496 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ment before his eyes one looks and looks in vain for a depauperated 

 and enfeebled cataract. The flow of water is of course diminished, 

 but to the occasional visitor it is but mathematically perceptible. 

 Citizens of Niagara Falls who have the cataract daily before the eye 

 have insisted that the loss of water is perceptible, and that such loss 

 is felt in other ways is seen in the now annual gorging of the ice 

 in the American channel at the upper end of Goat Island, which lays 

 bare the American channel, sends all its water to Canada, and which 

 very rarely happened when the depth of the water was normal. 



The two active American companies are not going to use any less 

 water than now, but are vigorously increasing their output and build- 

 ing new power houses to meet their growing market. Indeed, one of 

 them, realizing its close approach to statutory limits, has established 

 itself on the Canadian side. These two companies are permitted to 

 consume the following amounts of water: 



Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power & Manufacturing Co 7,700 cu. ft. per sec. 



Niagara Falls Power Co 8,600 " 



167300 " 



The water abstracted by these companies is in no small degree 

 wasted, that is to say the power produced is no equable measure of the 

 amount of water taken from the river. This page carries a picture 

 familiar to a thousand eyes — the view of the American bank below 

 the steel arch bridge. This has been termed ' the backyard view of 

 Niagara. The little cascades springing from holes in the side of 

 the bank at various heights are the wasteways of the factories above. 

 Some of these cascades are now encased in flumes and made pro- 

 ductive at the bottom of the cliff, but this is only a recent change 

 designed to save the wasted power, but involving the construction of a 

 row of factories or wheel pits all along the edge of the water. The 

 fall from the height of waters where these two companies have their 

 intakes, to the base of the cataract, is approximately 224 feet, far be- 

 yond the working possibility of the turbine pit. The outrush of water 

 at the base of the cliff near the bridge anchorage is the discharge of 

 the great tunnel of the Niagara Falls Power Co., which is the tail-race 

 from the wheel pits far back up the city and far above in the rocks. 



On the Canadian side the activity in the erection of power works 

 has been more strenuous. Utter devastation of the natural beauties of 

 Queen Victoria Park, the demolition of islands and creeks, the ex- 

 cavation of the rock surface to the complete obliteration of well-known 

 landmarks, have been the accompaniments of the unparalleled en- 

 deavors and achievements here. Whoever has visited this part of the 

 Falls region since the beginning of these gigantic operations has sought 

 in vain for the Dufferin Islands and Crescent Island, and what must 

 have seemed to him an inextricable chaos of rock excavations, of 



