VII 



NIAGARA ' 



IT is one of the disadvantages of reading books about nat- 

 ural scenery that they fill the mind with pictures, often 

 exaggerated, often distorted, often blurred, and, even 

 when well drawn, injurious to the freshness of first impres- 

 sions. Such has been the fate of most of us with regard 

 to the Falls of Niagara. There was little accuracy In the 

 estimates of the first observers of the cataract. Startled 

 by an exhibition of power so novel and so grand, emotion 

 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 

 allusion 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 



* A Discourse delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, April 4, 

 1873. 



' Prom 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. 



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