THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



OCTOBER, 1908 



SPOLIATION OF THE FALLS OF NIAGARA 1 



By Dr. J. W. SPENCER 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 



1. First Reference to Niagara — Champlain. — A few weeks hence 

 there will be celebrated the three-hundredth anniversary of the founda- 

 tion of the city of Quebec, by the Great Champlain. Out of this grew 

 the Dominion of Canada. Although the establishment of the little 

 settlement on the St. Lawrence River made Champlain most famous, 

 it is not in this that his chief greatness lay, but rather in his wonderful 

 explorations in the lake region of the interior of the continent, through- 

 out a long life spent in the wilderness. 



Jacques Cartier had ascended the St. Lawrence in 1535 and again 

 a few years later. Champlain followed in his tracks as far up the 

 river as Montreal (in 1603) five years before the settlement of Quebec. 

 From the summit of the old volcanic mountain at Montreal he saw the 

 first or Lachine rapids of the St. Lawrence, above which he could discern 

 the smooth water of the expanded river, now known as Lake St. Louis. 

 Here he received accounts from three different Indians as to the nature 

 of the country beyond. Their communication must have been largely 

 carried on by signs and diagrams, drawn on the sand. Although the 

 first volume of Champlain's works is extremely rare, the accounts were 

 transcribed by Lescarbot in his history of New France, published soon 

 after, in 1609. The description of the rapids and various lake-like 

 expansions of the St. Lawrence, the Thousand Islands, Lake Ontario, 

 the occurrence of Niagara with its rapids, and Lake Erie reaching to 

 Lake Huron "beyond which no man had been," were all so complete that 

 a navigator unimpeded by hostile Indians could easily have found his 

 way. But the natives were hostile, so that Lake Huron came to be 

 known long before Lake Erie and the Niagara River. 



2. First Account of Niagara Rimer. — Champlain never saw Niagara, 



1 Address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 June 30, 1908. 



vol. lxxii. — 19. 



