn from them its stirring incidents. General Scott 
 pointed out the location of the famous battery on the
 
 I06 NIAGARA. 
 
 British left which made such havoc with his brave 
 brigade, and in taking which the gallant Miller converted 
 his modest " I'll try, sir," into a triumphant "It is done." 
 The General also found the tree under which, faint from 
 his bleeding wound, he sat down to rest, placing its pro- 
 tecting boll between his back and the British bullets, as 
 he leaned against it. Plucking a small wild flower grow- 
 ing near it, he presented it to one of the ladies of the 
 party, telling her that " it grew in soil once nourished by 
 his blood." 
 
 General Porter showed us where, with his volunteers 
 and Indians, he broke through the woods on the British 
 right, just as Miller had captured the troublesome bat- 
 tery, thus aiding to win the most obstinate and bloody 
 fight of the war. Its hard-won trophies, however, were 
 too easily lost, as, by some misunderstanding or neglect of 
 orders, the proper guard around the field was not main- 
 tained, and, in the darkness proverbially intense just before 
 day, the British returned to the field and quietly removed 
 most of the guns. So our English friends claim it was a 
 drawn battle. 
 
 Nearly half a century later a dinner was given at 
 Queenston by our Canadian friends, to signalize the 
 completion of the Lewiston Suspension Bridge. On this 
 occasion a British-Canadian officer, the late Major Wood- 
 ruff, of St. David's, who served with his regiment during 
 the war, was called upon by the chairman, the late Sir 
 Allan McNabb, to follow, in response to a toast, the late 
 Colonel Porter, only son of General Porter. In a mirth- 
 ful reference to the stirrimr events of the war he alluded
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 107 
 
 to the British retreat after the battle of Chippewa, and 
 condensing the opposing forces into two personal pro- 
 nouns, one representing General Porter and the other him- 
 self, he turned to Colonel Porter and said : " Yes, sir, I 
 remember well the moving events of that day, and how 
 sharp he was after me. But, sir, he was balked in his 
 purpose, for although he won the victory I won the race, 
 and so we were even."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Incidents — Fall of Table Rock — Remarkable phenomenon in the river — 
 Driving and lumbering on the Rapids — Points of the compass at the 
 Falls — A first view of the Falls commonly disappointing — Lunar bow 
 — Golden spray — Gull Island and the gulls — The highest water ever 
 known at the Falls — The Hermit of the Falls. 
 
 OF incidents, curious, comic, and tragic, connected 
 with the locality the catalogue is long, but we must 
 make our recital of them brief. 
 
 We have before referred to Professor Kalm's notice of 
 the fall of a portion of Table Rock previous to 1750. 
 Authentic accounts of like events are the following : In 
 18 18 a mass one hundred and sixty feet long by thirty 
 wide; in 1828 and '29 two smaller masses; also in 1828 
 there went down in the center of the Horseshoe a huge 
 mass, of which the top area was estimated at half an acre. 
 If this estimate was correct, it would show an abrasion 
 equivalent to nearly one foot from the whole surface of 
 the Canadian Fall. In April, 1843, a mass of rock and 
 earth about thirty- five feet long and six feet wide fell 
 from the middle of Goat Island. In 1847, just north of 
 the Biddle Stairs, there was a slide of bowlders, earth, and 
 gravel, with a small portion of the bed-rock, the whole 
 mass being about forty feet long and ten feet wide. About
 
 Opposite page 109. Fall of Table Rock.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. IO9 
 
 every third return of spring has increased the abrasion 
 at these two points. At the first-named point more than 
 twenty feet in width has disappeared, with the whole of 
 the road crossing the island. From the latter point, 
 near the Biddle Stairs, which was a favorite one for viewing 
 the Horseshoe Fall, the seats provided for visitors and 
 the trees which shaded them have fallen. 
 
 On the 25th of June, 1850, occurred the great down- 
 fall which reduced Table Rock to a narrow bench along 
 the bank. The portion which fell was one immense solid 
 rock two hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, and one hun- 
 dred feet deep where it separated from the bank. The 
 noise of the crash was heard like muffled thunder for 
 miles around. Fortunately it fell at noonday, when but 
 few people were out, and no lives were lost. The driver 
 of an omnibus, who had taken off his horses for their 
 midday feed, and was washing his vehicle, felt the pre- 
 liminary cracking and escaped, the vehicle itself being 
 plunged into the gulf below. 
 
 In 1850, a canal-boat that became detached from a 
 raft, went down the Canadian Rapids, turned broadside 
 across the river before reaching the Falls, struck amid- 
 ships against a rock projecting up from the bottom and 
 lodged. It remained there more than a year, and when 
 it went down took with it a piece of the rock apparcnth' 
 about ten feet wide and forty feet long. At the foot of 
 Goat Island some smaller masses have fallen, and three 
 extensive earth-slides have occurred. 
 
 In the spring of 1852 a triangular mass, the vertex of 
 which was just beyond or south of the Terrapin Tower,
 
 IIO NIAGARA. 
 
 while its altitude of more than forty feet lay along the 
 shore of the south corner of Goat Island, fell in the night 
 with the usual grinding crash. And with it fell some 
 isolated rocks which lay on the brink of the precipice in 
 front of the tower, and from which the tower derived its 
 name. Before the tower was built, some person looking at 
 the rocks from the shore suggested that they looked like 
 huge terrapins sunning themselves on the edge of the 
 Fall. A few days after the fall of the triangular mass, 
 a huge column of rock a hundred feet high, about four- 
 teen feet by twelve, and flat on the top, became separated 
 from the bank and settled down perpendicularly until its 
 top was about ten feet below the surface rock. It stood 
 thus about four years, when it began gradually to settle, 
 as the shale and stone were disintegrated beneath it, and 
 finally it tumbled over upon the rocks below, furnishing an 
 illustration of the manner in which we suppose the rocks 
 which once accumulated below the Whirlpool must have 
 been broken down. In the spring of 1871 a portion of the 
 west side of the sharp angle of the Horseshoe, apparently 
 about ten by thirty feet, went down, producing a decided 
 change in the curve. 
 
 On the 7th day of February, 1877, about eleven 
 o'clock of a cold, cloudy day, there occurred the most 
 extensive abrasion of the Horseshoe Fall ever noted. 
 It extended from near the water's edge at Table Rock, 
 more than half the distance round the curve, some 
 fifteen hundred feet, and at the most salient angle the 
 mass that fell was from fifty to one hundred feet wide. 
 By this downfall the contour of the Horseshoe was
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND LNCIDENTS. I I I 
 
 decidedly changed, the reentering angle being made 
 acute and very ragged. Less than three months after- 
 ward the abrasion was continued some two hundred feet 
 toward Goat Island. 
 
 The trembling earth and muffled thunder gave evi- 
 dence of the immensity of the mass of fallen rock, but no 
 one saw it go down. For several months after the fall, 
 until the mass of rock got thoroughly settled in the bed 
 of the Falls, the exhibition of water- rockets, sent up a 
 hundred feet above the top of the precipice, was unique 
 and beautiful. The greatest angle of retrocession, which 
 had previously been wearing toward Goat Island, is again 
 turning toward the center of the stream. 
 
 On the 29th of March, 1848, the river presented a 
 remarkable phenomenon. There is no record of a 
 similar one, nor has it been observed since. The winter 
 had been intensely cold, and the ice formed on Lake 
 Erie was very thick. This was loosened around the 
 shores by the warm days of the early spring. During 
 the day, a stiff easterly wind moved the whole field up 
 the lake. About sundown, the wind chopped suddenly 
 round and blew a gale from the west. This brought 
 the vast tract of ice down again with such tremendous 
 force that it filled in the neck of the lake and the outlet, 
 so that the outflow of the water was very greatly 
 impeded. Of course, it only needed a short space 
 of time for the Falls to drain off the water below 
 Black Rock. 
 
 The consequence was that, when we arose in the 
 morning at Niagara, we found our river was nearly half
 
 112 NIAGARA. 
 
 gone. The American channel had dwindled to a respect- 
 able creek. The British channel looked as though it 
 had been smitten with a quick consumption, and was fast 
 passing away. Far up from the head of Goat Island and 
 out into the Canadian rapids the water was gone, as it 
 was also from the lower end of Goat Island, out beyond 
 the tower. The rocks were bare, black, and forbidding. 
 The roar of Niagara had subsided almost to a moan. 
 The scene was desolate, and but for its novelty and the 
 certainty that it would change before many hours, would 
 have been gloomy and saddening. Every person who 
 has visited Niagara will remember a beautiful jet of water 
 which shoots up into the air about forty rods south of the 
 outer Sister in the great rapids, called, with a singular 
 contradiction of terms, the " Leaping Rock." The writer 
 drove a horse and buggy from near the head of Goat 
 Island out to a point above and near to that jet. With a 
 log-cart and four horses, he drew from the outside 
 of the outer island a stick of pine timber hewed twelve 
 inches square and forty feet long. From the top of the 
 middle island was drawn a still larger stick, hewed on 
 one side and sixty feet long. 
 
 There are few places on the globe where a person 
 would be less likely to go lumbering than in the rapids 
 of Niagara, just above the brink of the Horseshoe Fall. 
 All the people of the neighborhood were abroad, explor- 
 ing recesses and cavities that had never before been 
 exposed to mortal eyes. The writer went some distance 
 up the shore of the river. Large fields of the muddy 
 bottom were laid bare. The shell-fish, the uni- valves,
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. II3 
 
 and the bi-valves were in despair. Their housekeeping 
 and domestic arrangements were most unceremoniously 
 exposed. The clams, with their backs up and their open 
 mouths down in the mud, were making their sinuous 
 courses toward the shrunken stream. The small-fry of 
 fishes were wriggling in wonder to find themselves 
 impounded in small pools. 
 
 This singular syncope of the waters lasted all the day, 
 and night closed over the strange scene. But in the 
 morning our river was restored in all its strength and 
 beauty and majesty, and we were glad to welcome its 
 swelling tide once more. 
 
 It is a curious fact that nine out of every ten persons 
 who visit the Falls for the first time, are on their arrival 
 completely bewildered as to the points of the compass ; 
 and this without reference to the direction from which 
 they may approach them. All understand the general 
 geographical fact that Canada lies north of the United 
 States. Hence they naturally suppose, when they arrive 
 at the frontier, that they must see Canada to the north of 
 them. But when they reach Niagara Falls they look 
 across the river into Canada, in one direction directly 
 south, and in another directly west. Only a reference to 
 the map will rectify the erroneous impression. It is cor- 
 rected at once by remembering that the Niagara River 
 empties into the south side of Lake Ontario. 
 
 One other fact may be regarded as well-established, 
 namely, that most visitors are disappointed when they 
 first look upon the Falls. They are not immediately and 
 forcibly impressed by the scene, as they had expected to
 
 114 NIAGARA. 
 
 be. The reasons for this are easily explained. The chief 
 one is that the visitor first sees the Falls from a point 
 above them. Before seeing them, he reads of their great 
 height ; he expects to look up at them and behold the 
 great mass of water falling, as it were, from the sky. He 
 reads of the trembling earth ; of the cloud of spray, that 
 may be seen a hundred miles away; of the thunder of 
 the torrent, and of the rainbows. He does not consider 
 that these are occasional facts. He may not know he is 
 near the Falls until he gets just over them. At certain 
 times he feels no trembling of the earth ; he hears no 
 stunning roar ; he may see the spray scattered in all 
 directions by the wind, and of course he will see no bow. 
 Naturally, he is disappointed. But it is not long before 
 the grand reality begins to break upon him, and every 
 succeeding day and hour of observation impresses him 
 more and more deeply with the vastncss, the power, the 
 sublimity of the scene, and the wonderful and varied 
 beauty of its surroundings. Those who spend one or 
 more seasons at Niagara know how very little can be 
 seen or comprehended by those who " stop over one 
 train." 
 
 They are fortunate who can see the Falls first from the 
 ferry-boat on the river below, and about one-third of the 
 way across from the American shore. The writer has fre- 
 quently tried the experiment with friends who were will- 
 ing to trust themselves, with closed eyes, to his guidance, 
 and wait until he had given them the signal to look 
 upward. 
 
 Those who may be at Niagara a few nights before and
 
 Rock of Ages and Whirlwind Bridge. 
 
 Opposite page 114.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. I15 
 
 after a full moon should not fail to go to Goat Island to 
 see the lunar bow. It is the most unreal of all real 
 things — a thing of weird and shadowy beauty. 
 
 Another striking scene peculiar to the locality is wit- 
 nessed in the autumn, when the sun in making its annual 
 southing reaches a point which, at the sunset hour, is 
 directly west from the Falls. Then those who are east 
 of them see the spray illuminated by the slant rays of the 
 sinking sun. In the calm of the hour and the peculiar 
 atmosphere of the season, the majestic cloud looks like 
 the spray of molten gold. 
 
 In 1 840 there was a small patch of stones, gravel, sand, 
 and earth, called Gull Island, lying near the center of the 
 Canadian rapid and about one hundred rods above the 
 Horseshoe Fall. It was apparently twenty rods long 
 by two rods wide, and was covered with a growth of 
 willow bushes. It was so named because it was a 
 favorite resort of that singular combination of the most 
 delicate bones and lightest feathers called a gull. 
 
 The birds seem large and awkward on the wing, but 
 as they sit upon the water nothing can appear more 
 graceful. They are far-sighted and keen-scented. Their 
 eyes are marvels of beauty. They are eccentric in their 
 habits, the very Arabs of their race — here to-day and 
 gone to-morrow. They are gregarious and often assem- 
 ble in large numbers. At times in a series of wild, rapid, 
 devious gyrations, and uttering a low, mournful murmur, 
 they seem to be engaged, as it were, in some solemn 
 festival commemorative of their departed kindred. One 
 moment the air will be filled with them and their sad
 
 Il6 NIAGARA. 
 
 refrain ; the next moment the cry will hav^e ceased and 
 not a gull will be seen. They come as they go, summer 
 and winter alike. In thirty years the writer has never 
 been able to discover when nor whence they came. In 
 winter they generally appear in the milder days, and 
 their disappearance is followed by cooler weather. 
 
