256 VIEW FROM THE EIDGE AT LEWISTON. 



generality of minds, is a difficult task ; but, once made, 

 then the sound of the cataract comes in like far off 

 music — not in the foreground, deafening and annoying, 

 but soothing and lulling, as it were, in the distance, and 

 thus administering to the enjoyment it had formerly 

 intruded upon and broken up. 



The fresh-water shells which occur in the deep bed of 

 mixed slaty gravel and red clay drift, which covers the 

 limestone rocks at the edge of the waterfall upon Goat 

 Island, are now well known. The minute, almost 

 microscopic species, I found very abundant in the clay. 

 Besides the shells usually collected, I picked up a frag- 

 ment of a fresh- water crustacean. 



After dinner, I left Niagara, on my way to Lewiston 

 — w^here the river escapes from the ravine and the high 

 lands — to take the steamer down Lake Ontario. This 

 railway is a very indifferent affair, and Lewiston a long 

 straggling skeleton of a place ; but the last mile's ride 

 along the edge of the ridge, and the view it affords, is 

 worth going twice as far, and by a still rougher road, to 

 enjoy. Sheer down we looked from a high escarpment, 

 upon the broad flat forest lands, stretching many miles 

 back from the lake, and along its shores farther than the 

 eye could reach. Here and there only, in all this 

 distance, a clearing appeared ; while right before us lay 

 the endless lake, and its occasionally bolder shores 

 beyond, with now and then a straggling sail or a distant 

 steamer's smoke, and all mellowed and blended together 

 by a four o'clock sun. The whole prospect perhaps 

 struck me the more that it came upon me quite miex- 

 pectedly ; but I regretted much that previous arrange- 

 ments did not admit of my spending a day in wander- 

 ing over these high lands — scarcely allowed me even 

 a moment to master what was before my eyes, as the 

 steam was up, and bags and portmanteaus demanded 

 the attention of the careful traveller. 



