SOME OBSERVATIONS OX NIAGARA. 217 







half-concealed rock and the bowlders to the left. But the torrent set 

 in strongly through this channel. The tugging was quick and vio- 

 lent, but we made little way. At length seizing a rope, the principal 

 oarsman made a desperate attempt to get upon one of the bowlders, 

 hoping to be able to drag the boat through the channel ; but it bumped 

 so violently against the rock, that the man flung himself back, and re- 

 linquished the attempt. 



We returned along the base of the American Fall, running in and 

 out among the currents which rushed from it laterally into the river. 

 Seen from below, the American Fall is certainly exquisitely beautiful, 

 but it is a mere frill of adornment to its nobler neighbor the Horse- 

 shoe. At times wc took to the river, from the centre of which the 

 Horseshoe Fall appeared especially magnificent. A streak of cloud 

 across the neck of Mont Blanc can double its apparent height, so here, 

 the green summit of the cataract shining above the smoke of the spray 

 appeared lifted to an extraordinary elevation. Had Hennepin and 

 La Hontan seen the fall from this position, their estimates of the height 

 would have been perfectly excusable. 



From a point a little way below the American Fall, a ferry crosses 

 the river in summer to the Canadian side. Below the ferry is a sus- 

 pension bridge for carriages and foot-passengers, and a mile or two 

 lower down is the railway suspension bridge. Between the ferry and 

 the latter the river Niagara flows unruffled; but at the suspension 

 bridge the bed steepens and the river quickens its motion. Lower 

 down the gorge narrows, and the rapidity and turbulence increase. 

 At the place called the " Whirlpool Rapids " I estimated the width of 

 the river at 300 feet, an estimate confirmed by the dwellers on the 

 spot. When it is remembered that the drainage of nearly half a con- 

 tinent is compressed into this space, the impetuosity of the river's es- 

 cape through this gorge may be imagined. Had it not been for Mr. 

 Bierstiidt, the distinguished photographer of Niagara, I should have 

 quitted the place without seeing these rapids ; for this, and for his 

 agreeable company to the spot, I have to thank him. From the edge 

 of the cliff above the rapids, we descended, a little I confess to a 

 climber's disgust, in an " elevator," because the effects are best seen 

 from the water-level. 



Two kinds of motion are here obviously active, a motion of trans- 

 lation, and a motion of undulation the race of the river through its 

 gorge, and the great waves generated by its collision with, and re- 

 bound from, the obstacles in its way. In the middle of the river the 

 rush and tossing are most violent ; at all events, the impetuous force 

 of the individual waves is here most strikingly displayed. Vast 

 pyramidal heaps leap incessantly from the river, some of them with 

 such energy as to jerk their summits into the air, where they hang sus- 

 pended as bundles of liquid spherules. The sun shone for a few miu- 



