THE EARTH 193 



long, but no ground has been found hitherto. 

 There is also a cataract at Powerscourt, in Ire- 

 land, in which, if I am rightly informed, the 

 water falls three hundred feet perpendicular ; 

 which is a greater descent than that of any other 

 cataract in any part of the world. There is a 

 cataract at Albany, in the province of New York, 

 which pours its stream fifty feet perpendicular. 

 But of all the cataracts in the world, that of 

 Niagara, in Canada, if we consider the great body 

 of water that falls, must be allowed to be the 

 greatest, and the most astonishing. 



This amazing fall of water is made by the river 

 St Lawrence, in its passage from the Lake Erie 

 into the Lake Ontario. We have already said that 

 St Lawrence is one of the largest rivers in the 

 world ; and yet the whole of its waters are here 

 poured down by a fall of a hundred and fifty feet 

 perpendicular. It is not easy to bring the imagi- 

 nation to correspond with the greatness of the 

 scene : a river extremely deep and rapid, and 

 that serves to drain the waters of almost all North 

 America into the Atlantic Ocean, is here poured 

 precipitately down a ledge of rocks, that rise like 

 a wall across the whole bed of its stream. The 

 width of the river, a little above, is near three 

 quarters of a mile broad, and the rocks, where it 

 grows narrower, are four hundred yards over. 

 Their direction is not straight across, but hollow- 

 ing inwards like a horse-shoe ; so that the cata- 

 ract, which bends to the shape of the obstacle, 

 rounding inwards, presents a kind of theatre the 

 most tremendous in nature. Just in the middle 



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