 In the spring of 1847 '^ long and fierce gale from 
 the west, which drove the water down Lake Erie, caused 
 the highest rise ever known in the river. It rose six feet 
 on the rapids, and for the first time reached the floor- 
 planking of the old bridge. The greater part of Gull 
 Island was washed down in this flood, and ten years 
 later it had wholly disappeared. 
 
 The vague tradition — the origin of which cannot 
 be traced — that there is a flux and reflux of the 
 waters in the Great Lakes, which embraces a period of 
 about seven years, is not confirmed by our observa- 
 tion, if it be intended to affirm that the ebb and flow 
 are both completed in seven years. Our observation 
 shows that there is a flow of about seven years, and a 
 reflux, which is accomplished in the same period. The 
 water in the Niagara was very low in 1843—4, again in 
 1857-8, and again in 187 1-2. This last is the lowest 
 long continued shrinkage ever known. It is, however, 
 altogether probable that the general level of the lakes will 
 fall hereafter, owing to the destruction of the forests and 
 the cultivation of the land along their shores. In this 
 case the waters of the Niagara and Detroit rivers may, in 
 the far future, meet in the bed of Lake Erie, and their 
 margins be covered with orchards and vineyards more 
 extensive and productive than those along the Rhine.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. I I / 
 
 The Hermit of the Falls, so called, Mr. Francis Ab- 
 bott, came to the village in June, 1829. He was a rather 
 good-looking, respectable young man, of moderate attain- 
 ments, who was subject, apparently, to a mild form of 
 intermittent derangement. Though his manner was 
 eccentric, his conduct was harmless, and it is probable 
 that his parents, who, it was afterward ascertained, were 
 respectable members of the Society of Friends in Eng- 
 land, encouraged his desire to travel, and furnished him 
 the means to do so. He seems to have had some taste 
 for music, and to have been a tolerable performer on the 
 flute. He wandered much about the island, both night 
 and day, and often bathed below the little fall on the 
 south side of Goat Island, near its head. He lived alone 
 in an unoccupied log-hut, directly across the island from 
 this fall, until about the first of April, 1831, when he 
 removed to a little cabin of his own building, on Point 
 View. In June of that year, just two years after his 
 arrival, he was drowned while bathing below the ferry. 
 Ten days after, his body was found at Fort Niagara, 
 brought back, and buried in the God's-acre at the Falls. 
 
 8a
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Avery's descent of the Falls — The fatal practical joke — Death of Miss Rugg 
 — Swans — Eagles — Crows — Ducks over the Falls — Why dogs have 
 survived the descent. 
 
 ON the morning of the 19th of July, 1853, a man was 
 discovered in the middle of the American rapid, 
 about thirty rods below the bridge. He was clinging 
 to a log, which the previous spring had lodged against 
 a rock. He proved to be a Mr. Avery, who had under- 
 taken to cross the river above the night before, but, 
 getting bewildered in the current, was drawn into the 
 rapids. His boat struck the log, and was overturned, 
 yet, by some extraordinary good fortune, he was able to 
 hold to the timber. A large crowd soon gathered on the 
 shore and bridge. A sign, painted in large letters, " We 
 will save you," was fastened to a building, that the read- 
 ing of it might cheer and encourage him. Boats and 
 ropes were provided, with willing hands to use them. 
 The first boat lowered into the rapids filled and sank 
 just before reaching Avery. The next, a life-boat, 
 which had been procured from Buffalo, was let down, 
 reached the log, was dashed off by the reacting waters, 
 upset, and sank beside him. Another light, clinker-built 
 boat was launched, and reached him just right. But, in 
 some unaccountable manner, the rope got caught be-
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. II9 
 
 twcen the rock and the log. It was impossible to loosen 
 it. Poor Avery tugged and worked at it with almost 
 superhuman energy for hours. The citizens above pulled 
 at the rope until it broke. 
 
 By this time a raft had been constructed, with a strong 
 cask fastened to each corner, and ropes attached so that 
 Avery could tie himself to it. It was lowered, and 
 reached him safely. He got on it and seized the ropes. 
 Every heart grew lighter as the rescuers moved across 
 the lower part of Bath Island, drawing in the rope, while 
 the raft swung easily toward Goat Island. But when it 
 reached the head of Chapin's Island, all hopes were 
 dashed again. The rope attached to the raft got caught 
 in the rocks as it was passing below a ledge in a swift 
 chute of water. All efforts to loosen it were in- 
 effectual. Another boat was launched and let down- 
 stream. It reached the raft all right, and Avery, in his 
 eagerness to seize it, dropped the ropes he had been 
 holding, stepped to the edge of the raft, with his hands 
 extended to catch the boat, when the raft, under his 
 weight, settled in the water, and, just missing his hold, 
 he was swept into the rapids, went down the north side 
 of Chapin's Island, and, almost in reach of it, in water so 
 shallow that he regained his feet for an instant, threw up 
 his hands in despair, fell backward, and went over the 
 Fall. The tragedy lasted eighteen hours. 
 
 The names connected with the next incident are sup- 
 pressed, out of regard for the feelings of surviving friends. 
 It is given as a warning to future visitors to Niagara not 
 to attempt any mirthful experiments around the Falls.
 
 I20 NIAGARA. 
 
 A party of ladies, gentremen, and children were on Luna 
 Island, near a small beech tree, since destroyed, called 
 "the Parasol." A young girl of ten was standing near 
 her mother, just on the brink of the water, when a young 
 man of twenty-two stepped up beside her and seized her 
 playfully by the arms, saying, " Now, Nannie, I am going 
 to throw you in," and swung her out over the water. 
 Taken by surprise and frightened, she struggled, twisted 
 herself out of his grasp, and fell into the rapid within twenty 
 feet of the brink of the precipice. Instantly the young man 
 plunged in after her, seized hold of her dress, and swung 
 her around toward her half-distracted mother, who almost 
 reached her as she slipped by and went over the Fall, 
 immediately followed by the young man. The young 
 girl was found some days afterward, lying on her back, 
 on a large rock, holding her open parasol above her head, 
 as though she had lain down to rest. A few weeks after- 
 ward the father of the young man was coming up the 
 river, on the Maid of the Mist, from the lower landing. 
 A body was discovered floating in the water, and, by the 
 aid of a small boat, was brought on board the steamer. It 
 was that of his son. 
 
 On the 23d of August, 1844, Miss Martha K. Rugg 
 was walking to Table Rock with a friend. Seeing a 
 bunch of cedar-berries on a low tree, which grew out 
 from the edge of the bank, she left her companion, reached 
 out to pick it, lost her footing, and fell one hundred and 
 fifteen feet upon the rocks below. She survived about 
 three hours. Pilgrims to Table Rock used to inquire 
 for the spot where this accident happened. The follow- 
 ing spring, an enterprising Irishman brought out a table
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 121 
 
 of suitable dimensions, set it down on the bank of the 
 river, and covered it with different articles, which he 
 offered for sale. In order to enlighten strangers about 
 the spot, he provided a remarkable sign, which he set up 
 near one end of the table. This sign was a monumental 
 obelisk, about five feet high, made of pine boards, and 
 painted white. On the base he painted, in black letters, 
 the following inscription : 
 
 " Ladies fair, most beauteous of the race, 
 Be.vare and shun a dangerous place. 
 Miss Martha Rugg here lost a life, 
 Who might now have been a happy wife." 
 
 An envious competitor, one of his own countrymen, 
 brought his own table of wares, and placed it just 
 above the original mourner. Thereupon, the latter, de- 
 termining that his rival should not have the benefit of his 
 sign, removed it below his own table, having first removed 
 the table itself as far down as circumstances would permit. 
 Then he added his master-stroke of policy. Up to that 
 time the monument had been stationary. Thencefor- 
 ward, every day on quitting business he put it on a 
 wheelbarrow and took it home, bringing it out again 
 on resuming operations in the morning. 
 
 Previous to the War of 1812, the Niagara River 
 abounded in swans, wild geese, and ducks. Since that 
 war none of the swans have been seen here, except two 
 pair which came at different times. One of each pair 
 went over the Falls, and was taken out alive but stunned. 
 Their mates, faithful unto death, were shot while watch- 
 ing and waiting for their return.
 
 122 NIAGARA. 
 
 Eagles have always been seen in the vicinity, and a 
 few have been captured. A single pair for many years 
 had their aerie in the top of a huge dead sycamore tree, 
 near the head of Burnt Ship Bay. It was interesting to 
 watch the flight of the male bird when he left his brood- 
 ing mate to go on a foraging expedition. Leaving the 
 topmost limb that served as his home observatory, he 
 would sweep round in a circle, forming the base of a regu- 
 lar spiral curve, in which he rose to any desired height. 
 Then, having apparently determined by scent or sight, or 
 by both, the direction he would take, he sailed grandly off. 
 How grandly, too, on his return, he floated to his lofty 
 perch with a single fold of his great wings, and sat for a 
 few moments, motionless as a statue, before greeting 
 his mate. When the young eaglets had but recently 
 chipped their shells, passing sportsmen were content to 
 view the majestic pair at a respectful distance. A pair of 
 eagles, each carrying ten talons, a hooked beak, a strong 
 pair of wings, and an unerring eye, all backed and pro- 
 pelled by an indomitable will and courage, are not to be 
 recklessly trifled with. 
 
 Early in July, 1877, two farmers riding in a buggy 
 from Bergholtz, in the easterly part of the town of 
 Niagara, toward the town of Wilson on Lake Ontario, 
 saw a large gray eagle sitting on a fence by the roadside, 
 and watching wath much interest some object in a field 
 beyond. Leaving their buggy, they ascertained that the 
 object of its solicitude was an eaglet sitting on the 
 ground, unable to fly, his wings and feathers having been 
 drenched by a heavy shower. One of the men who first 
 reached the young bird found it rather bellicose, and
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 123 
 
 while attempting to secure it was surprised by a vigorous 
 thump on the head from the old bird, accompanied with 
 a sensation of sharp claws in his hair which nearly pros- 
 trated him. His assailant then rose quickly some forty 
 feet in the air, and, turning again, descended upon the 
 man with such force as to compel him to relinquish his 
 game. His friend joined him, and for nearly half an 
 hour the two were engaged in a fierce fight with the 
 resolute bird, which they estimated would measure 
 eight feet across the extended wings. The eagle would 
 soar quickly upward as at first until it reached the 
 desired range, when it would turn upon them with 
 great fierceness, thumping with its wings and striking 
 with its talons at their very faces. Finally, securing a 
 number of good-sized cobble-stones, they advanced again 
 upon the eaglet, and were at once attacked by the parent. 
 But they used their stone artillery with vigor, and suc- 
 ceeded in getting the eaglet to their buggy, leaving its 
 gallant defender still unconquered and soaring in the air 
 with a slightly injured wing. 
 
 Before the War of the Rebellion, Niagara was a favor- 
 ite resort of that winged scavenger, the crow, and, at 
 times, they were very numerous. But after the first 
 year of the war they entirely disappeared. Snuffing the 
 battle from afar, they turned instinctively to the South, 
 and did not re-appear among us until several years after 
 the war had ended. 
 
 Large numbers of ducks formerly went over the Falls, 
 but not for the reason generally assigned, namely, that 
 they cannot rise out of the rapids. It is true that tlicy 
 cannot rise from the water while heading up-stream.
 
 124 NIAGARA. 
 
 When they wish to do so, they turn down the current, 
 and sail out without difficulty. No sound and living 
 duck ever went over the precipice by daylight. Dark 
 and especially foggy nights are most fatal to them. In 
 the month of September, 1841, four hundred ducks were 
 picked up below the Falls, that had gone over in the fog 
 of the previous night. In two instances, dogs have been 
 sent over the Falls and have survived the plunge. In 
 1858 a bull-terrier was thrown into the rapids, also near 
 the middle of the bridge. In less than an hour he came 
 up the ferry-stairs, very wet and not at all gay. 
 
 The reason why the dogs were not killed may be 
 thus explained. From the top of the Rapids Tower, be- 
 fore its destruction, the spectator could get a perfect view 
 of the Canadian Fall. On a bright day, by looking 
 steadily at the bottom of the Horseshoe, where water 
 falls into water, he could see, as the spray was occasion- 
 ally removed, a beautiful exhibition of water-cones, ap- 
 parently ten or twelve feet high. These are formed by 
 the rapid accumulation and condensation of the falling 
 water. It pours down so rapidly and in such quantities 
 that the water below, so to speak, cannot run off fast 
 enough, and it piles up as though it were in a state of 
 violent ebullition. These cones are constantly forming 
 and breaking. If any strong animal should fall upon one 
 of these cones, as upon a soft cushion, it might slide 
 safely into the current below. The dogs were, doubtless, 
 fortunate enough to fall in this way, aided also by the 
 repulsion of the water from the rocks in the swift chan- 
 nel through which they passed.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Wedding tourists at the Falls — Bridges to the Moss Islands — Railway at 
 the ferry — List of persons who have been carried over the Falls — Other 
 accidents. 
 
 FOR many years Niagara has been a favorite resort 
 for bridal tourists, who in a crowd of strangers can 
 be so excessively proper that every one else can see how 
 charmingly improper they are. 
 
 The three fine, graceful bridges which unite Goat 
 Island with the three smaller islands — the Moss Islands, 
 or the Three Sisters — lying south of it were built in 
 1858. They opened up a new and attractive feature of 
 the locality, with which all visitors are charmed. Those 
 who have been on them will remember what a broken, 
 wild, tangled mass of rocks, wood, and vines they 
 are. Nothing on Onalaska's wildest shore could be more 
 thoroughly primitive. 
 
