80 ROCK RUINS. 


























pestries rise nearly three hundred feet on either side, and 
at that dizzy depth, the river glides on, a flood of green and ; 
silver, till the harder rocks in the shallower chao beyond ] 
obstruct the current and hurl its waves fifteen feet in l 
air. 
Below the whirlpool these harder rocks appear as a light 
colored, gritty sandstone (2), underlaid by a soft red s 
stone (1).. Even to the most couse observer it 
and filled the gorge, pai as it is now apparent that the 
higher limestone and shale are continuous under the k : 
(d, f). sad 
The recession of the present falls is an established fi 
Father Hennepin, one of the early French explorers, 
scribed and figured Niagara as early as 1678. Then it 
three distinct parts beatead of two, as at present. On the 
Canada side a tabular rock of great size extended out intet- 
rupting and turning a portion of the overflow in an easter) 
direction, making a third fall at right angles, but continuous 
with the horse-shoe. About seventy years afterwards 
Danish naturalist, Kalm, records the disappearance of 
rock, and describes the fall as having about the same gen 
outline as at present. His sketch, however, does not 
materially from Father Hennepin’s, except in the ab 
of the third fall. Parts of Table Rock fell successively } 
1818, 1828, and 1829, and Kalm speaks of the descent ol 
portions of this rock, which extended under the water p 
vious to his visit in 1750. : 
All these changes were on the Canada side, and, a 
been already noticed by Professor Jules Marcou, that part 
the cataract recedes the most rapidly. The volume of ¥ 
is much greater, some twenty-five feet in depth in the cê 
of the horse-shoe curve, and the mass of debris, 
is so picturesque along the base of the American $ 
entirely wanting, the layers ‘of rock being carved out pe 
dicularly, probali to a considerable depth below the § 
