290 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



tance of seven miles, will have required nearly ten thousand years for its excavation ; 

 and, at the same rate, it will require upwards of thirty-five thousand years for the falls to 

 recede to Lake Erie, a distance of twenty -five miles. The draining of the lake, which is 

 not more than ten or twelve fathoms in average depth, must then take place, causing a 

 tremendous deluge by the sudden escape of its waters. In addition to the gradual erosion 

 of the limestone, which forms the bed of the Niagara at and above the falls, huge masses 

 of the rock are occasionally detached, by the undermining of the soft shale upon which it 

 rests. This effect is produced by the action of the spray powerfully thrown back upon 

 the stratum of shale ; and hence has arisen the great hollow between the descending flood 

 and the precipice. An immense fragment fell on the 28th of December, 1828, with a 

 crash that shook the glass vessels in the adjoining inn, and was felt at the distance of two 

 miles from the spot. By this disintegration, the angular or horse-shoe form of the great 

 fall was lessened, and its grandeur heightened by the line of the torrent becoming more 

 horizontal. A similar dislocation had occurred in the year 1818 ; and the aspect of the 

 precipice is always so threatening, owing to the wearing away of the lower stratum, as to 

 render it an affair of some real hazard to venture between the falling waters and the 

 rock. Miss Martineau undertook the enterprise, clad in the oil-skin costume used for the 

 expedition, and thus remarks concerning it : "A hurricane blows up from the caul 

 dron ; a deluge drives at you from all parts ; and the noise of both wind and waters, 

 reverberated from the cavern, is inconceivable. Our path was sometimes a wet ledge of 

 rock, just broad enough to allow one person at a time to creep along : in other places we 

 walked over heaps of fragments, both slippery and unstable. If all had been dry and 

 quiet, I might probably have thought this path above the boiling basin dangerous, and 

 have trembled to pass it ; but, amidst the hubbub of gusts and floods, it appeared so firm 

 - a footing, that I had no fear of slipping into the cauldron. From the moment that I 

 perceived we were actually behind the cataract, and not in a mere cloud of spray, 

 the enjoyment was .intense. I not only saw the watery curtain before me like tempest- 

 driven snow, but, by momentary glances, could see the crystal roof of this most wonderful 

 of Nature's palaces. The precise point where the flood quitted the rock was marked by a 

 gush of silvery light, which of course was brighter where the waters were shooting for 

 ward, than below, where they fell perpendicularly." There have been several hairbreadth 

 escapes, and not a few fatal accidents, at Niagara, the relation of which is highly illus 

 trative of Indian magnanimity. Tradition preserves the memory of the warrior of the 

 red race, who got entangled in the rapids above the falls, and, seeing his fate inevitable, 

 calmly resigned himself to it, and sat singing in his canoe till buried by the torrent in 

 the abyss to which it plunges. The celebrated Chateaubriand narrowly escaped a similar 

 fate. On his arrival he had repaired to the fall, having the bridle of his horse twisted 

 round his arm. "While he was stopping to look down, a rattlesnake stirred among the 

 neighbouring bushes. The horse was startled, reared, and ran back towards the abyss. 

 He could not disengage his arm from the bridle ; and the horse, more and more frightened, 

 dragged him after him. His fore-legs were all but off the ground ; and, squatting on the 

 brink of the precipice, he was upheld merely by the bridle. He gave himself up for lost ; 

 when the animal, astonished at this new danger, threw itself forward with a pirouette, 

 and sprang to the distance of ten feet from the edge of the abyss. 



The erosive action of running water, which is urging the Niagara falls towards Lake 

 Erie, is strikingly exhibited by several rivers which penetrate through rocks and beds of 

 compact strata, and have either scooped out their own passage entirely, or widened and 

 deepened original tracks and fissures in the surface, into enormous wall-sided valleys. 

 The current of the Simeto the largest Sicilian river round the base of Etna was 

 crossed by a great stream of lava about two centuries and a half ago ; but, since that era, 



