Sr 
NIAGARA. 13 
leaped beyond the control of the judgment, and gave cur- 
rency to notions which have often led to disappointment. 
A record of a voyage in 1535 by a French mariner named 
Jacques Cartier, contains, it is said, the first printed allu- 
sion to Niagara. In 1603 the first map of the district 
was constructed by a Frenchman named Champlain. In 
1648 the Jesuit Rageneau, in a letter to his superior at 
Paris,mentions Niagara as " a cataract of frightful height/'* 
In the winter of 1678 and 1679 the cataract was visited by 
Father Hennepin, and described in a book dedicated " to 
the king of Great Britain." He gives a drawing of the 
waterfall, which shows that serious changes have taken 
place since his time. He describes it as " a great and pro- 
digious cadence of water, to which the universe does not 
offer a parallel." The height of the fall, according to 
Hennepin, was more than 600 feet. ] " The waters," he 
says, " which fall from this great precipice do foam and 
boil in the most astonishing manner, making a noise more 
terrible than that of thunder. When the wind blows to 
the south its frightful roaring may be heard for more than 
fifteen leagues." The Baron la Hontan, who visited Niag- 
ara in 1687, makes the height 00 f ee t. In 1721 Charle- 
vois, in a letter to Madame de Maintenon, after referring 
to the exaggerations of his predecessors, thus states the 
result of his own observations: " For my part, after ex- 
amining it on all sides, I am inclined to think that we can- 
not allow it less than 140 or 150 feet" a remarkably 
close estimate. At that time, viz., a hundred and fifty 
years ago, it had the shape oj a horseshoe, and reasons will 
subsequently be given for holding that this has been always 
the form of the cataract, from its origin to its present 
site. 
As regards the noise of the fall, Charlevois declares the 
accounts of his predecessors, which, I may say, are repeated 
to the present hour, to be altogether extravagant. He is 
perfectly right. The thunders of Niagara are formidable 
enough to those who really seek them at the base of the 
Horseshoe Fall; but on the banks of the river, and par- 
ticularly above the fall, its silence, rather than its noise, 
* From an interesting little book presented to me at Brooklyn by 
its author, Mr. Holly, some of these data are derived: Hennepin, 
Kalm, Bakewell, Lyell, Hall, and others I have myself consulted. 
