CATARACTS, AND INUNDATIONS. 



hundred and forty-five miles. This river is in most parts wide and 

 deep, and has within it several fine and fruitful islands, with a 

 fertile soil on both its banks: but it is not navigable above fifty 

 miles for ships, on account of its cataract. 



At Powerscourt we also meet with a noble cataract, where the 

 water is said, but probably with much exaggeration, to fall three 

 hundred feet perpendicular, which is a greater descent than that of 

 any other cataract in any part of the world. 



NORTH AMERICA in its lakes and cataracts surpasses all other 

 parts of the world. That of Niagara we have already mentioned. 



The FALLS of ST. ANTHONY, on the river Mississippi, in httu 

 tude 44 30' north, descend from a perpendicular height of thirty 

 feet, and are upward of two hundred and fifty yards wide, whilst 

 the shore on each side is a level flat, without any intervening rock 

 or precipice. 



There are no remarkable rivers that extend far i to the state of 

 New Jersey; but that named Passuick, or Pasaic^ which dis- 

 charges itself into the sea to the northward of it, has a remarkable 

 cataract, about twenty miles from its mouth, where it is about 

 forty yards broad, and runs with a very swift current, till arriving 

 at a deep chasm or cleft, which crosses the channel, it falls about 

 seventy feet perpendicular in one entire sheet. One end of the 

 cliff is closed up, and the water rushes out at the other with incre- 

 dible rapidity, in an acute angle, to its former direction, and is 

 received into a large bason. Thence it takes a winding course 

 through the rocks, and spreads again into a very considerable 

 channel. The cleft is from four to twelve feet broad. When Mr. 

 Burnaby saw it, the spray formed two beautiful rainbows, a pri- 

 mary and secondary, which greatly assisted in producing as fine a 

 scene as imagination can conceive. This extraordinary pheno- 

 menon is supposed to have been produced by an earthquake. 

 What greatly heightens this scene, is another fall, though of less 

 magnificence, about thirty yards above. 



VOL. m. 



