Niagara Falls 



1801 



Heriot 



1802 



Kent 



1804 



Moore 



Can so vast, so rapid, and so continual a waste of water never 

 drain its sources? These are inexhaustible; and the body which 

 throws itself down these cliffs, forms the sole discharge of four 

 immense inland seas. 



The effect produced by the cold of winter on these sheets of 

 water thus rapidly agitated, is at once singular and splendid. 

 Icicles of great thickness and length are formed along the banks, 

 from the springs which flow over them. The sources, impreg- 

 nated with sulphur, which drain from the hollow of the rocks, 

 are congealed into transparent blue columns. Cones are formed 

 by the spray, particularly on the American side, which have in 

 several places large fissures disclosing the interior, composed of 

 clusters of icicles, similar to the pipes of an organ. Some parts 

 of the falls are consolidated into fluted columns, and the river 

 above is seen partially frozen. The boughs of the trees in the 

 surrounding woods are hung with the purest icicles formed from 

 the spray, and reflecting in every direction the rays of the sun, 

 produce a variety of prismatic hues, and a lustre almost too 

 refulgent to be long sustained by the powers of vision. 



Part of this description was published in 1 80 1 in the London Sun, and 

 afterwards copied from that paper into the Moniteur at Paris. It seems 

 to have been widely known throughout Europe. 



1802 



Kent, WILLIAM. Memoirs and letters of James Kent, late chancellor 

 of the state of New York. Bost. : Little, Brown and Co. 1 898. 

 Pp. 154-156. 



The chancellor rode the western circuit in the summer of 1 802. " Inci- 

 dentally he made a trip to Niagara Falls, then but rarely visited from the 

 Eastern States, which made a great impression on his imagination." By 

 his own account Kent felt only astonishment, terror, and awe at the sight. 

 " The scene," he writes, " sets all comparison, all rivalship at defiance. 

 It is, in one word, the most awful and sublime of the wonderful works of 



nature." 



1804 



MOORE, THOMAS. Memoirs, journal & correspondence of Thomas 

 Moore; ed. by Lord John Russell. Lond. : Longman, Brown, Green and 

 Longman's. 1853. 1:169-173. 



130 



