Niagara Falls 



1721 The soil of the three leagues I had to walk a foot to get 



Char evoix Either, and which is called the carrying-place of Niagara, seems 

 very indifferent; it is even very ill-wooded, and you cannot walk 

 ten paces without treading on ant-hills, or meeting with rattle- 

 snakes, especially during the heat of the day. 



1721 DUDLEY, Paul. An account of the falls of the river Niagara, taken 



Dudley at Albany, October 10, 1721, from Monsieur Borassaw, a French native 



of Canada. (Royal Society of London, Philosophical transactions. 

 April-May, 1 722, pp. 69-72.) 



Borassaw, Dudley's informant, appears to have been a French boatman 

 or trader. He was apparently at the Falls several times, among them in 

 May, 1 72 1 , when de Longueuil made his measurements of the cataract. 

 The transcription as made by Dudley is noteworthy for its critical spirit. 

 It was printed in various other places than that cited above. 



The falls of Niagara are formed by a vast ledge or precipice 

 of solid rock, lying across the whole breadth of the river, a 

 little before it empties itself into, or forms the Lake Ontario. 



M. Borassaw says, that in the spring 1 722 (should be 

 1 72 1 ) , the governor of Canada ordered his son, with three other 

 officers, to survey the Niagara, and take the exact height of the 

 cataract, which they accordingly did with a stone of half a 

 hundred weight, and a large cod-line, and found it on a perpen- 

 dicular no more than 26 fathoms — " vingt et six bras." 



This differs very much from the account Father Hennepin 

 has given to that cataract ; for he makes it 1 00 fathoms, and our 

 modern maps from him, as I suppose, mark it 600 feet; but I 

 believe Hennepin never measured it, and there is no guessing at 

 such things. 



When I objected Hennepin's account of those falls to M. 

 Borassaw, he replied, that accordingly everybody had depended 

 on it as right, until the late survey. On further discourse he 

 acknowledged, that below the cataract, for a great way, there 

 were numbers of small ledges or stairs across the river, that 

 lowered it still more and more, till it came to a level; so that if 



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