Niagara Falls 



1834 extending nearly fifteen hundred miles in length, and constituting 

 the ornament and great blessing of our North. The distant 

 St. Louis, which, in its beginning, moves in a doubtful course, as 

 if undecided whether to contribute its contents to the giant river 

 of our west, and travel with it three thousand miles, down to the 

 gulf of Mexico, or empty itself into the basin of Lake Superior, 

 — is the most remote source of this chain of waters. The last 

 named lake, with a sheet of thirty thousand square miles, Lake 

 Michigan, with a surface of fifteen thousand, Lake Huron with 

 one of eighteen thousand, and all three of amazing depth, so 

 that their bottom is nearly three hundred feet below the ocean 

 tides, while their surface is from six to seven hundred feet above 

 the level of the sea, — and Lake Erie, with a sheet of eight 

 thousand square miles, — all these reservoirs send their waters to 

 Niagara. 



Niagara Strait, a channel of thirty-seven miles, connecting 

 Lakes Erie and Ontario, is about a mile in width at its com- 

 mencement, but narrows and again widens even to as much as 

 five and six miles, and bends in various directions before it 

 arrives at the Falls, after a course of about twenty miles. In 

 some places its depth has been ascertained to be two hundred and 

 forty feet; in others it is probably much greater. Shortly before 

 arriving at the Fails, the course of the stream is a little north of 

 west; rolling over the Falls it makes an abrupt angle, and runs 

 toward north north-east. Not less variable than the breadth and 

 direction of the strait, is the rapidity of the current. Near Black 

 Rock, the velocity is probably not less than from six to eight 

 miles an hour ; the stream then glides quietly along, at the rate of 

 not more than from two to four miles, like the silent brooding of 

 a people, mocking patience, before a great revolution. At the 

 Rapids, above the Falls, the current assumes an immense velocity; 

 and the water below the Falls, rushes on, in some places with 

 mad fury, in all, with great rapidity, as far as Lewiston and 

 Queenston. The descent of the water in the strait is three hun- 

 dred and thirty-four feet. 



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