 A rude path with steps cut in the slope of the bank 
 was for several years the only way of getting down to the 
 water's edge at the ferry. In 1825 several flights of 
 stairs were erected, with good paths between, which made 
 the task quite safe and easy. The double railway-track 
 at the ferry was completed in 1845. When the necessary 
 excavations were nearly finished, and people were told 
 the object of it, the scheme met no approval from those
 
 126 NIAGARA. 
 
 conservative persons who have no faith in new things. 
 The idea of a railway "to go by water" was not con- 
 sidered a brilHant one. Indeed, the greater number 
 shrugged their shoulders at the thought of riding 
 down that hill. But as soon as the lumber cars were 
 started for the convenience of the workmen, and people 
 saw how expeditious and easy was the trip, it was 
 difficult to keep them off the cars. Hundreds of thou- 
 sands of passengers have ridden in them without accident 
 or injury. The motive power is a reaction water- 
 wheel set in a deep pit, and as all the machinery is 
 concealed, it has quite the appearance of a self-working 
 apparatus. There is alongside of the railroad a straight 
 stair-way of two hundred and ninety steps, for those who 
 prefer to use it. 
 
 The number of victims whom carelessness or folly 
 has sent over the Falls is large, and, it may be believed, 
 is quite independent of the Indian tradition that the 
 great cataract demands a yearly sacrifice of two human 
 victims. 
 
 Over the Falls. 
 
 In 1810 the boat Independence, laden with salt, filled and 
 sunk while crossing to Chippewa. The captain 
 and two of the crew went over the Falls. One 
 of the crew clung to a large oar, and was saved 
 by a small boat from Chippewa. 
 1821 Two men in a scow were driven down the cur- 
 rent by the wind, and went over the Falls.
 
 LOCAL HLSTORY AND LMCIUENTS. 12/ 
 
 1825 Two men in a boat from Grand Island went 
 over. 
 
 — Three men went over in three different canoes. 
 1 84 1 Two men, engaged in smuggHng, were upset in 
 
 the current ; one went over. One was found 
 dead on Grass Island. 
 
 — Two men who were carrying sand in a scow 
 were drawn into the current and went over. 
 
 1847 -^ lad of fourteen undertook to row across on a 
 Sunday morning, and went over. 
 
 1848 In August, a man in a boat passed under the 
 Goat Island Bridge, within ten feet of the shore ; 
 he asked of persons on the bridge, ** Can I be 
 saved?" Soon after the boat upset, and he 
 went over, feet foremost, struck on the rocks 
 below, and was never seen afterward. 
 
 — A little boy and girl were playing in a skiff, 
 which swung off the shore; the mother waded 
 into the water and rescued the girl. The boy, 
 sitting in the bottom of the skiff, with a hand on 
 each side, went over. 
 
 1870 A lady from Chicago, said to be deranged, threw 
 herself from Goat Island Bridge, and went over. 
 
 1 87 1 In June three men, unacquainted with the river, 
 hired a boat to cross, were drawn into the rapids 
 and went over. 
 
 — In July two men in a boat went over. 
 
 1873 Friday, July 4th, a young man and woman, and 
 a boy twelve years of age, brother of the latter, 
 hired a boat in Chippewa, ostensibly for a sail
 
 128 NIAGARA. 
 
 on the river. Not understanding the currents, 
 they were drawn into the rapids and carried 
 over the Horseshoe Fall. The bodies were not 
 recovered. It was afterward ascertained that 
 the young man had taken $500 from his father, 
 in Ohio; had come to Chippewa to meet the 
 young woman, who was from Toronto, to whom 
 he was married on the day preceding their 
 death. 
 
 1874 September 19th, a young man connected with 
 the Mohawk Institute, at Brantford, Canada — 
 whether as student or instructor was not known 
 — walked deliberately into the rapids above 
 Table Rock, and was carried over the preci- 
 pice, never to be seen again. 
 
 1875 September 8th, Captain John Jones — at that 
 time marine surveyor for a New York insurance 
 company — jumped into the rapids below Goat 
 Island Bridge, and went over the cliff, before the 
 eyes of many excursionists. Ill-health was sup- 
 posed to be the cause. The body was not found. 
 
 1877 March 5th, Mr. G. Homer Stone, aged twenty- 
 four, a school-teacher, living near Geneva, N. Y., 
 leaped into the rapids, near the upper end of 
 Prospect Park, and was carried over the Falls. 
 The body was not recovered. 
 July 1st, three men went out in a sail-boat from 
 Connor's Island, during a high wind and very 
 rough water. Attempting a starboard tack, 
 in order to reach Gill Creek Island, the boat was
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 29 
 
 upset, and two of them — after the three had tried 
 in vain to right the boat, and found it difficult 
 to keep their hold — abandoned it and tried to 
 swim ashore ; but, owing to the rough sea and 
 their wet and heavy clothing, they were soon 
 exhausted, and went to the bottom. The third 
 man, divesting himself of everything except his 
 pantaloons, determined to swim for the nearest 
 land the down-floating boat should pass. Fort- 
 unately, a large boat, manned by three sturdy 
 oarsmen, coming up the river, rescued him, after 
 he had become nearly exhausted. Three days 
 after the accident one of the bodies was found 
 near Grass Island, above the Falls, and the 
 other, two days later, in the Whirlpool below. 
 
 1877 October i6th, the discovery in the morning of 
 several articles of female apparel on a flat rock, 
 near the site of the old stone tower, and close to 
 the brink of the Falls, led to investigation, which 
 developed the fact that Miss Schofield, a young 
 woman from Woodstock, in Canada, while suffer- 
 ing from a sudden attack of brain fever, had 
 thrown herself into the rapids, and gone over 
 the Horseshoe Fall. She was a skillful teleg- 
 rapher, and had some local literary reputation. 
 Her body was never recovered. 
 
 1878 April 1st, John and Patrick Reilley, brothers, 
 started from Port Day, above the Falls, to row 
 across to Chippewa. One of them, being under the 
 influence of liquor, refused to row steadily and 
 
 9
 
 I30 NIAGARA. 
 
 quarreled with his brother, thus preventing him 
 from rowing. They were drawn over the Canadian 
 side of the Horseshoe Fall about four o'clock 
 in the afternoon. They were both skillful row- 
 ers, and well acquainted with the river, which 
 they had crossed and recrossed many times. 
 Their bodies were recovered several weeks later. 
 
 1878 April 6th, a young man, nineteen years of age, 
 from Woodstock, Canada, a member of the 
 Queen's Own, a volunteer regiment, which had 
 attended a recent military review at Montreal, 
 was on his return home, and crossed from Chip- 
 pewa to Navy Island to visit friends who kept 
 small boats on both sides of the river. After 
 finishing his visit, he declined to accept the 
 assistance of a young relative in recrossing the 
 river, and started alone. The result was that, 
 not understanding the force of the treacherous 
 current, he was carried into the great rapids and 
 went over the Horseshoe Fall. His body was 
 found, two days afterward, below the ferry. 
 
 1879 June 2 1st, the names of Monsieur and Madame 
 Rolland were registered at one of the hotels, 
 where they spent a night, but took their meals 
 at a restaurant kept by a Frenchman, because 
 Monsieur R. could not, as he said, speak 
 English. The following morning they went to 
 the Moss Islands. While near the lower end of 
 the outer island, so the husband claimed, madame 
 took a cup from him to get a drink of water
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 131 
 
 from the rapids, and, while his attention was 
 diverted for a moment, he heard a splash in the 
 water, and on looking round, saw that his wife 
 had fallen into the rapids. She went over the 
 Horseshoe Fall. He showed great distress and 
 every demonstration of sorrow. Nevertheless, 
 he left the next day for New York, after giving 
 his address to the restaurant-keeper, who, a few 
 days afterward, sent word to him that the body 
 had been recovered. Monsieur R. sent thirty 
 dollars to pay expenses of burial, and sailed 
 for France. Those who have seen the place 
 where, according to his story, madame fell in, 
 are skeptical on that point. 
 <i February 23d, a stranger named Doyle threw 
 himself into the rapids from Prospect Park, and 
 was carried over the American Fall. A body 
 found some days after in the river below, 
 claimed by friends to be his, was identified by a 
 coroner's jury as that of a man named Rowell, 
 whose body had been found some days before 
 in the river, near the ferry, with a bullet through 
 the head. It was never ascertained whether it 
 was a suicide or an assassination. 
 — July 1 2th, the body of a woman was found float- 
 ing below the Falls, having evidently come from 
 the river above. Some female wearing apparel 
 found on the shore of the rapids, below Goat 
 Island Bridge, it was supposed belonged to the 
 suicide.
 
 132 NIAGARA. 
 
 1881 Dr. H. and Mrs. S., of good birth, education, 
 and social position, loved not wisely but too 
 well. Exposure was certain and near. They 
 met at Niagara, July 14th, and went over the 
 Falls together. 
 — September 5th, a man from Toronto plunged 
 into the rapids at Table Rock, and went over. 
 In a letter to a Toronto paper, he stated that 
 domestic trouble was the impelling motive. 
 
 Below the Falls. 
 
 In 1 841 A number of British soldiers, stationed at Drum- 
 mondville, attempted to swim across the rapids 
 at the ferry at different times. None succeeded, 
 and two were drowned. 
 
 1842 A British soldier attempted to lower himself 
 down the bank, opposite Barnett's Museum, in 
 order to escape to the American shore. The 
 rope broke, and he was killed by the fall. 
 
 1844 In August, a gentleman was washed under the 
 great Fall, from a rock on which he had stepped, 
 against the remonstrances of the guide. He was 
 drowned. 
 
 1846 In August, a gentleman fell forty feet from a 
 rock near the Cave of the Winds, and was in- 
 stantly killed. 
 
 1875 August 9th, two young women and three young 
 men, residents of the village, went through the 
 Cave of the Winds, as they had often done
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 33 
 
 1875 before, to enjoy the exhilarating bath. One of 
 the young women, Miss P., stepped into one of 
 the eddying pools lying a little outside of the 
 usual track, and one of the young men, Mr. P., 
 thinking she might find the current stronger than 
 she anticipated, followed her, and while seeking a 
 sure footing for himself to guard against acci- 
 dent, the young lady lost her balance and fell 
 into the current. Mr. P. endeavored to seize her 
 bathing-dress, but not succeeding, sprang at 
 once into the current, and both went over a 
 ledge some eight feet high, at the foot of which 
 Miss P. rose to her feet in an eddy, and sought 
 support by leaning against a large rock lying 
 adjacent to it. When Mr. P. rose to the surface 
 he swam to her, and thinking they would be 
 safer in an opening among smaller rocks on the 
 opposite side of the eddy, he put his arm round 
 her, and both made a desperate effort to reach 
 the desired shelter. But the current proved 
 too strong, and bore them both out into the 
 river; Mr. P. swimming on his back, and sup- 
 porting Miss P. with his right arm, while her 
 right hand rested upon his shoulder. Suddenly 
 they became separated. Miss P., apparently 
 concluding that both could not be saved, disen- 
 gaged herself from him, and immediately sank 
 below the surface. Instantly her heroic friend 
 plunged after her. A cloud of spray covered 
 the troubled waters for a moment, and when it 
 9a
 
 134 NIAGARA. 
 
 passed nothing could be seen of the unfortunate 
 pair. The treacherous under-currents bore them 
 to their doom. Both bodies were recovered a 
 few days afterward from the Whirlpool. 
 1877 August 31st, Dr. Louis M. Stein registered at the 
 International Hotel. The following day, after 
 riding to different points on the American side 
 of the Falls, he alighted at the upper Suspen- 
 sion Bridge, and inviting a young bootblack 
 to accompany him, he started across the bridge, 
 talking rather incoherently on the way. When 
 near the Canadian end he stopped, took from his 
 pocket a roll of bills, gave the boy a dollar note, 
 and returned the others to his pocket. He 
 then started back, and when near the center of 
 the bridge dropped his hand-bag and shawl, 
 seized the boy, saying with an oath, " You have 
 got to come, too ! " and attempted to climb over 
 the railing. The boy successfully resisted, but 
 the man got over and dropped from one of the 
 wire stays into the river, one hundred and ninety 
 feet below. He was probably killed instantly, 
 and the body floated down the river, from 
 which it was taken some ten days afterward 
 and delivered to a son, who arrived from New 
 York city. 
 — December 25 th, a man from Chatauqua County, 
 N. Y., suffering from ill-health and misfortune, 
 jumped from the new Suspension Bridge, and 
 was never seen again.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 35 
 
 The narrowest escape at the Falls was that of the man 
 who, in January, 1852, fell from the Tower Bridge into 
 the rapids, and was caught between two rocks just on the 
 brink of the precipice, whence he was rescued, nearly 
 exhausted, by means of a rope. 
 
 In 1874, Mr. William McCullough, while at work 
 painting the small bridge between the first and second 
 Moss Islands, missed his footing and fell into the middle 
 of the channel ; he was carried down about fifty rods, and, 
 going over a ledge into more quiet water, got on his feet 
 and waded to a small rock projecting above the water, 
 upon which he seated himself to collect his senses and 
 await results. After several vain efforts to get a rope to 
 him, Mr. Thomas Conroy, a guide, then connected with 
 the Cave of the Winds, who had in the previous autumn 
 conducted Professor Tyndall up to Tyndall's Rock, put 
 on a pair of felt shoes, and, holding to an inch rope, 
 picked his way with an alpen-stock, from a point a short 
 distance up-stream, through favoring eddies and pools to 
 McCullough. After a short rest, he put the rope around 
 McCullough, under his arms, and winding the end around 
 his own right arm, the two started shoreward. On reachi- 
 ing the deep water near the shore, both were taken off 
 their feet, and, as the people pulled vigorously at the rope, 
 their heads went under for a short distance, but they were 
 safely landed. A contribution was taken up for Conroy 's 
 benefit, and Professor Tyndall, on hearing of the rescue, 
 sent him a five-pound note. 
 
