Watkins Glen
Watkins Glen
Watkins Glen, carved out of the western wall of the valley just at the head of Seneca Lake, is constructed upon a grander scale, yet entirely different. The torrent has hewn it among similarly laminated rocks, but the erosive processes have made vast amphitheatres, their great size dwarfing the diminutive brook flowing like a thread at the bottom. The entrance, level with the floor of the valley, presents the same squared and angular features as Havana Glen, but inside it is a grand amphitheatre enclosed within perpendicular stone walls three hundred feet high, and is proportionately spacious. It is quickly seen, however, that within the grand hall the rocky layers, instead of being squared and angular, have been smoothed and rounded by the waters, the small but dashing stream flowing over the floor by graceful curves through circular pools and winding channels. This glen is built on a prodigious scale, being over three miles long, and its head rising eight hundred feet above the valley. A narrow cascade eighty feet high falls at the far end of the entrance amphitheatre, and climbing up, the visitor enters "Glen Alpha," the first of the vast chambers. There aresuccessive glens and caverns as one proceeds onward and upward through the "Cavern Gorge" and "Glen Obscura," where a hotel and chalet are perched on the rocky ledges at four hundred feet elevation. Above is the "Sylvan Gorge," and then the fissure broadens out into its grandest section, the "Glen Cathedral," a magnificent nave, with walls rising nearly three hundred feet, the rocky layers giving it a level stone floor. It has the "Pulpit Rock" and "Baptismal Font," and climbing out one hundred and seventy feet upward alongside a cascade, the visitor then goes onward past more grottoes, falls and gorges for a long distance, until the "Glen Omega" is reached at the top. Here an airy railway bridge of one of the Vanderbilt roads spans it at two hundred feet height above the floor.
The shores of Seneca Lake, as one progresses northward, present various pretty little glens cut deeply into the bordering hills, and as these become lower there are vineyards and pastures displayed. Gradually the bluffs disappear, giving place to extensive farm lands as the level plain at the outlet is reached. Here, in imitation of a noble Swiss example, the town of Geneva has been built at the foot of the lake, its chief street extending along the western bank, with villas peeping out from the foliage. This is a prominent nursery town, florists and seedsmen being its chief merchants, and a large part of the adjacent country being devoted to seed-growingand propagation. Hobart College, a leading Episcopal foundation, is at Geneva. The outlet of the lake is the Seneca River, having an attractive waterfall, and after gathering the outflow of this group of Central New York lakes, it goes away northeastward to Oswego River.
CANISTEO AND CHEMUNG RIVERS.
There are yet two other lakes westward of Seneca, Keuka and Canandaigua. This region was generally first peopled by the Puritans, but others also came in, and at the outlet of Keuka is the town of Penn Yan, so called from the Pennsylvanians and Yankees who settled it, their descendants being the shrewd and thrifty race known as the "New York Yankees." There are extensive vineyards on Keuka where are made some of the best American clarets and champagnes, the centre of that industry being Hammondsport, at the head of the lake. Beyond is Canandaigua Lake, the town of Canandaigua standing at its northern end upon a surface gently sloping towards its shores. The word means the "place chosen for a village." The heads of all these lakes are in the southern highlands, making the watershed, south of which the streams are gathered into the Canisteo River, meaning "the board on the water," which flows into the Chemung, the "big horn," and thence by the Susquehanna down through Pennsylvania to the Chesapeake. The Erie Railway, comingeastward by a wild and lonely route across the Allegheny ranges, goes down the pretty Canisteo Valley to Hornellsville, a purely railroad town of twelve thousand people, which has grown up around the shops and stations. Below, the valley broadens, and is picturesque between its high bordering ridges, the stream meandering in wayward fashion over the almost flat intervale. It passes Addison and the town with the unique name of Painted Post, so called from an Indian monument inscribed in colors, and as the Canisteo River broadens with the contribution of its swelling tributaries, it reaches the active manufacturing city of Corning, having ten thousand people, and here falls into the Chemung, which comes up northward out of the Allegheny ranges in Pennsylvania to meet it. The Chemung Valley is a broad and fertile section of flat and highly cultivated bottom lands, having in its heart the city of Elmira, with thirty-five thousand inhabitants and many industrial establishments, making it a busy railroad centre. Here is the Elmira Reformatory, the Elmira Female College, and the various "Water Cures," a species of remedial establishment flourishing throughout Western New York, where there is apparently no limit to the efficacy or bountifulness of the water-supply. The broad Chemung flows through Elmira and beyond down its rich and wide-spreading valley, until at Athens it loses itself in the swelling waters of the Susquehanna.
THE VALLEY OF THE GENESEE.
