Chap. XII. 



BEST VIEW OF THE GREAT FALL. 



255 



the ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer 

 the ocean. 



The land beyond, or on the south of the Falls, retains, as 

 already remarked, the same level as before the rent was 

 made. It is as if the trough below Niagara were bent right 

 and left, several times before it reached the railway bridge. 

 The land in the supposed bends being of the same height 

 as that above the Fall, would give standing-places, or 

 points of view, of the same nature as that from the 

 railway-bridge, but the nearest would be only eighty yards, 

 instead of two miles (the distance to the bridge) from 

 the face of the cascade. The tops of the promontories 

 are in general flat, smooth, and studded with trees. The 

 first with its base on the east, is at one place so narrow, 

 that it would be dangerous to walk to its extremity. On 

 the second, however, we found a broad rhinoceros path and 

 a hut ; but, unless the builder were a hermit, with a pet rhino- 

 ceros, we cannot conceive what beast or man ever went there 

 for. On reaching the apex of this second eastern promontory 

 we saw the great river, of a deep sea-green colour, now sorely 

 compressed, gliding away, at least 400 feet below us.* 



Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the best 

 view of the Great Fall chasm, as also of the promontory op- 



* "We have twice used the -word 

 " glide" in the above description, and 

 wish to convey the idea that the river, 

 although so torn, tossed, and buffeted 

 in the Fall chasm, slips round the 

 points of the promontories with a re- 

 sistless flow, unbroken save by a 

 peculiar churning, eddying motion ; 

 this gave us the impression that the 

 cleft must be prodigiously deep to 

 allow all the water poured into it to 

 pass so untumultuously away ; and it 



may here be remarked that in the 

 frontispiece, a sketch of which was 

 sent to Sir Koderick Murchison 

 from the spot in 1860, the land 

 forming the promontories is neces- 

 sarily depressed to exhibit the Falls, 

 though it is not so in nature. The 

 foreground of this bird's-eye view has 

 more vegetation than actually ap- 

 pears ; far away from the influence of 

 the vapour, the rocks are rather 

 bare. 



