CHAPTER XI 

 PRESERVATION OF THE FALLS 



1832 



Coke, E. T. A subaltern's furlough: descriptive of scenes in various i 832 

 parts of the United States, upper and lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Coke 

 Nova Scotia, during the summer and autumn of 1832. Lond. : Saunders 

 andOtley. 1833. Pp. 292-311. 



The author spent four days at the Falls. His calm, well-written account 

 contains some excellent paragraphs on the preservation of the Falls. 



The hotel, and 400 acres of ground, have been lately pur- 

 chased by a company (of which, I believe, the British Consul at 

 New York is the head), who purpose founding a city, which is to 

 be commenced immediately, under the name of the " City of the 

 Falls," or " Clifton " — I forget which. . . . 



The company of speculators intend erecting grist-mills, store- 

 houses, saw-mills, and all other kinds of unornamental buildings, 

 entertaining the most sanguine hopes of living to see a very 

 populous city. The die then is cast, and the beautiful scenery 

 about the Falls is doomed to be destroyed. Year after year will 

 it become less and less attractive. Even at this time they were 

 surveying and allotting, and proprietors were planning one front of 

 their house upon the Falls, the other upon Lundy's Lane, and 

 meditating the levelling some of the rock, so as to form a pretty 

 little flower-garden. It would not surprise me to hear, before 

 many years have elapsed, that a suspension bridge has been 

 thrown across the grand Horse-shoe to Goat Island, so that the 

 good people of Clifton may be the better enabled to watch the 

 pyramidical bubbles of air rising from the foot of the cataract. 

 'Tis a pity that such ground was not reserved as sacred in per- 

 petuum; that the forest trees were not allowed to luxuriate in all 



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