 In view of the fact that nearly every year persons are 
 drawn into the rapids and carried over the P^alls, a New
 
 136 NIAGARA. 
 
 York journalist suggested a most extraordinary method 
 of saving them. He proposed that a cable should be 
 stretched across the rapids, above the Falls, strong 
 enough to arrest boats, and to which persons in danger 
 might cling until rescued. But this kind and ingenious 
 person forgot that old canal-boats, rafts of logs, and large 
 trunks of trees, with roots attached, would be trouble- 
 some things to hold at anchor. As well hope to stay an 
 Alpine avalanche with pipe-stems.
 
 » 'wK«'
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The first Suspension Bridge — The Railway Suspension Bridge — Extraor- 
 dinary vibration given to the Railway Bridge by the fall of a mass of rock 
 — De Veaux College — The Lewiston Suspension Bridge — The Suspen- 
 sion Bridge at the Falls. 
 
 ON the partial completion of the Hydraulic Canal, the 
 principal stockholders, with a number of invited 
 guests, celebrated the event on July 4, 1857, by an 
 excursion from Buffalo in the Cygnet, the first steamer 
 that ever landed within the limits of the village of 
 Niagara. The same route is followed during the season 
 of navigation by tugs towing canal-boats and rafts out 
 and in. No passenger boat, however, has been placed 
 on the route, although the sail on the river is a charm- 
 ing one. 
 
 Mr. Charles Ellet, in 1840, built the first suspension 
 brid^fe over the chasm. He offered a reward of five dollars 
 to any one who would get a string across it. The next 
 windy day all the boys in the neighborhood were kiting, 
 and before night a youth landed his kite in Canada and 
 received the reward. The first iron successor of the 
 string was a small wire cable, seven-eighths of an inch in 
 diameter. To this was suspended a wire basket in which 
 two persons could cross the chasm. The basket was 
 attached to an endless rope, worked by a windlass on 
 each bank. At an entertainment given on the occasion
 
 138 NIAGARA. 
 
 of the completion of the bridge, the good people of the 
 embryo village at the bridge, elated with their new- 
 acquisition, were inclined to regard their neighbors at the 
 Falls with patronizing sympathy. One of the latter said 
 to Mr. Ellet, " This bridge is a very clever affair, and you 
 only need the Falls here to build up a respectable village." 
 ■'Well," he replied, "give me money enough and I will 
 put them here." He had great faith in dollar-power. 
 
 This bridge was an excellent auxiliary in the construc- 
 tion of the present Railway Suspension Bridge, built by 
 Mr. John A. Roebling. It was begun in 1852, and the 
 first locomotive crossed it in March, 1855. It is one of 
 the most brilliant examples of modern engineering, and 
 stands unrivaled for its grace, beauty, and strength. 
 Seizing at once upon the natural advantages of the 
 location, the engineer resolved to combine the tubular 
 system with that of the suspension bridge. The car- 
 riage way was placed level with the banks of the river 
 at the edges of the chasm. The railway track was 
 placed eighteen feet above, on a level with the top of the 
 secondary banks across which the two railroads were to 
 approach it. The plan was perfect, and perfectly and 
 faithfully executed in all its details. It is practically a 
 skeleton tube. As the traveler passes over it in a car- 
 riage or a railway car, from the almost total absence of 
 any vibratory motion he feels at once that he is on a 
 safe basis, and his sense of security is complete. 
 
 One feature of the construction of the bridge may be 
 noticed as having a bearing on the question of its 
 durability. It is well known that when wrought-iron is
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 39 
 
 exposed to long continued or oft repeated and rapid 
 concussions, its fibers after a time become granulated, 
 whereby its strength is greatly impaired and finally 
 exhausted. It is also known that the effect of rhythmical 
 or regular vibrations is more destructive than the effect 
 of those which are inharmonious or irregular. Because 
 of this, a body of men is never allowed to march to music 
 across a bridge, nor is a large number of cattle ever driven 
 across at one time, lest they should, by accident, fall 
 into a common step and so overstrain or break down the 
 bridge. It is the difference between a single heavy blow 
 and an irregular succession of light ones. Hence, when 
 harmonious, regular vibrations can be broken up, the 
 destructive influence is greatly modified and retarded. 
 
 The bridge is supported by two large cables on each 
 side, one pair above the other, the lower pair being 
 nearer together horizontally than the upper pair, so that 
 a cross section of the skeleton tube would be shaped 
 somewhat like the keystone of an arch. Each of these 
 large cables is ten inches in diameter, and is composed of 
 seven smaller ones, called strands. These smaller strands 
 are made of number nine wire, and each one contains five 
 hundred and twenty wires. Each of these wires was 
 boiled three several times in linseed oil, giving it an 
 oleaginous coating of considerable thickness and great 
 adhesive power. Each wire was carried across the river 
 separately, from tower to tower, by a contrivance of the 
 engineers, the chief feature of which was a light iron pul- 
 ley about twenty inches in diameter, suspended on what 
 might be called a wire cord. This apparatus was called a
 
 I40 NIAGARA. 
 
 traveler, and curious and interesting was its performance 
 as seen from below. It looked like a huge spider weav- 
 ing an iron web. 
 
 Six of the seven strands forming each of the cables 
 were laid around the seventh as a center, and when 
 all were properly placed they were again saturated with 
 oil and paint. After this, by another contrivance of the 
 engineers, they were wound or wrapped with wire, like 
 winding a rope cable with marlin, and thus the whole 
 cable was made into a thoroughly compact, huge, 
 round, iron rope. This was covered with numerous coats 
 of paint to prevent the oxidation of the inner wires. 
 The oleaginous coating of the wires, together with the 
 small triangular spaces between them, would seem to 
 reduce the destructive power of the vibrations to zero. 
 But the vibrations are very greatly reduced and the stiff- 
 ness of the structure is greatly increased by the use of a 
 series of triangular stays, the triangle being the only geo- 
 metrical figure whose angles cannot be shifted. There are 
 sixty-four of these triangles. Their hypothenuses are 
 formed by over-floor stays of wire rope reaching from the 
 tops of the towers to different points in the lower floor, 
 this latter, of course, forming their common base and the 
 towers their altitude. The stays are fastened to the sus- 
 penders so as to form straight lines. As the towers and 
 the floor are rigid and solid in the direction of the lines 
 they represent, it follows that the intersections of the 
 hypothenuses with the common base form so many sta- 
 tionary points in the latter. These stationary points pre- 
 sent a powerful resistance to vibrations. The side trusses, 
 with their system of diamond-work braces and the weight
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. I4I 
 
 of the railway track on the upper bridge, also help to 
 stiffen the structure. There are likewise fifty-six under 
 stays or guys of wire rope fastened to the rocks below, 
 designed to prevent upward and lateral vibrations. A 
 heavy locomotive with twenty loaded cars produced a 
 depression of the upward curvature of the track of nearly 
 ten inches. The ordinary loads make a depression of 
 only five inches. 
 
 In Part II., attention was directed to a point on the 
 American side of the river, just below this bridge, where 
 the disintegration of the shale and abrasion of the super- 
 posed rock is strikingly exhibited. A singular phenom- 
 enon was witnessed here in 1863. A mass of rock and 
 shale, about fifty feet long, twenty feet wide, and sixty 
 feet deep, fell with a great crash. Directly following the 
 fall a remarkable motion was developed in the bridge 
 itself A strong wave of motion passed through the 
 whole structure from the American side to the opposite 
 shore, and returned again to the same side. 
 
 Some twelve or fifteen mechanics, who were at work 
 on the upper or railway track, were so alarmed that they 
 fled with all speed to the shore. The motion imparted to 
 the bridge was incalculably greater than, and of a dif- 
 ferent character from, any motion imparted by the crossing 
 of the heaviest trains. The rocky mass which fell was 
 forty rods below the bridge, and the hard floor on which it 
 struck was more than two hundred and thirty feet beneath 
 it. The mass itself fell about sixty feet average distance, 
 and might have weighed five thousand tons. The extraor- 
 dinary motion imparted to the bridge by the concussion 
 must have been transmitted along the bed-rock to the
 
 142 NIAGARA. 
 
 anchorages on the American side, thence through the 
 cables and the bridge across to the anchorages on the 
 Canadian side, whence it returned to the American side. 
 
 Mr. Donald McKenzie, master carpenter and super- 
 intendent of repairs, who has been connected with the 
 bridge constantly since its erection, and all the men 
 under him at the time, confirm this statement, and declare it 
 is impossible to exaggerate or describe the wave-like motion 
 which they experienced while escaping to the shore. 
 
 Half a mile further down is De Veaux College, a noble 
 charity endowed by the late Mr. Samuel De Veaux. He 
 was for many years an active business man at Niagara, 
 and by his integrity, industry, and wise enterprise accu- 
 mulated a handsome fortune. His death occurred in 1852, 
 and by his will he left nearly the whole of his estate to 
 certain trustees to establish an institution for the care, 
 training, and education of orphan boys. In addition to 
 these, other pupils are received who pay a fixed price for 
 their tuition, board, and incidentals. The institution has 
 gained a high reputation for the thoroughness of its 
 instruction and the excellence of its discipline. One of 
 its sources of income is the amount received annually for 
 admissions to the Whirlpool. Every visitor to that 
 interesting locality will cheerfully pay the fee charged 
 when he understands this fact. 
 
 The suspension bridge below the mountain near Lew- 
 iston, spanning the river where the water emerges from 
 the fearful abyss through which it dashes for five 
 miles, was built in 1856, by Mr. T. E. Serrel. The guys 
 designed to protect it from the cfifect of the wind were 
 fastened in the rocks on either side at the water's edge.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 43 
 
 The great ice jam of 1866 tore from their fastenings, or 
 broke off, many of these guys. Before they were replaced 
 a terrific gale in the following autumn broke up the road- 
 way, severed some of the suspenders, and left the struct- 
 ure a melancholy wreck danghng in the air. 
 
 The New Suspension Bridge, as it is called, just below 
 the ferry at the Falls, was built in 1868. It is a light, 
 graceful structure, standing one hundred and ninety feet 
 above the water. Its length is twelve hundred feet, after 
 the Brooklyn bridge the longest structure of the kind 
 in the world, and it is the narrowest of those designed 
 for carriage travel. To its narrowness it probably 
 owed its safety from destruction during a fierce gale 
 which occurred in the fall of 1869. The fastenings 
 or dowels of several of the guys on the Canadian side 
 were torn out, and the bridge at its center deflected down- 
 stream more than its width, so that the surface of its 
 road-way could not be seen half its length. Then its 
 undulations from end to end — like a stair-carpet being 
 shaken between two persons — were frightful, and for 
 a time it was feared that either cables or towers must 
 give way. After the gale subsided the old guys were 
 made fast again, new ones were added, and two two-inch 
 steel wire cables were stretched from bank to bank, and 
 connected with the bridge by wire stays. Wrought-iron 
 beams were afterward placed on the bottom stringers, and 
 channel irons on the top beams of the side trestles, all of 
 which were strongly bolted together. These improve- 
 ments added much to the strength of the whole structure, 
 and greatly increased its ability to resist horizontal 
 deflection.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Blondin and his "ascensions" — Visit of the Prince of Wales — Grand 
 illumination of the Falls — The steamer Caroline — The water-power of 
 Niagara — Lord DufTerin and the plan of an International Park. 
 
 IN the year 1858, a short, well-rounded, fair-complex- 
 ioned, light-haired Frenchman made his appearance 
 at the Falls, and expressed a wish to put a tight-rope 
 across the chasm below them, for the purpose of crossing on 
 the rope and exhibiting athletic feats. He received little 
 encouragement, but, having a Napoleonic faith in his star, 
 he persevered, and finally obtained the necessary author- 
 ity to place his rope just below the Railway Suspension 
 Bridge. It was a well and evenly twisted rope, about 
 two inches in diameter ; and after stretching it as taught as 
 it could be drawn, it hung in a moderate catenary curve. 
 Commencing at the shore ends he secured stays of small 
 rope to the large one, placing them about eight feet apart. 
 These were made fast to the shore in such a manner that 
 all the stays on one side of the main rope were parallel 
 to each other from the center outward to the ends. They 
 were made tight somewhat in the manner that tent-cords 
 are tightened, and when the structure was complete it 
 looked like the opposite sections of a gigantic spider- 
 web.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 45 
 
 At each end was a spacious inclosure, formed by a 
 rough board fence, for the use of spectators. M. Blon- 
 din — for this was the name of the new aspirant for acro- 
 batic honors — also made an arrangement with the super- 
 intendent of the railway bridge for its occupation during 
 what, with a shade of irony, he called his " ascensions." 
 Those who went within the inclosures and upon the 
 bridge paid a certain sum. A contribution was asked of 
 all outsiders. He selected Saturday as the day for fort- 
 nightly ascensions, and advertised his intentions very 
 liberally. The speculation was successful and gave 
 great satisfaction to the spectators. He exhibited a 
 variety of rope-walking feats, balancing on the cable, 
 hanging from it by his hands and feet, standing on his 
 head, and lowering himself down to the surface of the 
 water. He also carried a man across on his back, 
 trundled over a loaded wheelbarrow, and did divers other 
 things, and also walked over in a sack. He sprinkled in 
 a few extras to heighten the efifect, as the knowing ones 
 declared, such as slipping astride the cable, falling across 
 a stay-rope, or dropping something into the water. In 
 i860, he gave a special ascension in honor of the Prince of 
 Wales. The Prince and his party occupied a sheltered 
 space on the Canadian side, and Blondin walked to it from 
 the opposite side, performing various feats on the way over. 
 The Prince shook hands with him as he stepped into the 
 shed, and commended his courage and nerve. 
 
