Niagara Falls. 171 



Canada side Clifton Village, or the Village of the Falls, as it 

 is sometimes called, though the terminus of the Great 

 Western Railway is called Suspension Bridge, or Niagara 

 City. This village has grown up entirely with the erection of 

 the bridge. Near it is a mill, whose motive power is a wheel 

 below, requiring a shaft 280 feet long to communicate with 

 the mill on the top of the bank ; this is quite a curiosity in 

 its way. This International Suspension Bridge was thrown 

 across the Niagara River to connect the Great Western 

 Railway of Canada with the several lines of New York 

 State ; it is supported by four cables, each of which is nine 

 and a half inches in diameter, and composed of 8000 wires ; 

 the towers are 66 feet high, 15 feet square at the base, and 

 eight feet at the top : the span is 800 feet across. The 

 bridge is indeed a monument to the ingenuity and labour of 

 science. It has two floors — the upper for the railroad track 

 and the lower for pedestrians and carriages, a fee being 

 requisite before .passing ; and when half-way across the view 

 is most striking. Its tunnel-like form as you look through it 

 is most capacious. Looking up the river directly at the falls, 

 a mile and a half off — to see the water hurrying underneath 

 at a depth of 260 feet, flecked with the long and tortuous 

 lines of foam which have floated down from the cataract, and 

 compressed into a ridge-like rise in the middle, boiling and 

 leaping and foaming in its onward course to the whirlpool — 

 the precipitous banks of the river on either side, with a 

 luxuriant growth of pines growing on the debris at their 

 base — and, above all, the passage of the cars over the 

 tourist's head as he gazes, produce sensations of dread and 

 a nervous timidity. So solid is this bridge in its weight, 

 and its staying, that not the slightest motion is communi- 

 cated to it by the severest gales of wind that blow up through 

 the narrow gorge which it spans. Its equilibrium is less 

 affected in cold weather than in warm, and its elasticity is 

 such that after the passage of a train its equilibrium is at 



