62 On the Falls of Niagara. 



thinks the notion that the Falls were once at the 

 slope u seems extravagant" ; and, therefore, he con- 

 cludes, that they " received their present singular 

 position at * * * * * * * *." 



Let us take a momentary view of the opinion which 

 the author has adopted, and see whether it be entirely 

 void of extravagance. 



According to his belief, one of two things must 

 have produced the Falls ; either the laws of matter 

 at * * * * * * * * } or the miraculous interference 

 of the Deity with those laws at ****** * *. In 

 the first of these cases, what a vast number of con- 

 current circumstances must be admitted, the absence 

 of any one of which would have effectually destroyed 

 the phenomenon ; and these circumstances entirely 

 accidental, and unconnected with the necessary ope- 

 ration of the laws of matter. 



That a vast channel should be left in a bed of rock, 

 which is precisely of the same kind, on each side, 

 and corresponding, in most of their eminences and 

 depressions, in the only spot of all the surface of this 

 globe which could have produced the effect, pervious 

 and closed at its proper ends, running precisely in 

 the proper direction ; of the necessary degree of incli- 

 nation, 8cc; I say, that all these should have been 

 produced at * * * * * , by the laws of matter, 



would appear to me no less strange, than that those 

 same laws should, at * *******, have produced 

 a clock, or a piano-fortc. 



