176 Niagara Falls, 



mind, unless it be the beetling cliffs of the dark-rolling 

 Saguenay. 



The water that comes over the Horse-shoe Fall has a 

 peculiar appearance from the light green or emerald colour 

 it presents ; and from the Horse-shoe Fall not being quite 

 circular, but marked by projections and indentations, which 

 give amazing variety of form to the mighty torrent, it falls 

 in the centre in one dense mass, calm, unbroken, and resist- 

 less, and the depth on the edge of the leap is computed to 

 be 25 feet ; at the edges and the projections it is broken 

 into drops, which fall like a shower of diamonds sparkling in 

 the sun, and at times so light and foaming, that it is driven 

 up again by the currents of air ascending from the deep below. 

 Descending by a circular staircase, after first paying 50 cents 

 at the Museum House directly opposite, where you obtain a 

 guide and a tarpaulin dress to avoid the wetting influence of 

 the spray, the tourist finds himself on a narrow ledge of rock 

 which leads into a cavern behind the sheet of waters called 

 the " Cave of the Win,ds." It is in the form of a pointed 

 arch, the span on the left hand being composed of rolling 

 and dark water, that on the right, of dark limestone rock, in 

 which are layers here and there of a shining whfte spar, of 

 which a specimen should always be brought away, if it be 

 but to show that you have been under Niagara ; the cave is 

 from fifty to sixty feet long, but from the obscurity that 

 surrounds it, together with the violent currents of wind 

 caused by the agitation of the air from the falling waters, 

 and the slippery state of the narrow ledge, beneath which is 

 a black yawning gulf too obscure for the eye to penetrate, it 

 is a difficult and dangerous undertaking, especially for the 

 young and those who are at all nervous. The depth of the 

 abyss into which the waters pour has never been, and 

 probably never will be, ascertained ; and the mind is left to 

 conjecture the fathomless cavern which the impetus of the 

 waters must, during the lapse f ages, have worn. On the 