Among the rugged mountains of Potter County, in the northern part of Pennsylvania, the highest land in the State, are the springs feeding the headwaters of three noted rivers, seeking the ocean in opposite directions. The Allegheny flows westward and afterwards southward to the Ohio; the west branch of the Susquehanna goes eastward to break through the entire Allegheny chain in seeking the Atlantic; and the smaller stream, the Genesee, flows northward through New York between two long Allegheny ridges, the chief affluent of Lake Ontario. The Genesee passes through a valley of great beauty and gives water-power to many mills, a canal also being constructed to improve its navigation. After a romantic course of one hundred and fifty miles it empties into the lake at Charlotte, seven miles north of Rochester. For much of the distance its course is through a magnificent gorge, with a succession of cataracts that are renowned in American scenery. Where it first attacks the highlands of New York to break out of them, it plunges deeper and deeper down a series of grand cataracts at Portage. Here the Erie Railway, coming from the westward, has boldly thrown a stupendous bridge across the tremendous chasm and almost over the top of the highest cataract. The river makes a gorge in the yielding rocks, sinking from two hundred and fifty tosix hundred feet deep, and here are the Portage Falls, one cataract after another making the stream-bed lower, the walls of the wild ravine rising almost perpendicularly. The railway, crossing at the most favorable place, has built one of the highest bridges in the country, elevated two hundred and thirty-five feet above the river, resting upon lightly-framed steel trusses. From the car windows the river can be seen far below in what seems a narrow fissure, the current boiling along and then tumbling down the cataract, the edge of which crosses the river diagonally almost beneath the bridge. The waters pour into a chasm seeming almost bottomless as the spray obscures it. The ravine extends northward, and in the distance the waters go over a second fall and then a third, the chasm finally curving around to the right, making a bend, closing the view more than a mile away, with an enormous wall of bare rock. The three cataracts fall respectively seventy, one hundred and ten and one hundred and fifty feet—called the Upper, Middle and Lower Portage Falls—and for several miles below, the river flows through the deeper ravine amid equally magnificent surroundings.
This descent brings the Genesee River down from the higher plateau to what is known as the "Genesee Level," for at the end of the defile, fifteen miles below Portage, it flows out of the highlands over pleasant lands and with gentler current. Here onthe "Genesee Flats" is the village of Mount Morris, and near it has been placed, alongside the ravine, the rude log cabin, which was originally on the higher land above Portage, the Indian "Council House of Cascadea," where the Iroquois chiefs often met. At the removal in 1872, the services were conducted in the Senecas language, several Indians attending, and the identical "pipe of peace" given by Washington to Red Jacket was passed around. Nearby the river emerges through a Titanic gateway in the rocks to the pastoral region stretching far to the northward, while far over on the eastern verge is the village of Geneseo, sloping up the ascent. Its Indian name, meaning the "beautiful valley," is also given the river. After meandering placidly for miles across these flats, the Genesee River reaches the "Flour City of the West," Rochester, the storage and distributing mart for this fertile valley, getting its original start and title from the prolific wheat crops. And here the Genesee plunges down another waterfall which gives power to the Rochester mills.
When De Witt Clinton, in 1810, exploring the route for the Erie Canal, crossed the river here, there was not a house. The place was afterwards the "Hundred Acre Tract," planned in 1812 for a settlement by three adventurous frontiersmen, and the town was named for one of them, Nathaniel Rochester. After a few years, the spreading fame of the fertility of the Genesee Valley attracted a large population,and it became known as the garden spot of the then "West," so that out of this grew the flour-mills which have continued to be Rochester's chief industry. The Genesee River flows through with swift current, the Erie Canal being carried over on a massive stone aqueduct and the New York Central Railroad upon a wide bridge, and about a hundred yards beyond, the river plunges down the great Rochester Fall. The ledge over which it tumbles is a perpendicular wall, straight and regular in formation, and almost without fragments of rock at the foot, so that the fall is a clear one. The shores below are lined with huge stone mills and breweries, to which races on each bank conduct the water from a dam above the railroad bridge. This Rochester Fall, down which Sam Patch jumped to his death, is ninety-six feet high. Below it, the river flows through a somewhat wider channel, gradually bending to the left, and then it goes down a second cataract of twenty-five feet height, and finally, at some distance, over a third and broken fall of eighty-four feet. As at Portage, this second succession of triple cataracts sinks the river bed deeper and deeper into the gorge, so that the enclosing walls are in some places over three hundred feet high. This gorge is all within the limits of the city, the falls and rapids having a total descent of two hundred and sixty feet. This immense water-power, with the traffic facilities of canal and railway, have made the city, so that thereis a population of a hundred and forty thousand around the Genesee Falls, and manufactures of flour, beer, clothing, leather and other articles, valued at $75,000,000 annually. In the neighboring region there is also extensive seed-growing, the Rochester nurseries occupying miles of the level surface. Rochester University has two hundred students and valuable geological collections. The city has been a headquarters for the Spiritualists and advocates of Women's Rights. The Genesee emerges from the rocky gorge below Rochester, and flows in more tranquil course northward through a ravine carved deeply into the table-land, to Lake Ontario, at the little port of Charlotte.
