254 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 



adequately and graphically described — or, at least, that 

 I should fail were I to attempt to do so. I have seen 

 many water-falls in many countries, and I venture only 

 to remark, in regard to this one, that I think it is a 

 piece of great presumption in the common class of 

 tourists to talk as one usually hears them do, of their 

 having been disappointed — as if some great showman 

 had got up the thing for their amusement, and had not 

 put gunpowder enough into the crackers sufficiently 

 to astonish their w^eak minds. 



On the Canadian side of the Falls, a high bluff of red, 

 probably drifted clay, rests above the Niagara limestone, 

 forming an upland above the narrow fringe which sepa- 

 rates it from the waters of tbe river above the Falls. 

 Below the falls, this bluff retires to a considerable dis- 

 tance from the river, and the carriage-road to the suspen- 

 sion bridge runs along the surface of the nearly naked 

 rock. When walking leisurely here, two things agree in 

 forcing the same thought upon the imagination. Where 

 it is completely uncovered, the whole upper surface of 

 the limestone rock, on which we travel, exhibits evidence 

 of the wearing action of the water. It has the same 

 hollowed and irregular appearance as the surface above 

 the falls, over which the water is now pouring. Over 

 this, therefore, the river must formerly have run, before 

 it ate out the deep ravine below. And, again, the retir- 

 ing of the bluffs shows that it then, as we should sup- 

 pose, had occupied a wider bed, and, as it now does above 

 the Falls, had undermined the cliffs of clay, and bent its 

 course now more to the one side, and now more to the 

 other, as circumstances might direct. One reflects on 

 such things, and in his closet makes cool calculations of 

 the lapse of time necessary to accomplish all this. But 

 the greatness of the lapse is felt when we see before us 

 the protracted effect, and the still living and acting cause. 

 The foam of the cataract becomes, to the imagination, 



