THE HISTORY OF THE NIAGARA RIVER. 257 



another seuse, for the term of its life belougs to both histories. The 

 river spraug from a great geologic revolution, the banishment of the 

 dynasty of cold, and so its lifetime is a geologic epoch ; but from first 

 to last man has been the witness of its toil, and so its history is inter- 

 woven with the history of man. The human comrade of the river's 

 youth was not, alas, a reporter with a notebook, else our present labor 

 would be light. He has even told us little of himself. We only know 

 that on a gravelly beach of Lake Iroquois, now the Ridge road, he 

 rudely gathered stones to make a hearth, and built a fire ; and. the next 

 storm breakers, forcing back the beach, buried, and thus preserved, to 

 gratify yet whet our curiosity, hearth, ashes, and. charred sticks.* 



In these Darwinian days we cau not deem primeval the man pos- 

 sessed of the Promethean art of fire, and so his presence on the scene 

 adds zest to the pursuit of the Niagara problem. Whatever the an- 

 tiquity of the great cataract may be found to be, the antiquity of man 

 is greater. 



* Aiiieriean Anthropologist, vol, ii, pp. 173,174. 



H. Mis. 129 17 