LOCKPORT, CHAUTAUQUA AND ERIE.
Westward from Rochester the country is underlaid by red sandstones, and at Medina quarries are plentiful, this reproduction of the Arabian "City of the Prophet" being an extensive supplier of these dark-red Medina sandstones, as the geologists call them. Beyond, at Lockport, the higher terrace is reached, and here the Erie Canal is raised by an imposing series of five double locks from the Genesee level up to the Lake Erie level. Through these locks and by means of a subsidiary canal an immense water-power is obtained which is utilized by the Lockport mills. The much lower Genesee level is marked by the base of a bluff, stretching through the town andacross the adjacent region, evidently the bank of an ancient lake.
In western New York a high ridge crosses the country south of Lake Erie, and to the southward of its most elevated portion there stretches the elongated Chautauqua Lake, almost bisected by two jutting points at its centre. This charming lake is eighteen miles long, three or four miles wide, and elevated seven hundred and thirty feet above Lake Erie, its outlet draining southward into a tributary of the Allegheny River. Its elevation above tide is nearly thirteen hundred feet. The low hills enclosing it are popular summer resorts, and on the western bank in the season are drawn enormous crowds to the Chautauqua Assembly, which has established the "Summer School of Philosophy" for education. There are often twenty to thirty thousand people here at one time, and the plan has been so successful that it has various imitators elsewhere, the "Chautauqua idea" being varying instruction with recreation. The Indians named this lake, from the mists arising, Chautauqua, or "the foggy place." Beyond this popular resort the land falls away, and crossing the New York western boundary into the "Pennsylvania Triangle," a jutting corner thrust up to Lake Erie, a fine harbor is found at Erie, known in earlier history by its French name of Presque Isle. This triangle of the Keystone State, giving about forty miles of coast-line on the lake, has a history. Theearly surveyors discovered that, owing to misdescriptions in various English grants, this large triangular tract was, from a legal standpoint, "nowhere." It was north of Pennsylvania, west of New York and east of the Connecticut Western Reserve, which became part of Ohio. Pennsylvania finally bought it, paying the United States Government, in 1792, $150,640 for it, and also getting the Indian title for £1200. It was a good purchase, for Erie harbor is the best on the lake. Erie has about fifty thousand people, and is in a picturesque situation, owing to the beauty of the bay and the outlying island, which was formerly a peninsula. There is additional protection by a breakwater, making an extensive basin with spacious docks that have a large trade. The French were the early settlers, building their "Fort de la Presque Isle" in 1749, which was one of the chain of outposts they projected between the St. Lawrence and the Ohio. It was here that Commodore Perry hastily built the rude fleet with which he gained the noted victory over the Anglo-Canadian fleet on Lake Erie in 1813, and back here he afterwards in triumph towed his prizes. The remains of his flagship lie in the harbor. Perry's guns were the heaviest in that memorable contest for control of the lake, and therefore he won. In Lake Side Cemetery is buried Captain Charles Vernon Gridley, who commanded Admiral Dewey's flagship, the "Olympia," at the battle of Manila Bay in 1898.
THE CITY OF BUFFALO.
Dunkirk, in New York, northeast of Erie, is another harbor on the lake, and a terminal of the Erie Railway, the land hereabout being the monotonous level plain of western New York. Rounding the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of its outlet stream, the Niagara River, is Buffalo, the chief port of the lake and the metropolis of western New York. It is surrounded for miles upon the level land with railway terminals and car-yards, amid which factories, breweries, coal-pockets, cattle-pens and grain elevators are distributed. This great city, which has grown to four hundred thousand population, takes it name from the American bison, who roamed in large herds over the lands adjacent to Lake Erie as late as 1720, and thus gave the name to Buffalo Creek. The city covers a broad surface at the foot of Lake Erie, and is coeval with the nineteenth century, having been founded in 1801; but in the earlier years it was only a military post, and did not assume a commercial standing or begin to grow much until after the opening of the Erie Canal. The neighboring post of Niagara, a short distance down that river, was of more importance in the early days of the frontier, for it was on Niagara River, in 1669, that the Sieur de La Salle, who described the frozen stream as "like a plain paved with polished marble," built and in the following summer launched the"Griffin," the first rude vessel that explored the Upper Lakes. Afterwards one or two trading cabins appeared on Buffalo Creek, and then there was constructed a stockade fort. For thirty years the hunters and traders fought the savages and captured wild beasts, and then, after an interval of peace, the War of 1812 came with new ravages, during which the little settlement around the stockade at Buffalo was burnt by the British, who held the fort at the entrance to Niagara River. When the Erie Canal was opened, the expansion of the settlement became rapid, and its eligible position at the point where the lake commerce had to connect with the canal and the railways leading to the Atlantic seaboard has since given full scope to business enterprise and made it a large and wealthy city.
