2 Falls of the Kiagara. 



been proclaimed one of the wonders of the world. It is alone 

 in its kind. Though a waterfall, it is not to be compared 

 with other waterfalls. In its majesty, its supremacy, and its 

 influence on the soul of man, its brotherhood is with the living 

 ocean and the elernal hills. 



1 am humbly conscious that no words of mine can give an 

 adequate description, or convey a satisfactory idea, of Niagara 

 Falls. But having just returned from a visit to them,* with 

 the impression which they made upon my mind fresh and 

 deep, I may hope to impart at least a faint image of that 

 impression to the minds of those who have not seen them, 

 and re-touch, perhaps, some fading traces in the minds of those 

 who have. And if I can call the attention of any to this 

 glorious object as a work of God, and an echo of the voice 

 of God ; if by any thing which I may fitly say of it, I can 

 quicken the devotion of one breast, I shall feel that I have 

 fulfilled a sacred duty, and that I have not unworthily 

 expressed my sense of obligation for having been permitted 

 to behold it myself 



I will not begin my description with the cataract itself, but 

 take you back to the great lake from which the Niagara flows, 

 so that you may go down its banks as I did, and approach the 

 magnificent scene with a knowledge regularly a<id accumu- 

 latively gained of its principal accessaries. For the river and 

 the lake, nay, the whole superb chain of rivers and lakes, 

 should be taken into view, when we would conceive as we 

 ought of the Falls of Niagara. 



As we approach the town of Buffalo, which is situated near 

 the eastern extremity of Lake Erie, that wide spread sheet of 

 water opens to the sight. If the traveller has never seen the 

 ocean, he may here imagine that he sees it. If he has, he 

 will say that it is a sea vievv which here lies before him. As 

 he looks to the west, the horizon only bounds the liquid 

 expanse ; and it is not till he descends to the shore, and marks 

 the peculiar, quiet and exact level of the even and sleeping 

 lake, that he will find any thing to remind him that he is not 

 on the coast of the salt and swelling sea. Four miles north 

 from Buffalo we come to the vilage of Black Rock ;f and it 

 is here that the boundaries of the lake contract, and its 

 waters begin to pour themselves out through the sluceway 



*The visit was made with some friends, in July, 1831. 



t According to Mr. Featherstonhaugh, editor of the Monthly American 

 Journal of Geology and Natural Science, the 'seams and patches of 

 dark-colored chert contained in the beds of carboniferous limestone,' have 

 furnished its name to this vilage. 



