Travelers' Original Accounts: 1 80/ -1 840 



so that at all times when the sun shines you may here see a rain- i805 

 bow. Considerable quantities of lumber, which had come over lge ow 

 the fall from the saw-mills above, were cast up among the rocks 

 on the shore. They were rounded and smoothed on all sides, 

 much like the under surface of a wooden sled-runner, when 

 nearly worn out. We had been told that the carcasses of dead 

 fish which had perished in the fall were to be found strewed 

 along the shore. We saw none such. We met with dead and 

 putrid fish upon the rocks in many places, but they had been 

 caught by fishermen, and had probably been left by accident. 

 We saw several persons angling there for the white and black 

 bass, who appeared to be pretty successful. 



. . . After passing the Falls, the river is not to be seen from 

 the road for seven or eight miles, although it cannot be at any 

 considerable distance. The face of the country, as the road 

 goes, the whole length from Lake Erie to Queenstown, is remark- 

 ably level, and certainly has no perceptible descent. At the latter 

 place, however, it falls at once, as much and more than the road 

 by the side of the Great Falls, to the surface of the water below 

 them. This consideration, with others before mentioned, and the 

 appearance of the river banks just where it emerges from its con- 

 finement, leave no doubt on the mind that here was once the 

 Cataract. 



The banks exhibit several strata of rock, worn through per- 

 pendicularly by the violence of the current; and a regular glacis 

 or gradation of descent, from ledge to ledge, to the surface of 

 the bank in the village. The Cataract must therefore originally 

 have been a series of cascades. The river at this place is not 

 more than a quarter of a mile wide; an eddy sets back on each 

 side; the current, nevertheless, is not more rapid than in many 

 other places where it is six times as wide. Therefore, the water 

 must here be very deep, which indeed is a necessary consequence 

 of the force with which the torrent formerly descended from the 

 precipice above. We understood that some attempts had been 



135 



