i8o Niagara Falls. 



high and perpendicular banks, carrying round and round 

 with a circular quivering motion trees, dead animals, &c., 

 that come within its reach. The rocks are steep, and no 

 boat dares approach it ; and the corpse of a gentleman, 

 drowned while bathing not many years ago, was to be seen 

 for nearly three weeks making fearful and rapid gyrations, 

 suddenly disappearing at some point of motion, and again ' 

 emerging half its length above the flood, like a maniac 

 battling with his foe. Three and a half miles below the Falls 

 is a curious triangular shaped chasm in the bank of the river, 

 known as " The Devil's Hole." Into this falls a stream 

 called " The Bloody Rtm." Not a very classical name, 

 certainly, neither does tradition afford any clue as to its 

 origin, except in the fact of a body thoroughly riiled having 

 in the early days of Niagara been found there. More 

 probably it has been the scene of some Indian warfare, as 

 the same names, one a tributary of the Mississippi and 

 another of the Arkansas, had their origin from the indis- 

 criminate slaughter of buffaloes that took place there in days 

 of yore. One tradition asserts that it took its name from a 

 detachment of British soldiers having been precipitated over 

 it in their flight from an attack by Indians during the old 

 French war in 1759. Below this the Niagara resumes its 

 soft and gentle beauty, flowing through a channel where 

 the rocks rise from 150 to 200 feet perpendicularly, pre- 

 senting an appearance as if the river had worn for itself 

 the channel it now uses. Seven miles down, the country 

 rises into abrupt and elevated ridges called Queenston 

 Heights, and supposed to have been " the place of the 

 Falls" in former ages : it is said that the Falls recede 

 about a foot in a year, and Sir Charles Lyell, the 

 eminent geologist, thinks that thirty-Jive thousand years 

 must have elapsed since the time when Queenston Heights 

 frowned upon the Falls. It is, however, certain, that the 

 attrition of such a force of water must act upon the 



