CHAPTER XIX. 



TENTING ON THE NIAGARA. 



THE Niagara ranks with the most interesting rivers of the 

 world. Its great gorge, cut from Queenstown Heights 

 to Niagara City by the constant recession of the falls, is 

 not only grand in itself, but affords the most important 

 data for reckoning geological time, and also a most ad- 

 mirable illustration of the rock strata of the upper silurian 

 age; while the falls are not second to any of nature's won- 

 ders. Indeed, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, the river 

 is throughout an object of varied beauty. As this work is 

 written especially from Western New York as a point of 

 view, I have thought it necessary to spend time on this 

 grand water-course; and that time has been passed mostly 

 in tenting. For this kind of recreation no locality could 

 be finer than Buckhorn Island, which is separate from 

 Grand Island by Burnt-ship Creek. Here I once pitched 

 my tent, in the middle of August, under the shade of a 

 large maple in the edge of an open grove with a green 

 sward almost equal to a lawn, which, undermined along 

 the margin of the river, dropped over the low bank to the 

 water's edge like a fine terrace. Thus located on the very 

 brink of the river, the east end of the tent opened toward 

 Tonawanda, the west toward Niagara City and the Falls, 

 which were some four miles distant and in full view. 

 Directly north was the village La Salle, and the fine country 