The Buffalo suburbs are gridironed by railroads, and their terminals spread along the water-front and the sinuosities of Buffalo Creek. The grain elevators, as in all the lake cities, are a prominent feature, and they stand like huge monsters, forty of them, with high heads and long trunks along the creek and canal basins as if waiting for their prey. The fleets of vessels come over the lakes laden with grain from the West; tugs take them to one of these monsters, and down out of the long neck is plunged a trunk deep into the vessel's hold, which sucks up all the grain. It is stored and weighed and sent on its journey eastward. If this is by canal, the bargewaits on the other side, and the grain runs down into it through another trunk; if by railway, the cars are run under or alongside the elevator and quickly filled. Then the lake vessels are laden with coal for the return voyage. While an American gives these elevators scant attention, being used to them, not so the foreigner, who regards them with the greatest curiosity. Thus wrote Anthony Trollope about them: "An elevator is as ugly a monster as has yet been produced. In uncouthness of form it outdoes those obsolete old brutes who used to roam about the semi-aqueous world and live a most uncomfortable life, with their great hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws. Rivers of corn and wheat run through these monsters night and day. And all this wheat which passes through Buffalo comes loose in bulk; nothing is known of sacks or bags. To any spectator in Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of course; but this should be explained, as we in England are not accustomed to see wheat travelling in this open, unguarded and plebeian manner. Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels always in its private carriage."
The extensive commerce of Buffalo is varied by iron manufacturing, breweries, distilleries, oil refineries and other industries, but the elevators, coal chutes and railroad and canal business seem to overshadow everything else. The city has wide tree-lined streets, and is most handsome with its manyfine buildings. There is an extensive system of attractive parks connected by boulevards; broad streets lined with well-built residences, and in the newer parts the level surface is filled with ornamental homes, some most expensively constructed and elaborately adorned. The well-kept lawns and gardens are fully open to view, and Delaware Avenue, thus bordered, is one of the most attractive streets. On the Main Street, among many impressive structures, is the huge Ellicott Square Building, said to be the largest office-building in the world, housing a business community approximating five thousand persons. There are also two public Libraries and many handsome churches.
The locality of greatest interest in Buffalo is probably the little Prospect Park out at the edge of Lake Erie, where its waters flow into Niagara River. The basins and harbor making the beginning of the Erie Canal, which we have traced all across New York State, are down at the edge of the lake, and a steep bluff, rising about sixty feet, makes the verge of the Park, and continues around along the bank of the river. Here it is crowned by an esplanade surrounding the remains of old Fort Porter, a dilapidated relic of bygone days of frontier conflicts. A couple of superannuated cannon point their muzzles across the water towards Canada, but otherwise the locality is peaceful. A small military force is kept here, probably to watch the British Fort Erie over on the oppositeriver bank, a few hundred yards off, but the worst conflicts now are bouts at playing ball. The protecting harbor breakwater is out in front, and seen down the Niagara River are the light trusses of the International Railway Bridge, spanning its swift current, and the Erie Canal alongside the bank. Into the narrow river sweeps the drainage of the Great Lakes, an enormous mass of water, and in the centre the city has placed a large crib, tapping the clear current for its water-supply. The powerful torrent flows steadily northward out of Lake Erie, with a speed of six or seven miles an hour, to make the Niagara cataract, twenty miles away, and show its tremendous force in the Niagara gorge. In the words of Goethe:
"Water its living strength first shows,When obstacles its course oppose."
"Water its living strength first shows,When obstacles its course oppose."
"Water its living strength first shows,When obstacles its course oppose."
"Water its living strength first shows,
When obstacles its course oppose."
NIAGARA.
