On the Fulls of Niagara. 331 



These diluvial banks deserve the minutest attention of geologists, 

 inasmuch as they may enable them to detect more clearly than from 

 other data, the former positions of the cataract. It is to be presumed 

 that if they have been washed by the falls throughout their whole 

 distance to Que.enstown heights, traces of the fact would be discov- 

 erable along their base. I searched in vain a portion of that line for 

 shells, and other river deposits such as are seen on Goat island above 

 the falls. They may, however exist, and it is important that they 

 should be sought for. These banks are described by Mr. Bakewell 

 as curved and water-worn, with large boulders imbedded in them, 

 shewing, he conceives, that the river once flowed nearly on a level 

 with their summits. But all these appearances are just as indicative 

 o{ diluvial action, to which on any hypothesis, theboulders certainly 

 belong. 



Supposmg the existing drainage of this region to have begun im- 

 mediately after the catastrophe which reduced lake Erie and its sister 

 lake to their present dimensions, or supposing it to have followed that 

 far mightier event which overspread the whole continent with the 

 debris of its rocks ; in either case we are bound to make the Trenton 

 falls and the several falls on the Gennessee river contemporaneous. 

 Now an important question arises here : are there any facts in relation 

 to the rate of recession of these falls analogous to those of Niagara ? 

 None are I believe at present known, though those streams admit of 

 a much more exact determination as to changes of position in their 

 falls, than is practicable in the vast and irregular horseshoe fall of the 

 greater cataract of Niagara. 



Bearing upon this discussion there is a still more important ques- 

 tion, namely, what features did the surface of the region present 

 after the transient denuding causes above spoken of had ceased, or 

 in other words when the existing streams, first found their way to the 

 ocean ? The surface of the land was evidently what it now is, denu- 

 ded and every where scooped into a multitude of vallies, the recepta- 

 cles of course, of the newly formed rivers. This being ihe case, is it 

 not extremely probable that the depressions into which the Niagara 

 and other rapid streams first fell, were originally vallies of denudation. 

 The existing falls upon these streams have no doubt contributed in a 

 considerable degree to deepen and prolong the gorges through which 

 they flow, but that they hcgan these excavations is what I cannot 

 consider established. One has only to explore the vicinity of Tren- 

 ton falls, of the upper falls of the Gennessee river at Portage, and of 