 As illustrating the power of the imagination over the 
 nerves it may be noted that, if the great spidcr's-web had 
 been stretched out anywhere on a level surface, and not 
 10
 
 146 NIAGARA. 
 
 more than three feet above the ground, a dozen men in 
 any large community could have been found to walk it 
 as unconcernedly, if not as gracefully, as the famous 
 " ascensionist." After three years of successful labor at 
 Niagara, he sought other air-spaces. 
 
 The most notable occurrence, however, which empha- 
 sized the visit of the Prince of Wales in that year was the 
 illumination of the Falls late in the evening of a moonless 
 night. On the banks above and all about on the rocks 
 below, on the lower side of the road down the Canadian 
 bank, and along the water's edge, were placed numerous 
 colored and white calcium, volcanic, and torpedo lights. 
 At a signal they were set aflame all at once. At the 
 same time rockets and wheels and flying artillery were set 
 off in great abundance. The shores were crowded with 
 spectators, and the scene was a most remarkable one. 
 The steady, lurid light below and the intermittent flashes 
 and explosions overhead, the seething, hissing volumes 
 of flame and smoke rolling up from the deep abyss, the 
 ghostly appearance of the descending stream, the ghastly 
 swift current of white foam, the weird appearance of the 
 cloud of spray with a faint and fantastic illumination at 
 its base, which faded out in the dim light of the stars as 
 it ascended, the peculiarly deep but muffled and solemn 
 monotone of the falling water, the livid hue imparted to 
 the faces of the quiet but deeply interested spectators, all 
 made the scene memorable and impressive. When the 
 Marquis of Lome and the Princess Louise visited the 
 Falls in January, 1879, they saw them illuminated by 
 electricity, the light having the illuminating power of 
 32,000 candles.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 147 
 
 In December, 1837, the steamer Caroline came down 
 from Buffalo to aid, it was said, the so-called Patriots, then 
 engaged in an insurrection against the Canadian Govern- 
 ment. A motley collection of adventurers on Navy Island 
 constituted the disturbing, not to say attacking, force. 
 At Chippewa was stationed a body of Canadian militia, 
 under the command of Colonel — afterward Sir — Allan 
 McNabb, who had the good fortune to win his spurs in a 
 single almost bloodless campaign. By his direction a 
 boat expedition was sent to attack the Caroline, as she lay 
 at the old Schlosser dock. In the melee one American 
 was killed. The steamer was set on fire, and her fasten- 
 ings must have been burnt away, as also a part of her upper 
 works, since the writer, ten years later, while returning 
 from a fishing expedition, discovered her smoke-pipe lying 
 at the bottom of the river, in a quiet basin not thirty rods 
 below the dock. A cat-fish of moderate dimensions ap- 
 peared to be keeping house in it, and, with his head barely 
 projecting from one end, was serenely watching the cur- 
 rent for whatever game it might bring to his iron parlor. 
 After the new bridges were built connecting the Three 
 Sisters with Goat Island, the guides and drivers, in their 
 desire to enhance the interest of the scene, astonished 
 travelers by informing them that it was the boiler of the 
 Caroline which caused the extraordinary elevation of the 
 water which we have before referred to as the Leaping 
 Rock. 
 
 Nine miles from the Falls is the Tuscarora Reserva- 
 tion of four thousand acres. On this there are about 
 three hundred and fifty Indians, mosth' half-breeds.
 
 148 NIAGARA. 
 
 engaged in agricultural pursuits, which supply a portion 
 of their necessities. The Indian women who are seen at 
 the Falls in the summer season working and vending 
 different articles of bead- work belong to this community. 
 The Tuscaroras have not been more fortunate than others 
 of their race in bargaining with their white brothers, and 
 their lands are now stripped of the fine oak timber and 
 valuable wood which stood upon it a few years since, and 
 which was sold in large quantities at small prices. 
 
 As a compensation for this system of robbery we 
 maintained a Christian missionary among them for a 
 few years, and we boast that they are all Protestants. 
 The resident missionary, a very w^orthy man, but a 
 rather prosy preacher, always addressed his dusky 
 audience in the English language, his thoughts being 
 conveyed to them by an interpreter. For many years 
 the interpreter was a native Tuscarora, a fine specimen 
 of his race, six feet tall, with a tawny complexion, 
 dark, flashing eyes, and a musical voice. It was 
 interesting to note his manner while acting as interpreter 
 for different clergymen. When interpreting the pious 
 but humdrum utterances of the passionless missionary, 
 he stood at the right side of the preacher, with his left 
 elbow resting on one end of the modest pulpit, and 
 delivered himself with an air that seemed to say, " It 
 does not amount to much, but I give it to you as it is." 
 But the change was magical when, as sometimes hap- 
 pened during the summer season, some eloquent preacher 
 addressed the congregation. The natural courtesy of 
 the interpreter led him, instead of putting his elbow on
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 149 
 
 the pulpit, to stand a little to the rear of the strange 
 preacher, respectfully waiting for his words. As the 
 priest warmed into his subject the interpreter caught his 
 spirit, straightened his fine figure to its full height, 
 advanced to a line with the speaker, and as the theme 
 was developed and the orator grew more and more 
 eloquent, the excitement became contagious ; the Indian 
 entered fully into its spirit, his face glowed with anima- 
 tion, his eyes shone with a warmer light, his long arms 
 were stretched forth, and with gestures energetic or sub- 
 dued, but always graceful, and the varied inflections of 
 his voice in harmony with the theme, he followed the 
 discourse to the end. His audience, too, would become 
 thoroughly aroused, and a little more animation would be 
 infused into the plaintive tones of the closing hymn. 
 
 One of the future attractions of Niagara, to sportsmen 
 at least, may be the catching of California trout, twenty 
 thousand of the fry having been put into the rapids by the 
 writer in June, 1881. 
 
 Concerning the manufactories, shops, rubbish, and 
 litter along the race near the brink of the American 
 Falls, which appear so uncouth and inharmonious, and 
 which are noticed by strangers as being a desecration of 
 the scene, it is only just to remark that the utilization of 
 the water-power here, in the easiest and most economical 
 manner, was one of the imperative necessities of the early 
 settlement of the country. For many years a large terri- 
 tory, lying on both sides of the river, was dependent 
 upon the manufacturing, repairing, and milling facilities 
 of this place. For furnishing these in those days, water- 
 lOA
 
 150 NIAGARA. 
 
 power was the only agent And the name — Manchester 
 — given to the place by its early settlers only fore- 
 shadowed their hope that it would one day rival its great 
 English namesake. 
 
 There are fewer manufactories on the old race-ways 
 now than there were forty years ago, but many new ones 
 have been located on the hydraulic canal that has been 
 excavated at great expense, which leaves the river a mile 
 above the Falls, and empties into the chasm half a mile 
 below. The three years of unusual drought in the northern 
 half of the United States, from 1876 forward, demon- 
 strated how little dependence can be placed during the 
 summer season on the ordinary water-powers of that 
 region, and the attention of manufacturers has been newly 
 drawn to Niagara. 
 
 The early dream of growth in population and wealth 
 at Niagara seems likely to be realized. Already exten- 
 sive milling and manufacturing establishments have been 
 put in operation, and others are in contemplation. When 
 it is considered that engineers estimate the sum-total of all 
 the water-power in the northern portion of the United 
 States at less than 500,000 horse-power, and that, accord- 
 ing to data furnished by the United States Lake Survey 
 Bureau, the water-power of Niagara is equal to 1,500,000 
 horse-power, we can form some idea of the vastness of 
 the force which awaits the enterprise of American manu- 
 facturers. 
 
 " I understand, Mr. President," said Daniel Webster, 
 in a speech prefacing a toast complimentary to the 
 citizens of Rochester for their generous hospitality at the
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 151 
 
 New York State Fair in 1844, "that the Genesee River 
 has a fall of 250 feet within the limits of the city of 
 Rochester. Sir, if the Thames had a fall of 250 feet within 
 the limits of the city of London, London would not be 
 a town — it would be a-1-1 t-h-e w-o-r-l-d!" and as he 
 deliberately stretched out his great arms, and expanded 
 his broad chest, while slowly pronouncing the last three 
 words, one could almost see London gradually enlarging 
 its ample borders in all directions. When the 1,500,000 
 horse-power of Niagara is utilized for the economic wants 
 of men, Niagara will not be a town — it will be a large part 
 of all the world. 
 
 On the 25th of September, 1878, in an after-luncheon 
 speech before the Ontario Society of Artists at Toronto, 
 Lord Dufiferin, Governor-General of Canada, first publicly 
 suggested the idea of creating an International Park from 
 lands to be taken from both sides of the river adjacent to 
 and including the Falls. He stated that he had conferred 
 with Governor Robinson of New York upon the subject, 
 and that the project was cordially approved by him. 
 Governor Robinson, in his annual message the following 
 winter, commended the project to the consideration of 
 the Legislature, by whom a commission of distinguished 
 gentlemen was appointed to investigate the subject and 
 report thereon. After a full examination this commission 
 reported warmly in favor of the plan, and their recom- 
 mendation was cordially indorsed by a great many promi- 
 nent citizens residing in different sections of the country. 
 The press, too, was almost unanimously for it. A major- 
 ity of the members of the Legislature to whom the report was
 
 152 NIAGARA. 
 
 made would have passed a bill for the further prosecution 
 of the scheme, but, unfortunately, it was ascertained that 
 any bill they might pass for this purpose would be vetoed 
 for economical reasons. It is hoped that better counsels 
 may ultimately prevail, and the plan be perfected. 
 Nothing else can save Niagara from total desecration and 
 disgrace. The fact that there is not a square foot of 
 land in the United States from which an untaxed view of 
 the great cataract can be obtained is a disgrace to the 
 State, the nation, and the civilization of the age.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Poetry in the Table Rock albums — Poems by Colonel Porter, Willis G. 
 Clark, Lord Morpeth, Jose Maria Heredia, A. S. Ridgely, Mrs. 
 Sigourney, and J. G. C. Brainard. 
 
 BEFORE the last fall of Table Rock, there stood 
 upon it for many years a comfortable summer-house, 
 where people could take refuge from the spray, look at 
 the Falls, partake of luncheon, and procure guides and 
 dresses to go under the sheet. In the sitting-room was a 
 large round table, on which were placed a number of 
 albums, as they were called. In these visitors could write 
 whatever thoughts or sentiments might be suggested by 
 the scene. With the grand reality before them but few 
 persons attempted anything serious, by far the greater 
 number adopting the facetious vein. It was emphatically 
 light literature. One or two collections of it have been 
 published, furnishing the reader with only a modicum of 
 sense to an intolerable quantity of nonsense. 
 
 The following specimens are better than the average : 
 
 " To view Niagara Falls, one day, 
 
 A Parson and a Tailor took their way. 
 The Parson cried, while rapt in wonder 
 And list'ning to the cataract's thunder: 
 ' Lord ! how thy works amaze our eyes, 
 And fill our hearts with vast surprise ! ' 
 The Tailor merely made this note: 
 ' Lord ! what a place to sponge a coat i ' "
 
 154 NIAGARA. 
 
 "THOUGHTS ON VISITING NIAGARA. 
 
 " I wonder how long you've been a roarin' 
 At this infernal rate : 
 I wonder if all you've been a pourin' 
 Could be ciphered on a slate. 
 
 " I wonder how such a thund'rin' sounded 
 When all New York was woods ; 
 I suppose some Indians have been drownded 
 When rains have raised your floods. 
 
 " I wonder if wild stags and buffaloes 
 Hav'nt stood where now I stand ; 
 Well, 'spose — bein' scared at first — they stub'd their toes, 
 I wonder where they'd land ! 
 
 " I wonder if the rainbow's been a shinin' 
 Since sunrise at creation ; 
 And this waterfall been underminin' 
 With constant spatteration ! 
 
 " That Moses never mentioned ye, I've wonder'd, 
 While othei- things describin' ; 
 My conscience ! how loud you must have tliunder'd 
 While the deluge was subsidin' ! 
 
 " My thoughts are strange, magnificent, and deep 
 While I look down on thee. 
 Oh ! what a splendid place for washing sheep 
 Niagara would be ! 
 
 " And oh ! what a tremendous water power 
 Is wasted o'er its edge ! 
 One man might furnish all the world with flour 
 With a single privilege. 
 
 " I wonder how many times the lakes have all 
 Been emptied over here ?
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 55 
 
 Why Clinton didn't feed the Grand Canawi 
 From hence, I think is queer." 
 
 The most graceful verses on Niagara ever written by 
 a resident are the following by the late Colonel Porter, 
 who was an artist both with the pencil and the pen. 
 They were written for a young relative in playful ex- 
 planation of a sketch he had drawn at the top of a page 
 in her album, representing the Falls in the distance, and 
 an Indian chief and two Europeans in the foreground : 
 
 " An Artist, underneath his sign (a masterpiece, of course) 
 Had written, to prevent mistakes, 'This represents a horse ' : 
 So ere I send my Album Sketch, lest connoisseurs should err, 
 I think it well my Pen should be my Art's interpreter. 
 
 " A chieftain of the Iroquois, clad in a bison's skin. 
 
 Had led two travelers through the wood, La Salle and Hennepin. 
 He points, and there they, standing, gaze upon the ceaseless flow 
 Of waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago. 
 
 " Those three are gone, and little heed our worldly gain or loss — 
 The Chief, the Soldier of the Sword, the Soldier of the Cross. 
 One died in battle, one in bed, and one by secret foe ; 
 But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago. 
 
 " Ah, me ! what myriads of men, since then, have come and gone ; 
 What states have risen and decayed, what prizes lost and won ; 
 What varied tricks the juggler. Time, has played with all below : 
 I^ut the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago. 
 
 " What troops of tourists have encamped upon the river's brink; 
 What poets shed from countless quills Niagaras of ink ; 
 What artist armies tried to fix the evanescent bow 
 Of the waters falling as -they fell two hundred years ago.
 
