Niagara Falls 



1900 activity and outing, and the circulation of their finances increased 

 unap by the smooth words of the tin-type man, the bazaar man and 



the coffee and sandwich, of the wiener, vender. Ladies rich in 

 furs eat sausage with a relish on the ice-bridge, for tramping 

 about the formation creates a startling appetite. During the 

 ice-bridge season, Sunday is the heaviest day at Niagara, and 

 on such occasions the cliffs echo and reecho with the hilarity 

 of the visitors. The free parks on both sides of the river 

 are black with humanity, and the wonder is that some lives 

 are not crushed out in the throng. Here and there about the 

 ice-bridge little knots of people may be seen. They represent 

 that class of individual who is determined to do something 

 different from the multitude. They are explorers bent on plant- 

 ing a tree or bush on some hitherto unreached point. A flag 

 will float from the top, and cheer on cheer will denote the suc- 

 cess of the venture. Others will explore the deep crevasses, 

 taking soundings to determine, if they can, how thick the ice is 

 at this or that spot. This matter of thickness is an interesting 

 study, and men of considerable ability like to know the result of 

 these investigations. It is usually estimated that about one-third 

 of a body of ice remains above the surface of the water. In 

 many instances the crevasses of the Niagara ice-bridges are all 

 of thirty or forty feet deep, and on the basis referred to the 

 thickness of the body of ice would be nearly one hundred feet. 

 This is not given as an accurate statement of the thickness of the 

 ice, for this question of thickness is a hard matter to ascertain 

 with any degree of accuracy. However, if the ice has a thick- 

 ness of thirty feet above the rivers surface, it is a safe conclusion 

 that there is a considerable depth below the water. 



The winter of 1899 brought a most wonderful ice-bridge to 

 Niagara. The formation was massive. Its power was threaten- 

 ing. The abutments of the upper steel-arch bridge, the greatest 

 all-metal arch in the world, are located close to the water's edge, 

 right where the ice-bridges form. The ice gathered about these 



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