The Indians who first looked upon the world's greatest cataract gave the best idea of it in their appropriate name, "The Thunder of Waters." There is no setting provided for it in the charms of natural scenery; it has no outside attractions. All its beauty and sublimity are within the rocky walls of its stupendous chasm. The approaches from every direction are dull and tedious, the surrounding country being flat. The forests are sparse and there are few fine trees, these being confined to the verge of theabyss, and being generally of recent planting. The Niagara River flows northward from Lake Erie through a plain. The Lake Erie level is five hundred and sixty-four feet above the sea, and in its tortuous course of about thirty-six miles to Lake Ontario, the Niagara River descends three hundred and thirty-three feet, leaving the level of Ontario still two hundred and thirty-one feet above the sea. More than half of all the fresh water on the entire globe—the whole enormous volume from the vast lake region of North America, draining a territory equalling the entire continent of Europe, pours through this contracted channel out of Lake Erie. There is a swift current for a couple of miles, but afterwards the speed is gentler as the channel broadens, and Grand Island divides it. Then it reunites into a wider stream, flowing sluggishly westward, small islands dotting the surface. About fifteen miles from Lake Erie the river narrows and the rapids begin. They flow with great speed for a mile above the falls, in this distance descending fifty-two feet, Goat Island dividing their channel at the brink of the cataract, where the river makes a bend from the west back to the north. This island separates the waters, although nine-tenths go over the Canadian fall, which the abrupt bend curves into horseshoe form. This fall is about one hundred and fifty-eight feet high, the height of the smaller fall on the American side being one hundred and sixty-four feet.The two cataracts spread out to forty-seven hundred and fifty feet breadth, the steep wooded bank of Goat Island, separating them, occupying about one-fourth the distance. The American fall is about eleven hundred feet wide and the Canadian fall twice that width, the actual line of the descending waters on the latter being much larger than the breadth of the river because of its curving form. Recent changes, caused by falling rock in the apex of this fall, have, however, made it a more symmetrical horseshoe than had been the case for years. The Niagara River, just below the cataract, contracts to about one thousand feet, widening to twelve hundred and fifty feet beneath the new single-arch steel bridge recently constructed a short distance farther down. For seven miles the gorge is carved out, the river banks on both sides rising to the top level of the falls, and the bottom sinking deeper and deeper as the lower rapids descend towards Lewiston, and in some places contracting to very narrow limits. Two miles below the cataract the river is compressed within eight hundred feet, and a mile farther down, at the outlet of the Whirlpool, where a sharp right-angled turn is made, the enormous current is contracted within a space of less than two hundred and fifty feet. In the seven miles distance, these lower rapids descend about one hundred and four feet, and then with placid current the Niagara River flows a few miles farther northward to Lake Ontario.
The view of Niagara is impressive alike upon sight and hearing, and this impressiveness grows upon the visitor. From the bridge just below the American fall, and from the Canadian side, the whole grand scene is in full display, and quickly convinces that no description can exaggerate Niagara. The Indians first told of the falls, and they are indicated on Champlain's map of 1632. In 1648 the Jesuit missionary Rugueneau wrote of them as a "cataract of frightful height." The first white man who saw them was Father Louis Hennepin, the Franciscan, in 1678, who described them as "a vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. The waters which fall from this horrible precipice do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous noise more terrible than that of thunder, for when the wind blows out of the south their dismal roaring may be heard more than fifteen leagues off." Upon Charles Dickens the first and enduring effect, instant and lasting, of the tremendous spectacle, was: "Peace—peace of mind, tranquility, calm recollections of the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness." The falls had a sanative influence upon Professor Tyndall, for, "quickened by the emotions there aroused," he says, "the blood sped exultingly through the arteries, abolishing introspection, clearing the heart of all bitterness,and enabling one to think with tolerance, if not with tenderness, upon the most relentless and unreasonable foe." After Anthony Trollope had looked upon the cataract he wrote: "Of all the sights on this earth of ours, I know no other one thing so beautiful, so glorious and so powerful. That fall is more graceful than Giotto's Tower, more noble than the Apollo. The peaks of the Alps are not so astounding in their solitude. The valleys of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica are less green. The finished glaze of life in Paris is less invariable; and the full tide of trade around the Bank of England is not so inexorably powerful."
GEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF NIAGARA.
The estimate is that nine hundred millions of cubic feet of water pour over Niagara every hour, and great as this mass is, there is a belief that half the water passing into Lake Erie from the upper lakes does not go over the falls, but finds its way into Ontario through a subterranean channel. Nothing demonstrates this theory, but it is advanced to account for the difference between the amount of water accumulated in the upper lakes and that going over the falls. The actual current is sufficiently enormous, however, and steadily wearing away the rocks over which it descends, it has during the past ages excavated the gorge of the lower rapids. The land surface, which is low at Lake Erie, scarcely risingabove the level of its waters, gradually becomes more elevated towards the north, till near Lewiston it is about forty feet above Erie. The Niagara River thus flows in the direction of the ascent of this moderately inclined plane. Beyond this the surface makes a sudden descent towards Lake Ontario of about two hundred and fifty feet down to a plateau, upon which stands Lewiston on the American side and Queenston on the Canadian side of the river. There thus is formed a bold terrace looking out upon Ontario, from which that lake is seven miles away, and from the foot of the terrace the surface descends gently one hundred and twenty feet farther to the lake shore. The gorge through which the river flows is three hundred and sixty-six feet deep at this terrace. There is no doubt the first location of the great cataract was on the face of the terrace near Lewiston, and it has gradually retired by the eating away, year after year, of the rocky ledges over which the waters pour. This, however, has not been done in a hurry, for the geologists studying the subject estimate that it has required nearly thirty-seven thousand years to bring the falls from Lewiston back to their present location. In fact, from the stratification, Professor Agassiz expressed the opinion that at one time there were three distinct cataracts in Niagara River.
