Falls of the Niagara. ft 



commanding Spirit is there. 'The Lord is upon many wa- 

 ters.' The heights and the depths, the shadows and the 

 sunlight, the foam, the mist, the rainbows, the gushing show- 

 ers ot" diamonds, the beauty, and the power, and the majesty 

 all around and beneath, environ the spirit with holiest influ- 

 ences, and without violence, compel it to adore. ' Deep 

 calleth unto deep.' The cataract, from its mysterious depths, 

 callelh with its thunder, back to the deep lake, and up to the 

 deep sky, and forward to the deep ocean, and far inward to 

 the deep of man's soul. And the answer of the lake, and the 

 answer of the sky, and the answer of the ocean, are praise to 

 the Maker, praise to him who sitteth above the water-flood, 

 praise to Almighty God ! And where is the soul which will 

 not also hear that call, and answer it even with a clearer and 

 louder answer, and cry, Praise to the Creator, praise to the 

 infinite, and holy, and blessed God ! 



These Falls are not without their history; — but^ like their 

 depths, it is enveloped with clouds. Geologists suppose, and 

 with good apparent reason, that time was when the Niagara 

 fell over the abrupt bank at Q,ueenstown, between six and 

 seven miles below the place of the present Falls, and that it 

 has, in the lapse of unknown and incalculable years, been 

 wearing away the gulf in the intermediate distance, and toil- 

 ing and travelling through the rock, back to its parent lake. 

 The abrupt termination of the high bank and table land at 

 Queenstown, the correspondence of the opposite cliffs to 

 each other all the way up to the Falls, the masses of super- 

 incumbent limestone, which both the American and Canadian 

 cataracts hurl, from time to time, into the boiling abyss,* all 

 seem to favor this supposition. But when did the grand jour- 

 ney begin? When will it end? How vain to ask? How 

 momentary human life appears, when we give our minds to 

 such contemplations i Where was the cataract toiling in its 

 way, when none but the awe-struck Indian came to bow 

 before its sublimity ? Where was it, when the moss-buried 

 trunk, which now lies decaying by its borders, was a new 

 sprung sapling, glittering with the spray-drops which fed its 



* Within a i'ew years, several pieces of theupper stratum have been 

 thus thrown down. The waters, however, are now obHged to act iipon 

 a surface three times wider than that which formerly sustained them, 

 and the limestone is becoming more and more compacted with the harder 

 chert, as they approach Black Rock. Their retrocession must therefore 

 be slow, beyond the power of computation. Beneath the limestone strata, 

 there is a layer of loose shale, which is easily washed away, and which 

 is always first hollowed out, before the limestone falls. 



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