 156 NIAGARA. 
 
 " And stately inns feed scores of guests from well replenished 
 
 larder, 
 And hackmen drive their horses hard, but drive a bargain 
 
 harder ; 
 And screaming locomotives rush in anger to and fro : 
 But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago. 
 
 '* And brides of every age and clime frequent the island's bower, 
 And gaze from off the stone-built perch — hence called the 
 
 Bridal Tower — 
 And many a lunar belle goes forth to meet a lunar beau. 
 By the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago. 
 
 " And bridges bind thy breast, O stream ! and buzzing mill- 
 wheels turn, 
 To show, like Samson, thou art forced thy daily bread to earn : 
 And steamers splash thy milk-white waves, exulting as they go, 
 But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago. 
 
 " Thy banks no longer are the same that early travelers found 
 them. 
 But break and crumble now and then like other banks around 
 
 them ; 
 And on their verge our life sweeps on — alternate joy and woe; 
 But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago. 
 
 " Thus phantoms of a by-gone age have melted like the spray. 
 And in our turn we too shall pass, the phantoms of to-day: 
 But the armies of the coming time shall watch the ceaseless 
 
 flow 
 Of waters faUing as they fell two hundred years ago." 
 
 On turning to the more serious poems that have been 
 written on the theme, the reader naturally experiences a 
 feeling of disappointment that a scene which has filled and 
 charmed so many eyes should have found so few inter-
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 157 
 
 preters. Only those who see Niagara know how fast the 
 tongue is bound when the thought struggles most for 
 utterance. One who seems to have experienced this 
 feeling thus expresses it : 
 
 " I came to see ; 
 I thought to write ; 
 I am but dumb." 
 
 The late Mr. Willis G. Clark thus expands the same 
 sentiment : 
 
 " Here speaks the voice of God — let man be dumb. 
 Nor with his vain aspiring hither come. 
 That voice impels the hollow-sounding floods, 
 And like a Presence fills the distant woods. 
 These groaning rocks the Almighty's finger piled; 
 For ages here his painted bow has smiled, 
 Mocking the changes and the chance of time — 
 Eternal, beautiful, serene, sublime ! " 
 
 The following from the Table Rock Album was written 
 by the late Lord Morpeth : 
 
 NIAGARA FALLS. — BY LORD MORPETH. 
 
 " There's nothing great or bright, thou glorious Fall ! 
 Thou mayest not to the fancy's sense recall. 
 The thunder-riven cloud, the lightning's leap. 
 The stirring of the chambers of the deep ; 
 Earth's emerald green and many tinted dyes. 
 The fleecy whiteness of the upper skies ; 
 The tread of armies thickening as they come. 
 The boom of cannon and the beat of drum ;
 
 158 NIAGARA. 
 
 The brow of beauty and the form of grace, 
 
 The passion and the prowess of our race ; 
 
 The song of Homer in its loftiest hour, 
 
 The unresisted sweep of human power ; 
 
 Britannia's trident on the azure sea, 
 
 America's young shout of Liberty ! 
 
 Oh ! may the waves which madden in thy deep 
 
 There spend their rage nor chmb the encirchng steep ; 
 
 And till the conflict of thy surges cease 
 
 The nations on thy banks repose in peace." 
 
 The extracts below are from a poem written after a 
 visit to the Falls by Jose Maria Heredia, and translated 
 from the Spanish by William Cullen Bryant : 
 
 " NIAGARA. 
 
 " Tremendous torrent! for an instant hush 
 The terrors of thy voice, and cast aside 
 Those wide involving shadows, that my eyes 
 May see the fearful beauty of thy face ! 
 
 " Thou flowest on in quiet, till thy waves 
 
 Grow broken 'midst the rocks; thy current then 
 
 Shoots onward like the irresistible course 
 
 Of destiny. Ah, terribly they rage, — 
 
 The hoarse and rapid whirlpools there ! My brain 
 
 Grows wild, my senses wander, as 1 gaze 
 
 Upon the hurrying waters ; and my sight 
 
 Vainly would follow, as toward the verge 
 
 Sweeps the wide torrent. Waves innumerable 
 
 Meet there and madden, — waves innumerable 
 
 Urge on and overtake the waves before, 
 
 And disappear in thunder and in foam.
 
 5- 159 
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENi. 
 
 " They reach, they leap the barrier,— the abyss 
 Swallows insatiable the sinking waves. 
 A thousand rainbows arch them, and woods 
 Are deafened with the roar. The violent shock 
 Shatters to vapor the descending sheets. 
 A cloudy whirlwind fills the gulf, and heaves 
 The mighty pyramid of circling mist 
 To heaven. * * * * 
 
 What seeks my restless eye ? Why are not here, 
 About the jaws of this abyss, the palms, — 
 Ah, the delicious palms,— that on the plains 
 Of my own native Cuba spring and spread 
 Their thickly foliaged summits to the sun. 
 And, in the breathings of the ocean air 
 Wave soft beneath the heaven's unspotted blue? 
 
 " But no, Niagara, — thy forest pines 
 Are fitter coronal for thee. The palm, 
 The effeminate myrtle and pale rose may grow 
 In gardens and give out their fragrance there. 
 Unmanning him who breathes it. Thine it is 
 To do a nobler office. Generous minds 
 Behold thee, and are moved and learn to rise 
 Above earth's frivolous pleasures; they partake 
 Thy grandeur at the utterance of thy name. 
 
 " Dread torrent, that with wonder and with fear 
 Dost overwhelm the soul of him who looks 
 Upon thee, and dost bear it from itself, — 
 Whence hast thou thy beginning? Who supplies, 
 Age after age, thy unexhausted springs? 
 What power hath ordered that, when all thy weight 
 Descends into the deep, the swollen waves 
 Rise not and roll to overwhelm the earth ?
 
 ^^O NIAGARA. 
 
 " The Lord hath opened his omnipotent hand, 
 Covered thy face with clouds and given his voice 
 To thy down-rushing waters : he hath girt 
 Thy terrible forehead with his radiant bow. 
 I see thy never-resting waters run, 
 And I bethink me how the tide of time 
 Sweeps to eternity." 
 
 The lyric from which the following extracts are taken 
 was written by Mr. A. S. Ridgely, of Baltimore, Md. : 
 
 " Man lays his scepter on the ocean waste, 
 His footprints stiffen in the Alpine snows, 
 But only God moves visibly in thee, 
 O King of Floods ! that with resistless fate 
 Down plungest in thy mighty width and depth. 
 * * * Amazement, terror, fill. 
 Impress and overcome the gazer's soul. 
 Man's schemes and dreams and petty littleness 
 Lie open and revealed. Himself far less — 
 Kneeling before thy great confessional — 
 Than are the bubbles of the passing tides. 
 Words may not picture thee, nor pencil paint 
 Thy might of waters, volumed vast and deep ; 
 Thy many-toned and all-pervading voice; 
 Thy wood-crown'd Isle, fast anchor'd on the brink 
 Of the dread precipice ; thy double stream. 
 Divided, yet in beauty unimpaired ; 
 Thy wat'ry caverns and thy crystal walls; 
 Thy crest of sunlight and thy depths of shade, 
 Boiling and seething like a Phlegethon 
 Amid the wind-swept and convolving spray. 
 Steady as Faith and beautiful as Hope. 
 There, of beam and cloud the fair creation, 
 The rainbow arches its ethereal hues. 
 From flint and granite in compacturc strong.
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. l6l 
 
 Not with steel thrice harden'd — but with the wave 
 Soft and translucent — did the new-bom Time 
 Chisel thy altars. Here hast thou ever poured 
 Earth's grand libation to Eternity; 
 Thy misty incense rising unto God — 
 The God that was and is and is to be." 
 
 Mrs. Sigourney wrote the following poem, it is said, 
 during a visit to Table Rock : 
 
 "apostrophe to NIAGARA. 
 
 " Flow on, forever, in thy glorious robe 
 Of terror and of beauty. God has set 
 His rainbow on thy forehead, and the clouds 
 Mantled around thy feet. And He doth give 
 Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him 
 Eternally, bidding the lip of man 
 Keep silence, and upon thy rocky altar pour 
 Incense of awe-struck praise. 
 
 And who can dare 
 To lift the insect trump of earthly hope, 
 Or love, or sorrow, 'mid the peal sublime 
 Of thy tremendous hymn ! Even ocean shrinks 
 Back from thy brotherhood, and his wild waves 
 Retire abashed ; for he doth sometimes seem 
 To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall 
 His wearied billows from their vieing play. 
 And lull them to a cradle calm : but thou. 
 With everlasting, undecaying tide 
 Dost rest not night nor day. 
 
 The morning stars, 
 When first they sang o'er young creation's birth, 
 Heard thy deep anthem ; and those wrecking fires 
 That wait the archangel's signal, to dissolve 
 The solid earth, shall find Jehovah's name 
 II
 
 l62 NIAGARA. 
 
 Graven, as with a thousand spears 
 On thine unfathomed page. Each Iccfy bough 
 That hfts itself within thy proud domain 
 Doth gather greenness from thy living spray, 
 And tremble at the baptism. Lo ! yon birds 
 Do venture boldly near, bathing their wings 
 Amid thy foam and mist. 'Tis meet for them 
 To touch thy garment here, or lightly stir 
 The snowy leaflets of this vapor wreath. 
 Who sport unharmed on the fleecy cloud. 
 And listen to the echoing gate of heaven 
 Without reproof. But as for us, it seems 
 Scarce lawful with our broken tones to speak 
 Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint 
 Thy glorious features with our pencil's point, 
 Or woo thee with the tablet of a song, 
 Were profanation. 
 
 Thou dost make the soul 
 A wondering witness of thy majesty ; 
 And while it rushes with delirious joy 
 To tread thy vestibule, dost chain its step. 
 And check its rapture, with the humbling view 
 Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand 
 In the dread presence of the Invisible, 
 As if to answer to its God through thee." 
 
 The following lines were written by the late John 
 G. C. Brainard, who never saw the Falls. They were 
 dashed ofif at a single short sitting, for the head of the 
 literary column of the Connecticut Mirror, of Hartford, 
 which he then edited : 
 
 "the falls of NIAGARA. 
 
 " The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain 
 While I look upward to thee. It would seem
 
 LOCAL HISTORY AND INCIDENTS. 1 63 
 
 As if God pour'd thee from his ' hollow hand ' 
 
 And hung his bow upon thine awful front, 
 
 And spoke in that loud voice which seem'd to him 
 
 Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake, 
 
 'The sound of many waters,' and had bade 
 
 Thy flood to chronicle the ages back. 
 
 And notch his cen'tries in the eternal rocks. 
 
 *' Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we 
 That hear the question of that voice sublime? 
 Oh ! what are all the notes that ever rung 
 From War's vain trumpet by thy thundering side ! 
 Yea, what is all the riot man can make 
 In his short life to thy unceasing roar ! 
 And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him 
 Who drown'd a world and heap'd the waters far 
 Above its loftiest mountains? — a light wave 
 That breaks and whispers of its Maker's might."
 
 PART IV. 
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS 
 OF THE WORLD. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Yosemite — Vernal — Nevada — Yellowstone — Shoshone — St. Maurice — 
 Montmorency. 
 
 FOR the purpose of comparison it may be interesting 
 to note other cataracts in the United States, and in 
 other parts of the world, and also some of the remarkable 
 rapids, which may be successors to what were once per- 
 pendicular falls. For descriptions of those in foreign 
 countries we are chiefly indebted to the geographical 
 gazetteers and the journals of Humboldt, Livingstone, 
 Bohle, and Stanley ; for information regarding the cata- 
 racts of Norway we are indebted to Murray's " Norway, 
 Denmark and Sweden." 
 
 In the United States, after Niagara, the first to claim 
 our attention are the Falls of the Yosemite, so graphically 
 and scientifically made known to us in the second vol- 
 ume of Professor J. D. Whitney's Geological Report for 
 California.
 
 <-^rTf^' 
 
 

 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. 165 
 
 Before describing them it is necessary to note the 
 physical features of the region in which they are placed. 
 The valley of the Yosemite forms a portion of the bed 
 of the Merced River, which flows through it and passes 
 from it by a wild, deep caiion into the San Joaquin. It 
 is about eight miles long and from half a mile to a mile 
 wide, with a sharp bend to the west, about two miles 
 from its upper end. To this place the Merced and two 
 tributaries, called the North and South Forks, have 
 come through the most rugged canons, falling nearly 
 two thousand feet in the space of two miles. 
 
 Near the southerly end of the valley is the remark- 
 able rock El Capitan, an almost vertical cliff 3,600 feet 
 high, and one of the grandest objects in the valley. 
 Just above this is the imposing pile called the Cathedral 
 Rocks, and behind these, connected with them, two 
 slender and beautiful granite columns called the Cathe- 
 dral Spires. 
 
 Two miles above, on the opposite side, is the row of 
 summits, rising like steps one above another, named the 
 Three Brothers. On the other side, in the angle of the 
 valley, stands Sentinel Rock, so called from its fancied 
 resemblance to a watch-tower. Three-fourths of a mile 
 in a southerly direction from this is the Sentinel Dome, 
 more than four thousand feet high and affording from its 
 summit a most magnificent view. Following up the North 
 Fork, just at the entrance of the canon, rises the Half 
 Dome, the grandest and loftiest in the Yosemite Valley, 
 an inaccessible crest of granite, having an elevation — 
 according to Prof Brewer — of 6,000 feet. On the oppO" 
 IIA
 
 l66 NIAGARA. 
 
 site side of the same caiion stands the North Dome, 
 another of those rounded masses of granite so charac- 
 teristic of the sierras. Appearing as a buttress to this 
 is Washington's Column, and below this the Royal 
 Arches, an immense arched cavity, formed by the 
 giving way and sliding down of portions of the rock, 
 and presenting, in the upper part, a vaulted appear- 
 ance. 
 