During the brief time observations have been made, great fragments of rocks have been repeatedlycarried down by the current pouring over Niagara, the frosts assisting disintegration. This caused not only a recession but decided changes in appearance. Since 1842 the New York State geologists, who then made a careful and accurate topographical map, have been closely watching these changes, and the average rate of recession is estimated at slightly over two feet annually. In Father Hennepin's sketch of 1678 there was a striking feature, since entirely disappeared, a third fall on the Canadian side facing the line of the main cataract, and caused by a large rock turning the diverted fall in this direction, this rock falling, however, in the eighteenth century. The rate at which recessions occur is not uniform. No change may be apparent for several years, and the soft underlying strata being gradually worn away, great masses of the upper and harder formations then tumble down, causing in a brief period marked changes. At the present location of the cataract, sheets of hard limestone cover the surface of the country, and from the top of the falls to eighty or ninety feet depth. Shaly layers are under these. All the strata slope gently downward against the river current at the rate of about twenty-five feet to the mile. Above the falls, in the rapids, the limestone strata are piled upon each other, until about fifty feet more are added to the formation, when they all disappear under the outcropping edges of the next series above, composed of marls and shales. Throughthese piles of strata the cataract has worked its way back, receding probably most rapidly in cases where, as at present, the lower portion of the cutting was composed of soft beds of rock, which being hollowed out and removed by frost and water, let down the harder strata above. The effect of continual recession must be to diminish the height of the falls, both by raising the river level at their base and by the sloping of the surmounting limestone strata to a lower level. A recession of two miles farther, the geologists say, will cut away both the hard and the soft layers, and then the cataract will become almost stationary on the lower sandstone formation, with its height reduced to about eighty feet. This diminution in the Niagara attractions might be startling were it not estimated that it can hardly be accomplished for some twelve thousand years.
APPEARANCE OF NIAGARA.
The best view of the great cataract is from the Canadian shore just below it, where, from an elevation, the upper rapids can be seen flowing to the brink of the fall. A bright day is an advantage, when the green water tints are most marked. The Canadian shore above, curves around from the westward, and in front are the dark and precipitous cliffs of Goat Island, surmounted by foliage. The Canadian rapids come to the brink an almost unbroken sheet of foaming waters, but the narrower rapids onthe American side are closer, and have a background of little islands, with torrents foaming between. The current passing over the American fall seems shallow, compared with the solid masses of bright green water pouring down the Canadian horseshoe. There, on either hand, is an edge of foaming streams, looking like clusters of constantly descending frosted columns, with a broad and deeply recessed, bright-green central cataract, giving the impressive idea of millions of tons of water pouring into an abyss, the bottom of which is obscured by seething and fleecy clouds of spray. On either side, dark-brown, water-worn rocks lie at the base, while the spray bursts out into mammoth explosions, like puffs of white smoke suddenly darting from parks of artillery. The water comes over the brink comparatively slowly, then falls with constantly accelerated speed, the colors changing as the velocity increases and air gets into the torrent, until the original bright green becomes a foaming white, which is quickly lost behind the clouds of spray beneath. These clouds slowly rise in a thin, transparent veil far above the cataract. From under the spray the river flows towards us, its eddying currents streaked with white. A little steamboat moves among the eddies, and goes almost under the mass of falling water, yet finds a practically smooth passage. Closer, on the left hand, the American fall appears a rough and broken cataract, almost all foam, with green tints showing through,and at intervals along its face great masses of water spurting forward through the torrent as a rocky obstruction may be met part way down. The eye fascinatingly follows the steadily increasing course of the waters as they descend from top to bottom upon the piles of boulders dimly seen through the spray clouds. Adjoining the American cataract is the water-worn wall of the chasm, built of dark red stratified rocks, looking as if cut down perpendicularly by a knife, and whitened towards the top, where the protruding limestone formation surmounts the lower shales. Upon the faces of the cliffs can be traced the manner in which the water in past ages gradually carved out the gorge, while at their bases the sloping talus of fallen fragments is at the river's edge. Through the deep and narrow canyon the greenish waters move away towards the rapids below. It all eternally falls, and foams and roars, and the ever-changing views displayed by the world's great wonder make an impression unlike anything else in nature.
