and Physical Structure of the adjacent Country. 129 
shoe Fall. The shock was felt at a considerable distance: the 
noise was like a distant clap of thunder. 
The disintegration of the rocks must continue until the 
Falls reach Lake Erie, provided the present causes continue 
to operate. Goats’ Island, which now separates the Falls, 
will, perhaps, as the waters recede on each side of it, remain 
in the midst of the fallen flood, a high, perpendicular, inac- 
cessible rock : a lasting monument of the destructive power of 
that element which now thunders at its base. 
It may, perhaps, be said that this deep chasm or chan- 
nel, through which the river runs on its descent, was a rent 
made by an earthquake. This supposition would avail if the 
strata were deranged, but the reverse is the fact. The strata 
on each side are parallel and on the same level, and bear evi- 
dent marks of the action of some powerful instrument having 
cut through them in a perpendicular direction: that instru- 
ment was water. Thewall-like appearance of the rocks on each 
side of the river is precisely the same at the Falls, as at the 
commencement of the chasm at Queenstown. 
By the lockages on the Krie and Oswego canals, lately 
constructed, it appears that the elevation of ‘Lake Erie above 
Lake Ontario is 290 feet ; and that the elevation of the former 
lake above the river Hudson, at Albany, is 575 feet. The river 
at Albany is 150 miles distant from the sea. 
Since it is a well established fact that the Falls have re- 
ceded considerably within the memory of man, and are, by 
slow but progressive steps, cutting their way backwards to 
Lake Erie, the mind is led to ¢ anticipate the period when the 
present chasm will extend to that lake, and the consequences 
which must result from such an event. 
My father, in a former edition of his Introduction to Geo- 
logy, published i in 1815, offered some observations upon this 
subject, the justice of which seems confirmed, in a reniarkable 
manner, by the recent interesting researches of Mr. Lyell, on 
the fresh-water formations in the lakes of Scotland : — “ Since 
the banks of the Cataract of Niagara were inhabited by Eu- 
ropeans, the distance has been progressively shortening be- 
tween the Falls and Lake Erie. When it has worn down the 
intervening calcareous rocks, and effected a junction, the 
upper lake will become dry land, and form an extensive plain, 
surrounded by rising ground, and watered by a river or 
smaller lake, which will occupy the lowest part. In this 
plain, future geologists may trace successive strata of fresh- 
water formation, covering the subjacent crystalline limestone. 
The gradual deposition of minute earthy particles, or the 
Pads rapid subsidence of mud from sudden inundations, will 
Vor dil: —= No. 12, K 
