298 j,xi'] ruj'joN 10 'iiiE 



him, as he said of liis predecessor, " the good father, I fear, 

 too often had no other foundation for his accounts than report, 

 or at least a slight inspection." Pike, who is more correct 

 than any traveller whose steps we have followed, states the 

 perpendicular fall at sixteen and a half feet;* Major Long 

 measured it in 1817 with a plumb line, from the table 

 rock from wliich the water was falling, and found it to be 

 the same. Mr. Colhoun measured it while we were there, 

 with a rough water level, and made it about fifteen feet. The 

 difference of a foot is trifling, and depends upon the place 

 where the measurement was made ; but we cannot account 

 for the statement, made by Mr. Schoolcraft, that the river 

 has a perpendicular pitch of forty feet, and this as late as 

 fourteen years after Pike's measurement. The same au- 

 thor states the breadth of the river, near the brink of the 

 fall, to be two hundred and twenty-seven yards, while 

 Pike found it to be six hundred and twenty-seven yards, 

 which agrees tolerably well with a measurement made on 

 the ice. Messrs. Say and Colhoun obtained an approxi- 

 mate admeasurement of five hundred and ninety-four yards ; 

 this resulted from a trigonometrical calculation, the angles 

 having been measured with a compass that was small and 

 not nicely graduated, and the base line having been ob- 

 tained under unfavourable circumstances. Below the fall, 

 the river contracts to about two hundred yards; there is a 

 considerable rapid both above and below; a portage of two 

 hundred and sixty poles in length is usually made here ; 

 the whole fall, or difference of level between the place of 

 disembarking and reloading, is stated by Pike to be fifty- 

 eight feet, which is probably very near the truth; the 

 whole fall to the foot of the rapids, which extend several 

 miles down the river, may be estimated as not far short of 

 one hundred feet. 



*Pike, ut supra, App. to Part 1, p. 51. 