GOAT ISLAND.
Niagara presents other spectacles; the islands scattered among the upper rapids; their swiftly flowing, foaming current rushing wildly along; the remarkable lower gorge, where the torrent making the grandest rapids runs finally into the Whirlpool basin with its terrific swirls and eddies—these join in making the colossal exhibition. Added to all is theimpressive idea of the resistless forces of Nature and of the elements. Few places are better fitted for geological study, and by day or night the picture presents constant changes of view, exerting the most powerful influence upon the mind. Goat Island between the two falls is a most interesting place, covering, with the adjacent islets, about sixty acres, and it was long a favorite Indian Cemetery. The Indians had a tradition that the falls demand two human victims every year, and the number of deaths from accident and suicide fully maintains the average. There have been attempts to romantically rename this as Iris Island, but the popular title remains, which was given from the goats kept there by the original white settlers. It was from a ladder one hundred feet high, elevated upon the lower bank of Goat Island, near the edge of the Canadian fall, that Sam Patch, in 1829, jumped down the Falls of Niagara. He endeavored to gain fame and a precarious living by jumping down various waterfalls, and not content with this exploit, made the jump at the Genesee falls at Rochester and was drowned. A bridge crosses from the American shore to Goat Island, and it is recorded that two bull-terrier dogs thrown from this bridge have made the plunge over the American falls and survived it. One of them lived all winter on the carcass of a cow he found on the rocks below, and the other, very much astonished and grieved, is said to have trotted up the stairs fromthe steamboat wharf about one hour after being thrown into the water and making the plunge.
From the upper point of Goat Island a bar stretches up the river, and can be plainly seen dividing the rapids which pass on either side to the American and Canadian falls. A foot-bridge from Goat Island, on the American side, leads to the pretty little Luna Island, standing at the brink of the cataract and dividing its waters. The narrow channel between makes a miniature waterfall, under which is the famous "Cave of the Winds." Here the venturesome visitor goes actually under Niagara, for the space behind the waterfall is hollowed out of the rocks, and amid the rushing winds and spray an idea can be got of the effects produced by the greater cataracts. Here are seen the rainbows formed by the sunlight on the spray in complete circles; and the cave, one hundred feet high, and recessed into the wall of the cliff, gives an excellent exhibition of the undermining processes constantly going on. Upon the Canadian side of Goat Island, at the edge of the fall, foot-bridges lead over the water-worn and honeycombed rocks to the brink of the great Horseshoe. Amid an almost deafening roar, with rushing waters on either hand, there can be got in this place probably the best near view of the greater cataract. Here are the Terrapin Rocks, and over on the Canadian side, at the base of the chasm, are the fragments of Table Rock and adjacent rocks which haverecently fallen, with enormous masses of water beating upon them. In the midst of the rapids on the Canadian side of Goat Island are also the pretty little islands known as the "Three Sisters" and their diminutive "Little Brother," with cascades pouring over the ledges between them—a charming sight. The steep descent of the rapids can here be realized, the torrent plunging down from far above one's head, and rushing over the falls. This fascinating yet precarious region has seen terrible disasters and narrow escapes. The overpowering view of all, from Goat Island, is the vast mass of water pouring down the Canadian falls. This is fully twenty feet in depth at the brink of the cataract, and it tumbles from all around the deeply recessed Horseshoe into an apparently bottomless pool, no one yet having been able to sound its depth. In 1828 the "Michigan," a condemned ship from Lake Erie, was sent over this fall, large crowds watching. She drew eighteen feet water and passed clear of the top. Among other things on her deck were a black bear and a wooden statue of General Andrew Jackson. The wise bear deserted the ship in the midst of the rapids and swam ashore. The ship was smashed to pieces by the fall, but the first article seen after the plunge was the statue of "Old Hickory," popping headforemost up through the waters unharmed. This was considered a favorable omen, for in the autumn he was elected President of the United States.
THE RAPIDS AND THE WHIRLPOOL.
