122 ; HalVs Remarks on Niagara Falls 



The course of the Oak Orchard creek, in Orleans County, 

 is over the same strata, and furnishes direct confirmation of 

 the succession of falls and rapids, precisely in the manner I 

 have just enumerated. But as this is little known, I will ad- 

 duce that of the Genesee river, in its descent from Rochester 

 to Lake Ontario. 



In consequence of the dip of the strata, or from its absence, 

 the hard, quartzose sandstone (No. 2,) of the Niagara section 

 does not appear in the Genesee river. On entering the river 

 from the lake, we find an open channel for five miles, where 

 the river descends perpendicularly for about one hundred feet 

 from the top of the sandstone, No. 4. The hard limestone 

 layer, or one filling the place of that at Niagara, has retreated 

 a quarter of a mile farther up the river, where it forms a fall 

 of twenty five feet. This recession of the limestone, beyond 

 the sandstone, is owing to a mass of green shale below it, 

 twentythree feet thick, while at Niagara the same shale is but 

 four feet thick. From this place to the upper fall, about a 

 mile and a half distant, we have a rapid stream. This fall is 

 one hundred and ten feet high, and over precisely the same 

 rocks as the Niagara fall at present, viz. Nos. 7 and 8 of sec- 

 tion, the Niagara shale and limestone. The limestone at the 

 top of the fall is much thinner than that at Niagara, in conse- 

 quence of the less recession into the mass, as well as from 

 being thinner as a whole. We have here a case precisely 

 analogous to Niagara as I have supposed it to have been for- 

 merly. 



Had there been a quantity of water flowing down the 

 Genesee equal to the Niagara, the upper fall would have been 

 excavated farther backward, and the lower fall, in all proba- 

 bility entirely obliterated, presenting a rapid current from the 

 upper fall to the present site of the Rochester landing. There 

 appears here positive proof that there never has been so large 

 a body of water passing down the Genesee as down the Ni- 

 agara, and the concurring testimony is to the efi'ect that the 

 wearing action has been far less. The recession of the lower 

 falls at Rochester would add little or nothing to the height of 

 the upper ; for the ascent of the river bed, and the dip of the 



