The English Period 



you are in the creation, and your mind is forcibly impressed with 1796 

 an awful idea of the power of that mighty Being who com- WeId 

 manded the waters to flow. 



Since the Falls of Niagara were first discovered they have 

 receded very considerably, owing to the disrupture of the rocks 

 which form the precipice. The rocks at bottom are first loosened 

 by the constant action of the water upon them; they are after- 

 wards carried away, and those at top being thus undermined, are 

 soon broken by the weight of the water rushing over them: even 

 within the memory of many of the present inhabitants of the 

 country, the falls have receded several yards. The commodore 

 of the King's vessels on Lake Erie, who had been employed on 

 that lake for upwards of thirty years, informed me, that when he 

 first came into the country it was a common practice for young men 

 to go to the island in the middle of the falls; that after dining 

 there, they used frequently to dare each other to walk into the 

 river towards certain large rocks in the midst of the rapids, not 

 far from the edge of the falls; and sometimes to proceed through 

 the water, even beyond these rocks. No such rocks are to be 

 seen at present; and were a man to advance two yards into the 

 river from the island, he would be inevitably swept away by the 

 torrent. It has been conjectured, as I before mentioned, that 

 the Falls of Niagara were originally situated at Queenstown; 

 and indeed the more pains you take to examine the course of the 

 river from the present falls downward, the more reason is there 

 to imagine that such a conjecture is well founded. From the 

 precipice nearly down to Queenstown, the bed of the river is 

 strewed with large rocks, and the banks are broken and rugged; 

 circumstances which plainly denote that some great disruption 

 has taken place along this part of the river; and we need be at 

 no loss to account for it, as there are evident marks of the action 

 of water upon the sides of the banks, and considerably above 

 their present bases. Now the river has never been known to 

 rise near these marks during the greatest floods ; it is plain, there- 

 fore, that its bed must have been once much more elevated than 



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