The surface of Niagara River below the cataract is for some distance comparatively calm, so that small boats can move about and pass almost under the mass of descending waters. The deep and narrow gorge stretches far to the north with two ponderous international railroad bridges thrown across it in the distance, carrying over the Vanderbilt and Grand Trunk roads. An electric road is constructed down the bottom of the gorge on the American bank, and another along its top on the Canadian side. The water flows with occasional eddies, its color a brilliant green under the sunlight, the gorge steadily deepening, the channel narrowing, and when it passes under the two railroad bridges, which are close together, the river begins its headlong course down the Lower Rapids leading to the Whirlpool. With the speed of an express train, the torrent runs under these bridges, tossing, foaming and rolling in huge waves, buffeting the rocks, and thus it rushes into the Whirlpool. Viewed from the bottom of the gorge alongside the torrent, the effect is almost painful, its tempestuous whirl and headlong speed having a tendency to make the observer giddy. The rushing stream is elevated in the centre far above the sides, the waves in these rapids at times rising thirty feet, tossing wildly in all directions, and coming together with tremendous force. Huge rocks, fallen inearlier ages, evidently underlie the torrent. It was in these terrible rapids that several daring spirits, and notably Captain Webb in 1883, attempted, unprotected, to swim the river, and paid the penalty with their lives. More recently these rapids have been safely passed in casks, peculiarly constructed, although the passengers got rough usage. The Whirlpool at the end of the rapids is a most extraordinary formation. The torrent runs into an oblong pool, within an elliptical basin, the outlet being at the side through a narrow gorge not two hundred and fifty feet wide, above which the rocky walls tower for three hundred feet. Into this basin the waters rush from the rapids, their current pushing to its farthest edge, and then, rebuffed by the bank of the abyss, returning in an eddy on either hand. These two great eddies steadily circle round and round, and logs coming down the rapids sometimes swim there for days before they are allowed to get to the outlet. Upon the left-hand side of this remarkable pool the eddy whirls around without obstruction, while that upon the right hand, where the outlet is, rebounds upon the incoming torrent and is thrown back in huge waves of mixed foam and green, the escaping waters finally rushing out through the narrow opening, and on down more brawling rapids to the end of the deep and wonderful gorge, and thence in placid stream through the level land northward to Lake Ontario.
NIAGARA INDUSTRIES AND BATTLES.
The town of Niagara Falls, which has about seven thousand people, long had its chief source of prosperity in the influx of sight-seers, but it has recently developed into an important industrial centre through the establishment of large works utilizing the power of the falls by means of electricity. Some distance above the cataract on the American side a tunnel starts, of which the outlet is just below the American fall. This tunnel is one hundred and sixty-five feet below the river surface at the initial point, and passes about two hundred feet beneath the town, being over a mile long. Part of the waters of the Upper Rapids are diverted to the head of the tunnel, and by falling through deep shafts upon turbine wheels the water-power is utilized for dynamos, and in this way an enormous force is obtained from the electricity, which is used in various kinds of manufacturing, for trolley roads and other purposes, some of the power being conducted to Buffalo. A similar method is to be availed of on the Canadian side. It is estimated that in various ways the Niagara Falls furnish fully four hundred thousand horse-power for industrial uses, and the amount constantly increases. The largest dynamos in the world, and the most complete electrical adaptations of power are installed at these Niagara works.
But the history of Niagara has not been alwaysscenic and industrial. In 1763 occurred the horrible massacre of the "Devil's Hole," alongside the gorge of the Lower Rapids, when a band of Senecas ambushed a French commissary train with an escort, the whole force but two, who escaped, being killed, while reinforcements, hurried from Lewiston at the sound of the muskets, were nearly all caught and tomahawked in a second ambush. Many of the victims were thrown alive from the cliffs into the boiling Niagara rapids, their horses and wagons being hurled down after them. There were repeated actions near Niagara in the War of 1812. In October, 1812, the battle of Queenston Heights was fought, the Americans storming the terrace and killing General Brock, the British commander, whose monument is erected there, but being finally defeated and most of them captured. There were various contests near by in 1813, and the battle of Chippewa took place above the falls on July 5, 1814, the British being defeated. On July 25th the battle of Lundy's Lane was fought just west of the falls, between sunset and midnight of a summer night, a contest with varying success and doubtful result, the noise of the conflict commingling with the roar of the cataract, and the dead of both armies being buried on the field, so that, in the words of Lossing, "the mighty diapason of the flood was their requiem."
"O'er Huron's wave the sun was low,The weary soldier watched the bowFast fading from the cloud belowThe dashing of Niagara."And while the phantom chained his sightAh! little thought he of the fight,—The horrors of the dreamless night,That posted on so rapidly."
"O'er Huron's wave the sun was low,The weary soldier watched the bowFast fading from the cloud belowThe dashing of Niagara."And while the phantom chained his sightAh! little thought he of the fight,—The horrors of the dreamless night,That posted on so rapidly."
"O'er Huron's wave the sun was low,The weary soldier watched the bowFast fading from the cloud belowThe dashing of Niagara.
"O'er Huron's wave the sun was low,
The weary soldier watched the bow
Fast fading from the cloud below
The dashing of Niagara.
"And while the phantom chained his sightAh! little thought he of the fight,—The horrors of the dreamless night,That posted on so rapidly."
"And while the phantom chained his sight
Ah! little thought he of the fight,—
The horrors of the dreamless night,
That posted on so rapidly."
Thus majestically wrote Mrs. Sigourney of this matchless cataract of Niagara: