Flora and Fauna 



and there piled up in the water, greatly contribute to heighten the 1834 



effect of the savage grandeur and sublimity of the scene. The N euw i cc j 



roaring of the cataract is heard at a considerable distance, and 



lofty columns of mist and vapour ascend into the air. The stranger 



is conducted from the village to the above mentioned rapid, and 



then proceeds, by a long, strongly built wooden bridge over the 



end of the rapid, to Bath Island, where there are warm and cold 



baths. . . . A considerable paper-mill has been erected here, 



and a toll for passing the bridge is paid, once for all, for the whole 



time you may remain here. The toll-keeper sells refreshments 



and various curiosities of the country, minerals, Indian rarities, 



and the like. 



A second bridge leads from Bath Island to Goat Island which 

 is about seventy acres in extent, entirely covered with a beautiful 

 forest of sugar maples, beeches, horn-beams, elms, birches, &c, 

 beneath which the asarabaca, mayapple, and various other plants, 

 are growing ; none of them were, however, in flower. The shores 

 of this island are shaded by old pines and very large white cedars, 

 such as we should in vain look for in Europe, and many fine 

 shrubs grow on the banks. There were formerly a great number 

 of Virginian deer in this beautiful forest, but they grew so familiar 

 and became so troublesome by running after strangers that they 

 were removed. The blue headed jay and the Hudson's Bay 

 squirrel are numerous. From the bridge which leads to Goat 

 Island there is a convenient path, on the right hand, which goes 

 along the shore through the wood; and after proceeding a short 

 distance, the stranger suddenly finds himself on the rather steep 

 declivity, immediately above the fall of the right or southern arm 

 of the river, which is called the American branch. The sight is 

 striking, and much grander than all the descriptions I had read 

 of it had led me to conceive. 



The southern or American part of the fall is divided by a 

 narrow rocky island ... to which a bridge has been 

 thrown. This rocky island is closely overgrown with white cedar 

 (Arbor vitae), the tall, thick, whitish trunks of which, with their 



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