Travels Through North America 



rich country, interspersed with fine fields and gentle- 

 men's seats. 



The Falls are very extraordinary, different from 

 any I had hitherto met with in America. The river 

 is about forty yards broad, and runs with a very 

 swift current, till coming to a deep chasm or cleft, 

 which crosses the channel, it falls above seventy feet 

 perpendicular in one entire sheet. One end of the 

 cleft is closed up, and the water rushes out at the 

 other with incredible rapidity, in an acute angle to 

 its former direction; and is received into a large 

 basin. Hence it takes a winding course through 

 the rocks, and spreads again into a very consider- 

 able channel. The cleft is from four to twelve feet 

 broad. The spray formed two beautiful (viz. the 

 primary and secondary) rainbows, and helped to 

 make as fine a scene as imagination could conceive. 

 This extraordinary phenomenon is supposed to have 

 been produced by an earthquake. The fate of two 

 Indians is delivered down by tradition, who, ven- 

 turing too near the Falls in a canoe, were carried 

 down the precipice, and dashed to pieces. Thirty 

 or forty yards above the great Fall, is another, a 

 most beautiful one, gliding over some ledges of rocks 

 each two or three feet perpendicular, which heightens 

 the scene very much. 



From hence I returned, and in my way crossed 

 over the river to Colonel John Schuyler's copper 



[io6] 