 In the angle formed by the Merced with the South 
 Fork is the symmetrical and beautiful North Dome. 
 This valley is the most remarkable basin thus far found 
 in the world, and in view of its gigantic and impressive 
 scenery we cannot but marvel at its size — a mere cup 
 or trough in the midst of one of the sublimest of 
 geological formations. This tiny strip of wonder-land 
 is, as we have seen, only eight miles long and less than 
 three-quarters of a mile average width. 
 
 Beginning at the south-westerly end of the valley we 
 first reach, in ascending it, the Bridal Veil, formed by one 
 of the torrents that feed the Merced River. It is i,ooo 
 feet in height, the body of water not being large, but 
 sufficient to produce the most picturesque effect. As it 
 is swayed backward and forward by the force of the 
 wind, it seems to flutter like a white veil. 
 
 Near the head of the valley, where it turns sharply 
 toward the west, we have before us the Yosemite Fall. 
 " From the edge of the cliff to the bottom of the valley the 
 perpendicular distance is, in round numbers, 2,550 feet. 
 The fall is not one perpendicular sheet. There is first a 
 vertical descent of 1,500 feet, when the water strikes on
 
 Opposite pa^e 166. 
 
 Bridal Veil Fall.
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. 1 6/ 
 
 what seems to be a projecting ledge, but which is in 
 reahty a shell" or recess about a third of a mile back from 
 the front of the lower portion of the cliff. Across this 
 shelf the water rushes downward in a foaming torrent on 
 a slope, equal to a perpendicular height of 626 feet, when 
 it makes a final plunge of about 400 feet on to a low talus 
 of rock at the foot of the precipice. As these various 
 falls are in one vertical plane, the effect of the whole 
 from the opposite side of the valley is nearly as grand, 
 and perhaps even more picturesque, than it would be 
 if the descent was made in one sheet from the top to 
 the bottom. The mass of water in the 1,500 feet fall 
 is too great to allow of its being entirely broken up 
 into spray, but it widens very much as it descends, 
 and as the sheet vibrates backward and forward with 
 the varying pressure of the wind, which acts with 
 immense force on this long column of water, the effect 
 is indescribably grand." 
 
 The first fall in the canon of the Merced is the 
 Vernal, "a simple perpendicular sheet 475 feet high, the 
 rock behind it being a perfectly square-cut mass of 
 granite. Ascending to the summit of the Vernal Fall by 
 a series of ladders, and passing a succession of rapids and 
 cascades of great beauty, we come to the last great fall 
 of the Merced — the Nevada, which has a descent of 639 
 feet, and near its summit has a peculiar twist caused by 
 the mass of water falling on a projecting ledge which 
 throws it off to one side, adding greatly to the picturesque 
 effect. It must be ranked as one of the finest cataracts 
 in the world, taking into consideration its height, the
 
 l68 NIAGARA. 
 
 volume and purity of the water, and the whole character 
 of the scenery which surrounds it." 
 
 The fall from end to end of the valley proper is about 
 fifty feet. "Its smooth and brilliant color, diversified as it 
 is with groves of trees and carpeted with showy flowers, 
 offers the most wonderful contrast to the towering masses 
 of neutral and light purple-tinted rocks by which it is 
 surrounded. Its elevation above the sea is estimated 
 at 4,060 feet, and the cliffs and domes about it from 
 3,000 to 5,000 feet higher." It is a source of great 
 satisfaction to the lover of nature that this famous and 
 favored territory, so studded with grandeur and fretted 
 with beauty, has wisely been set apart by Governmental 
 authority to minister to the higher needs and better 
 instincts of man. 
 
 The valley of the Yellowstone east of the Rocky 
 Mountains in the north, like that of the Yosemite west 
 of the sierras of the Pacific slope, is another wonder- 
 land, presenting a bewildering variety of land and water 
 formations which, in turn, awe, charm, fascinate, or amuse, 
 but always astonish, the beholder. 
 
 Among the most interesting objects in the Yellow- 
 stone Valley are the upper and lower falls of the 
 Yellowstone River. " No language," says Professor 
 Hayden, "can do justice to the wonderful grandeur 
 and beauty of these scenes, and it is only through the 
 eye that the mind can gather anything like an ade- 
 quate conception of them. The two falls are not more 
 than a fourth of a mile apart. Above the upper fall 
 the Yellowstone flows through a grassy, meadow-like
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. 169 
 
 valley with a calm, steady current, giving no warning 
 until very near the fall that it is about to rush over 
 a precipice 140 feet high, and then, within a quarter 
 of a mile, again leap down a distance of 350 feet. 
 After the waters roll over the upper descent they flow 
 with great rapidity along the upper flat, rocky bottom 
 which spreads out to near double the width above the 
 falls, and continues thus until near the fall, when the 
 channel again contracts and the waters seem, as it were, 
 to gather into a compact mass and plunge over the 
 descent of 350 feet in detached drops of foam as white as 
 snow." 
 
 On the Snake or Lewis River, the largest tributary of 
 the Columbia River, are three falls, the greatest of which 
 is the Shoshone in Idaho, where the river, with a width of 
 six hundred yards, is said to be of so great a depth that 
 it discharges nearly as much water as the Niagara, over a 
 precipice about two hundred feet high. This grand fall is 
 situated in the midst of magnificent scenery, and is sur- 
 rounded by a fertile country. 
 
 Another lesser Niagara is found in the north-east, in 
 the river St. Maurice, the largest tributary of the St. 
 Lawrence, which falls into it from the north below Three 
 Rivers and about twenty-two miles above its mouth. The 
 fall — the Shawenegan — is the same height as Niagara, 
 and while the width and depth of the river are not given, 
 the volume of water pouring over the precipice is said to 
 be forty thousand feet per second, a supply sufficient to 
 produce a grand and impressive cataract. 
 
 Eight miles below Quebec the river Montmorency dis-
 
 \yO NIAGARA. 
 
 charges directly into the St. Lawrence, over a chff two 
 hundred and fifty feet high, with a width of one hundred 
 and fifty feet. The falHng foam-flecked sheet presents 
 a beautiful and picturesque appearance. It is unique as 
 being the only known instance in which a tributary falls 
 perpendicularly into the main stream.
 
 Opposite pane 
 
 Nevada Falls.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Tequendama — Kaiteeur — Paulo Affonso — Keel-fos — Riunkan-fos — Sarp- 
 fos — Staubbach — Zambesi or Victoria — Murchison — Cavery — Schafl- 
 hausen. 
 
 IN South America is the remarkable fall of Tequen- 
 dama, on the river Bogota, which, at this point, is only 
 one hundred and forty feet wide, and is divided into nu- 
 merous narrow and deep channels which finally unite in 
 two of nearly the same width, and make a perpendicular 
 plunge of six hundred and fifty feet to the plain below. 
 "The cataract," says Humboldt, "forms an assemblage 
 of everything that is sublimely picturesque in beautiful 
 scenery. It is not one of the highest falls, but there 
 scarcely exists a cataract which, from so lofty a height, 
 precipitates so voluminous a mass of water. The body, 
 when it first parts from its bed, forms a broad arch of 
 glassy appearance; a little lower down it assumes a fleecy 
 form, and ultimately, in its progress, it shoots forth in 
 millions of smaller masses, which chase each other like 
 sky-rockets. The attending noises are quite astounding, 
 and dense clouds of vapor soar upward, presenting beauti- 
 ful rainbows in their ascent. What gives a remarkable 
 appearance to the scene is the great difference in the vege- 
 tation surrounding different parts of it." At the summit 
 the traveler " finds himself surrounded, not only with
 
 172 NIAGARA. 
 
 begonias and the yellow bark tree (Sandal), but with oaks, 
 elms, and other plants, the growth of which recall to mind 
 the vegetation of Europe, when suddenly he discovers, as 
 from a terrace and at his feet, a country producing the 
 palm, the banana, and the sugar-cane. The cause of the 
 difference is not ascertained, the difference of altitude — 
 one hundred and seventy-five metres — not being suflficient 
 to exert much influence on the atmosphere." 
 
 Another and grander South American fall, of compara- 
 tively recent discovery, is the Kaiteeur, so called, in the 
 river Potaro, a large affluent of the Essequibo, the largest 
 river in British Guiana. The volume of water is greater 
 than that in the Bogota, and falls in a single column of 
 dazzling whiteness seven hundred and forty feet into a 
 vast basin below. The ascending cloud of spray, the 
 solemn monotone of the descending flood, the extreme 
 wildness of the primitive forest, and the luxuriant and 
 abundant growth of tropical vines and shrubs, and their 
 gorgeous colors, make the scene impressive. 
 
 " There is in Brazil," says Elisee Reclus, " not far from 
 Bahia, the wonderful cataract of San Francisco, known by 
 the name of Paulo Affonso. At the foot of a long slope 
 over which it glides in rapids, the river, one of the most 
 considerable of the South American continent, whirls 
 round and round as it enters a kind of funnel-shaped 
 cavity, roughened with rocks, and suddenly contracting 
 its width, dashes against three rocky masses reared up like 
 towers at the edge of the abyss ; then dividing into four 
 vast columns of water, it plunges down into a gulf two 
 hundred and forty-six feet in depth. The principal column,
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. 1 73 
 
 being confined in a perpendicular passage, is scarcely sixty- 
 six feet in width, but it must be of an enormous thicl^ness 
 (depth), as it forms almost the whole body of the river. 
 Half way up, the channel which contains it bends to the 
 left, and the falling mass, changing its direction, passes 
 under a vertical column of water, which penetrates through 
 it from one side to the other, and breaking it up into a 
 chaos of surges, converts it into a sea of foam. Sometimes 
 the white, misty vapor may be seen, and the thunder 
 of the water may be heard at a distance of more than 
 fifteen miles." The spray and roar of Niagara are often 
 seen and heard at Toronto, forty miles away, across 
 Lake Ontario. 
 
 In Norway is found the highest perpendicular fall in 
 the world that is constantly supplied with water. It is 
 the Keel-fos, formed by a mountain stream that falls two 
 thousand feet into the Navoens Fjord near Gudhaven, but 
 the water becomes a mere billowy bank of mist before it 
 reaches the bottom. 
 
 The Riunkan-fos is another Norwegian cataract in the 
 outlet of Lake Mjosvard, which pours through a wild, 
 rock-studded slope until it reaches a precipice, on the 
 brink of which it is divided by a huge mass of rock into 
 two channels. Thence it falls eight hundred and eighty 
 feet into a dark basin at its foot, from" which water- 
 rockets and sharp jets of foam shoot up and out in all 
 directions. The intense whiteness of the fleecy column 
 is indescribable. 
 
 A still more famous Norwegian cararact is the Sarp- 
 fos in the Stor-Elven, formed by the junction of the
 
 174 NIAGARA. 
 
 Lougen and Glommen, the largest of the Norwegian 
 rivers. Like the Riunkan-fos the stream is greatly con- 
 tracted in a rocky gorge, and at the edge of the cliff is 
 divided into two channels which, however, soon unite in 
 a fall of one hundred feet upon huge masses of rock, 
 through and over which it rushes tumultuously for a short 
 distance, and then flows quietly into the sea. The vol- 
 ume of water is unusuUy large for a purely mountain 
 river, being in the gorge at the top of the fall one hun- 
 dred and fifty feet wide and forty feet deep. The massive 
 and intensely white column contrasted with the dark green 
 foliage of the solemn pines, and the darker rocks about it, 
 and the deep blue water into which it falls, produce a 
 vivid impression on the mind of the beholder. The Stor- 
 Elven here presents the curious phenomenon of a stream 
 changing, not from a perpendicular fall to a rapid, but the 
 reverse, from a rapid to a perpendicular fall. A great 
 portion of the right bank of the river at the fall, and for a 
 considerable distance below, is chiefly composed of a stiff" 
 blue clay, and the river once flowed past Sarpsborg, a 
 mile below, in a succession of magnificent rapids. At 
 that time a superb mansion with numerous out-buildings 
 stood at the termination of the rapids. On the 5th of 
 February, 1 702, the mansion, together with everything in 
 and about it, sunk into an abyss six hundred feet deep, 
 and was entirely buried beneath the water. The walls of 
 the house were of unusual strength and thickness, with 
 several high towers, but the whole was buried out of sight. 
 Fourteen persons and two hundred head of cattle were also 
 engulfed. The catastrophe was caused by the washing
 
 Opposite page 174. Upper Falls of the \'ello\vstone.
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. 1/5 
 
 out of the blue clay, and the undermining of the bank, 
 which then toppled over into the watery chasm. 
 
 In Switzerland is the Staubbach — dust-stream — a well 
 known fall in the canton of Berne. It has a sheer descent 
 of nearly nine hundred feet, in which the water is converted 
 into spray that is easily moved by the wind, thus giving it a 
 singularly beautiful resemblance to a white curtain floating 
 in the air. 
 
 In South Africa, Livingstone has made the public 
 acquainted with that extraordinary hiatus in the crust of 
 the earth in which the great river Zambesi is swallowed 
 up. A stream more than a thousand yards wide, dotted 
 with islands, flowing between fertile banks clothed with 
 the luxuriant and gorgeous vegetation of the tropics, with- 
 out the least preliminary break or rapid, suddenly drops 
 into a dark chasm of unknown depth, which, repeatedly 
 doubling on itself, pursues its tortuous course some forty 
 miles through the hills before emerging again into the 
 sunlight. "From Kalai," says Livingstone, " after some 
 twenty minutes' sail we came in sight of the columns of 
 vapor appropriately called smoke. * * * Five 
 
 columns now arose, and, bending in the direction of the 
 wind, they seemed placed against a low ridge covered 
 with trees. The tops of the columns at this distance (six 
 miles) appeared to mingle with the clouds. The whole 
 scene was extremely beautiful." At the brink of the chasm 
 he found the river divided into two channels of unequal width 
 by a large island called the "Garden," on account of its 
 rich vegetation. " Creeping with awe to the verge I 
 peered down into a large rent which had been made from
 
 1/6 NIAGARA. 
 
 bank to bank of the broad Zambesi, and saw that a stream 
 a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet and 
 then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen 
 or twenty yards. In looking down into this fissure on the 
 right of the island one sees nothing but a dense, white 
 cloud. From this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapor 
 exactly like steam, and it mounted two hundred or three 
 hundred feet high ; then, condensing, it changed its hue 
 into that of dark smoke, and came back in a constant 
 shower. This shower fell chiefly on the opposite side of 
 the fissure, and a few yards back from the top there 
 stands a straight- hedge of evergreen trees, whose 
 leaves are always wet. From their roots a number of 
 little rills run back into the gulf, but as they flow down 
 the steep wall the column of vapor in its ascent licks 
 them up clean off" the rock, and away they mount again. 
 They are constantly running down, but never reach the 
 bottom." 
 
