Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 5, November 1852. Various
force of the waters appears to be wearing away the rock over which they rush, and gradually shifting the cataract higher up the river. It is conceived that by this process it has already receded in the course of ages through a distance of more than seven miles, from a point between Queenstown and Lewiston, to which the high level of the country continues. The rate of procession is fixed, according to an estimate, mentioned by Mr. M’Gregor, at eighteen feet during the thirty years previous to 1810; but he adds another more recent, which raises it to one hundred and fifty feet in fifty years.
The following account of a visit to the Falls of Niagara has been communicated to us by Mr. N. Gould. It forms a part of his unpublished Notes on America and Canada.
“My attention had been kept alive, and I was all awake to the sound of the cataract; but, though within a few miles, I heard nothing. A cloud hanging nearly steady over the forest, was pointed out to me as the ‘spray cloud;’ at length we drove up to Forsyth’s hotel, and the mighty Niagara was full in view. My first impression was that of disappointment – a sour sort of deep disappointment, causing, for a few minutes, a kind of vacuity; but, while I mused, I began to take in the grandeur of the scene. This impression is not unusual on viewing objects beyond the ready catch of the senses; Stonehenge and St. Paul’s cathedral seldom excite much surprise at first sight; the enormous Pyramids, I have heard travelers say, strike with awe and silence on the near approach, but require time to appreciate. The fact is, that the first view of Niagara is a bad one; and the eye, in this situation, can comprehend but a small part of the wonderful scene. You look down upon the cataract instead of up to it; the confined channel, and the depth of it, prevent the astounding roar which was anticipated; and, at the same time, the eye wanders midway between the water and the cloud formed by the spray, which it sees not. After a quarter of an hour’s gaze, I felt a kind of fascination – a desire to find myself gliding into eternity in the centre of the Grand Fall, over which the bright green water appears to glide, like oil, without the least commotion. I approached nearly to the edge of the ‘Table Rock,’ and looked into the abyss. A lady from Devonshire had just retired from the spot; I was informed she had approached its very edge, and sat with her feet over the edge – an awful and dangerous proceeding. Having viewed the spot, and made myself acquainted with some of its localities, I returned to the hotel (Forsyth’s) which, as well as its neighboring rival, is admirably situated for the view; from my chamber-window I looked directly upon it, and the first night I could find but little sleep from the noise. Every view I took increased my admiration; and I began to think that the other Falls I had seen were, in comparison, like runs from kettle-spouts on hot plates. I remained in this interesting neighborhood five days, and saw the Fall in almost every point of view. From its extent, and the angular line it forms, the eye cannot embrace it all at once; and, probably, from this cause it is that no drawing has ever yet done justice to it. The grandest view, in my opinion, is at the bottom, and close to it, on the British side, where it is awful to look up through the spray at the immense body as it comes pouring over, deafening you with its roar; the lighter spray, at a considerable distance, hangs poised in the air like an eternal cloud. The next best view is on the American side, to reach which you cross in a crazy ferry-boat: the passage is safe enough, but the current is strongly agitated. Its depth, as near to the falls as can be approached, is from 180 to 200 feet. The water, as it passes over the rock, where it is not whipped into foam, is a most beautiful sea-green, and it is the same at the bottom of the Falls. The foam, which floats away in large bodies, feels and looks like salt water after a storm: it has a strong fishy smell. The river, at the ferry, is 1170 feet wide. There is a great quantity of fish, particularly sturgeon and bass, as well as eels; the latter creep up against the rock under the Falls, as if desirous of finding some mode of surmounting the heights. Some of the visitors go under the Falls, an undertaking more curious than pleasant. Three times did I go down to the house, and once paid for my guide and bathing dress, when something occurred to prevent me. The lady before alluded to performed the ceremony, and it is recorded, with her name, in the book, that she went to the farthest extent that the guides can or will proceed. It is described as like being under a heavy shower-bath, with a tremendous whirlwind driving your breath from you, and causing a peculiarly unpleasant sensation at the chest; the footing over the débris being slippery, the darkness barely visible, and the roar almost deafening. In the passage you kick against eels, many of them unwilling to move, even when touched: they appear to be endeavoring to work their way up the stream.”