 In Northern Africa the Murchison Falls in the White 
 Nile, between lakes Victoria N'yanzi and Albert N'yanzi, 
 were discovered by Sir Samuel Baker, and are de- 
 scribed by him. " Upon rounding the corner a magnifi- 
 cent sight burst suddenly upon us. On either side of the 
 river were beautifully wooded clifis rising abruptly to a 
 height of about three hundred feet; rocks were jutting out 
 from the intensely green foliage, and, rushing through a 
 gap that cleft the river exactly before us, the river itself, 
 contracted from a grand stream, was pent up in a narrow 
 gorge scarcely fifty yards in width; roaring furiously 
 through the rock-bound pass, it plunged in one leap of
 
 f^pposite page 176. 
 
 The Staubbacli — Switzerlan
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. \TJ 
 
 about one hundred and twenty feet perpendicularly into 
 a dark abyss below. The fall of water was snow-white, 
 which had a superb effect, as it contrasted with the dark 
 cliffs that walled the river, while graceful palms of the 
 tropics and wild plantains perfected the beauty of the 
 view." 
 
 A writer in Hamilton's "East Indian Gazetteer" gives 
 us an account of the cataract of Gungani Chuki in the 
 northern branch of the river Cavery. " Much the larger 
 stream is broken by projecting masses of rock into one 
 cataract of prodigious volume and three or four smaller 
 torrents. The first plunges into the river below from a 
 height variously estimated at from one hundred to one 
 hundred and fifty feet, while the others, impeded in their 
 course by intervening rocks, work their way with many 
 fantastic evolutions to a distance about two hundred feet 
 from the base of the precipice, where they all unite to 
 make a single final plunge, while the other branch of the 
 river precipitates itself in two columns from a cliff of the 
 same height, and standing nearly at right angles with 
 the main fall. • The surrounding scenery is wild in 
 the extreme, and the whole presents a very imposing 
 spectacle. 
 
 " A second cataract is formed by the southern arm of the 
 Cavery about a mile below. The channel here spreads 
 out into a magnificent expanse, which is divided into no 
 less than ten distinct torrents, which fall with infinite variety 
 of configuration over a precipice of more than one hun- 
 dred feet, but presenting no single body equal to the 
 Gungani Chuki, but the whole forming an amphitheatre 
 12
 
 1/8 NIAGARA. 
 
 of cataracts, meeting the eye in every direction along a 
 sweep of perhaps 90°, and combined with scenery of such 
 sequestered wildness that for picturesque effect it is perhaps 
 without parallel in the world." This branch of the stream 
 is used to irrigate the province of Tanjore, and the com- 
 ing of its floods is celebrated by the natives with special 
 festivities, as they consider the river to be one of their most 
 beneficent deities. 
 
 The beautiful and picturesque fall of the Rhine below 
 SchafThausen, where the water falls sixty-five feet in a 
 single column, is the admiration of all travelers.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Famous Rapids and Cascades — Niagara — Amazon — Orinoco^ 
 Parana — Nile — Livingstone. 
 
 TN all its features and characteristics the great water- 
 -*- course, including the great lakes, which feeds the 
 Niagara, is peculiar and interesting. It is more than 
 two thousand miles long ; its utmost surface-sources 
 are scarcely six hundred feet above tide- water ; its 
 bottom, at its greater depth, is more than four hundred 
 feet below tide-water. In all its course it receives less than 
 two score of affluents, and only two of these, the St. Mau- 
 rice and the Saugeen, bring to it any considerable quantity 
 of water, and no flood in any of them discolors its emerald 
 surface from shore to shore. Only fierce gales of wind 
 bring up from its own depths the sediment that can dis- 
 color its whole face. Far the greater portion of its water- 
 supply is drawn from countless hidden springs, lying 
 deep in the bosom of the earth. In all the elements of 
 beautiful, picturesque, and enchanting scenery it is 
 unrivaled. 
 
 The rapids of the Niagara just above the Falls, from 
 the Leaping Rock down through the Witches' Caldron 
 to the edge of the precipice, are nearly a mile in 
 width, and discharge ten million cubic feet of water 
 each minute. But for a combination of grandeur and
 
 l80 NIAGARA. 
 
 beauty, and for imparting a sense of almost infinite 
 power, nothing can surpass the Whirlpool Rapids below 
 the Falls, where the ten million cubic feet of water are 
 compressed into a tortuous, tumultuous channel, less 
 than four hundred feet wide. 
 
 There are many lesser rapids in the St. Lawrence, 
 from the Thousand Islands to Montreal, the passage of 
 which in the large lake steamers is an exciting voyage. 
 The constant changes of scenery at every turn and in 
 every rood of progress is almost bewildering. Then the 
 alternation of rapids and broad expanses of river, the 
 bird-like motion as the steamer sinks and sails down 
 through the rapids, and the sense of relief when it 
 seems to rise and glide over the smooth river, vary 
 and increase the excitement. There is developed in 
 one of those expanses a peculiar geological feature 
 called the Split Rock. The name is strictly accurate. 
 The descending steamer finds but one narrow chan- 
 nel, a little more than its own width, through which it 
 can pass in a stream more than half a mile wide. It 
 lies between the sharp corners of a broad, wedge- 
 shaped cleavage in an immense rock which, by some 
 convulsion of nature — not by any abrading process 
 of the elements — has been literally split downward more 
 than eighty feet. The last crooked and turbulent rapid 
 passed just before reaching Montreal is the terror of the 
 river pilots, and they never attempt its passage except by 
 daylight. From Montreal to the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
 the constantly deepening channel flows with an unbroken 
 current.
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. l8l 
 
 It is a notable fact that the great river of rivers, which 
 drains a larger territory than any other on the globe, the 
 Amazon proper, has a fall of only two hundred and ten 
 feet in a course of three thousand miles, and while it has 
 a deep channel and a uniform current of three miles 
 an hour for its whole length, it has no broken rapids. 
 But in its many great affluents rapids are numerous, 
 though not so famous as those found in other South Am- 
 erican rivers. 
 
 The river Orinoco, more remarkable in some respects 
 than the Amazon, receives the waters of four hun- 
 dred and thirty-six rivers, besides two thousand smaller 
 streams. It is one thousand five hundred miles long, is 
 navigable for seven hundred and eighty miles, and at 
 Bolivar, two hundred and fifty miles from its mouth, it is 
 four miles wide and three hundred and ninety feet deep. 
 Its famous rapids of the Apure and Maypure were visited 
 by Humboldt. At the latter, the river is two thousand 
 eight hundred and forty yards wide, and plunges down an 
 inclined plane about three miles long, making a fall equal 
 to forty feet in vertical height. It is dotted with innum- 
 erable islands which furnish a striking contrast to the vast 
 sheet of white water, presenting the singular appearance 
 of an eruption of shrub-crowned rocks in a sea of foam. 
 These islands, and its great width, constitute the peculiar 
 characteristics of this chute. 
 
 In the grandest of the South American rapids, those 
 of the river Parana, a vast volume of water from a chan- 
 nel nearly two and a half miles in width is compressed 
 into a gorge only sixty-six yards wide, through which
 
 1 82 NIAGARA. 
 
 the flood dashes down a slope of sixty degrees inclina- 
 tion and fifty-six feet perpendicular fall. Its roar — a 
 perpetual monotone — is heard thirty miles away. 
 
 Hardly less remarkable than the rapids of the South 
 American rivers are those of the two great African rivers, 
 the Nile and the Congo, or, as Mr. Stanley has re-chris- 
 tened the latter, the Livingstone. The Nile may be 
 compared to a vast tree with its huge delta-roots in the 
 Mediterranean, its boll extending up through a rainless 
 desert nearly one thousand five hundred miles to meet its 
 numerous branches which stretch up into the mountains 
 of Abyssinia, and the vast basin south of the equator 
 that contains the great lakes of Victoria N'yanzi and 
 Albert N'yanzi. From these branches in each year, at a 
 fixed season, are poured down the sediment-charged waters 
 which irrigate and fertilize an immense valley that would 
 otherwise be only a parched and desert waste. 
 
 Without specifying the data for his calculations, Mr. 
 Stanley, who saw them both, states that the volume of 
 the Livingstone is ten times greater than that of the Nile. 
 Its course is interrupted by two series of cataracts, or 
 rather a combination of cascades and rapids. The first 
 series, seven in number, occurs within four hundred 
 miles of its source, and consists of the Stanley Falls, 
 occupying different points in a channel sixty-two miles 
 long. Its banks are of moderate elevation above its bed, 
 and in the long, bright, equatorial days the leaping, 
 sparkling, foaming waters present a scene of dazzling 
 brilliancy. In the second series, named by Mr. Stanley 
 the Livingstone Falls, there are thirty-two cascades, more
 
 OTHER FAMOUS CATARACTS. 1 83 
 
 extensive and imposing than those of the first. The 
 river, after a gentle descent of nearly one thousand miles, 
 and after receiving many large affluents, reaches the first 
 of these impetuous torrents where all its waters are com- 
 pressed into a narrow gorge only four hundred and fifty 
 feet wide, and at a single point near the right bank where 
 a sounding was possible, Mr. Stanley found a depth of 
 one hundred and thirty-eight feet. 
 
 The remaining thirty-one cascades are distributed 
 along a channel one hundred and fifty-five miles in 
 length, between banks from fifty to six hundred feet high, 
 and having a fall of one thousand one hundred feet. The 
 dimensions here given indicate that these rapids are 
 second, in power and impressiveness, only to those above 
 the Whirlpool of Niagara.
 
 o 

 
 ^S• 
 
 .\W[1)N1VERS/A 
 >- 
 
 
 '^/Sa]AIN(l-3Wv 
 
 ^(i/ojiivDJo'^ ^.aojnvjjo^ 
 
 nr r«Mrr»^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped belc. 
 
 ■\LIFOfi'/(A 
 
 '^. 
 
 vmv 
 
 MN(13WV 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 :x3 
 
 
 -< 
 ■S5 
 
 .•^^^ 
 
 
 ^A 
 
 CO 
 
 \ JUNU6 1991 
 
 ^ lU/LPO 
 
 m 2 WKS FROM DATE RECEIVED 
 
 
 \M1 
 
 I 
 
 
 I 
 kRYQc 
 
 
 315 
 
 != <: 
 
 ^^^OJllVDJO^ ^^fiOJIWJJO^^ ^rilJONVSOl^"^
 
 ilOSANCflfj^ 
 
 «S3 i ir^ ^ 
 
 -^llIBRARYQc 
 
 ^5a3AINn3WV^ '^.JOdllVDJO^ 
 
 
 s 3 1158 01028 2498 i 
 
 :lOSANCElfj}> 
 
 'm\m\^ 
 
 ^OfCAlIFO/?^ 
 
 ^OFCAIIFO/?^ ^^WEUNIVERS-/^ ^lOSANCElfj 
 
 ,yp,^°VM.f'N.?^.'?IONAL LIBRARY FACILITY "^O""^ 
 
 ^^AavaaiH^"^ '■^om^^.. 
 
 
 ummoA 
 
 'Homyi'S^ 
 
 \WM)NIVER% 
 
 o 
 
 %130NVS01^ 
 
 ^lOSANCElfj> 
 
 <^\mmo/: 
 
 <^\\mmyo. 
 
 %a3AINfl-3WV^ ^<!/0JllVJJO^ 
 
 \{)i\miss 
 
 0FCA1IF0% ,\WFl)NIV£RS//i 
 
 ?AavHani^ 
 
 
 A;>:lOSANCElfj> 
 o 
 
 '^/yfiiAiNniw'i^ 
 
 <\,OF-CAllF0/?,i^ 
 
 ^;OFCAIIFO/?^ 
 
 >&AJivHgn-Ti'^ ^<?AHvagiHN 
 
 aOSANCElfj> 
 
 'mmmi'^ 
 
 ^^^^t•LiBRARY•Qc 
 
 ^VLIBRARYOa 
 
 ^.J/OJIIVDJO^ 
 
 ^<yojnv3jo'^ 
 
 ^WE•UNiV[R5/A 
 
 - , ^ ^ o 
 
 <ril30NVS01^ 
 
 v^lOSANCElfj 
 
 i 
 
 %a3AINfl-3\< 
 
 ^lOSANCElfj> 
 
 /'sajAiNn-awv 
 
 .^jOFCAlIFOff^ 
 
 -V-OFCAIIFO/?^ .^t^EUNIVERS-//) 
 
 >'<?AavaHiii^ ^(?Aavaaii-# 
 
 o 
 
 ^lOSANCElfj 
 o 
 
 "^/iaaAiNii-JVi 
 
 MllBRARYd?/r 
 
 \WEUNIVER5'/A 
 
 '<!/ojnv3jo'^ ^riiJONVsoi^"^ 
 
 ^lOSANCElfx> 
 
 o 
 
 c= <. 
 
 v7m\iN'nmv 
 
 ^HIBRARYQ^ A^llIBRARY^ 
 
 ^<!/ojnv:!jo'^ \m\m\^