Supposing the cataract to be receding at the rate of fifty yards in forty years, as it is stated by Captain Hall, the ravine which extends from thence to Queenstown, a distance of seven miles, will have required nearly ten thousand years for its excavation; and, at the same rate, it will require upward of thirty-five thousand years for the falls to recede to Lake Erie, a distance of twenty-five miles. The draining of the lake, which is not more than ten or twelve fathoms in average depth, must then take place, causing a tremendous deluge by the sudden escape of its waters. In addition to the gradual erosion of the limestone, which forms the bed of the Niagara at and above the falls, huge masses of the rock are occasionally detached by the undermining of the soft shale upon which it rests. This effect is produced by the action of the spray powerfully thrown back upon the stratum of shale; and hence has arisen the great hollow between the descending flood and the precipice. An immense fragment fell on the 28th of December, 1828, with a crash that shook the glass vessels in the adjoining inn, and was felt at the distance of two miles from the spot. By this disintegration, the angular or horse-shoe form of the great fall was lessened, and its grandeur heightened by the line of the torrent becoming more horizontal. A similar dislocation had occurred in the year 1818; and the aspect of the precipice always so threatening, owing to the wearing away of the lower stratum, as to render it an affair of some real hazard to venture between the falling waters and the rock. Miss Martineau undertook the enterprise, clad in the oil-skin costume used for the expedition, and thus remarks concerning it: – “A hurricane blows up from the cauldron; a deluge drives at you from all parts; and the noise of both wind and waters, reverberated from the cavern, is inconceivable. Our path was sometimes a wet ledge of rock, just broad enough to allow one person at a time to creep along: in other places we walked over heaps of fragments, both slippery and unstable. If all had been dry and quiet, I might probably have thought this path above the boiling basin dangerous, and have trembled to pass it; but, amidst the hubbub of gusts and floods, it appeared so firm a footing, that I had no fear of slipping into the cauldron. From the moment that I perceived we were actually behind the cataract, and not in a mere cloud of spray, the enjoyment was intense. I not only saw the watery curtain before me like tempest-driven snow, but, by momentary glances, could see the crystal roof of this most wonderful of Nature’s palaces. The precise point where the flood quitted the rock was marked by a gush of silvery light, which of course was brighter where the waters were shooting forward, than below, where they fell perpendicularly.” There have been several hair-breadth escapes, and not a few fatal accidents, at Niagara, the relation of which is highly illustrative of Indian magnanimity. Tradition preserves the memory of the warrior of the red race, who got entangled in the rapids above the falls, and, seeing his fate inevitable, calmly resigned himself to it, and sat singing in his canoe till buried by the torrent in the abyss to which it plunges. The celebrated Chateaubriand narrowly escaped a similar fate. On his arrival he had repaired to the fall, having the bridle of his horse twisted round his arm. While he was stopping to look down, a rattle-snake stirred among the neighboring bushes. The horse was startled, reared, and ran back toward the abyss. He could not disengage his arm from the bridle; and the horse, more and more frightened, dragged him after him. His fore-legs were all but off the ground; and, squatting on the brink of the precipice, he was upheld merely by the bridle. He gave himself up for lost; when the animal, astonished at this new danger, threw itself forward with a pirouette, and sprang to the distance of ten feet from the edge of the abyss.
The erosive action of running water, which is urging the Niagara Falls toward Lake Erie, is strikingly exhibited by several rivers which penetrate through rocks and beds of compact strata, and have either scooped out their own passage entirely, or widened and deepened original tracks and fissures in the surface, into enormous wall-sided valleys. The current of the Simeto – the largest Sicilian river round the base of Etna – was crossed by a great stream of lava about two centuries and a half ago; but, since that era, the river has completely triumphed over the barrier of homogeneous hard blue rock that