American Falls

“ The height of Niagara and the close compression of its vast volume make it a grander sight than the Falls of the Columbia,—but no other cataract known to me on this continent rivals it for an instant. The great American Falls of Snake are much loftier and more savage than either, but their volume is so much less as to counterbalance those advantages. Taking the Falls of the Columbia all in all,—including their upper and lower rapids,—it must be confessed that they exhibit every phase of tormented water in its beauty of color or grace of form, its wrath or its whim. ”

“ Wing Dam of one of the Canadian Companies running out to the Edge of the Rapids. Then the American Falls, though still forming a cataract, will be but a ghost of their ancient magnificence; instead of the mighty sheet of emerald waters now spreading in silent majesty over the rock crest, a weakly, thin, white apron of waters carried forward by a slender impulse a tergo and the great cadence will have lost its glory. Electric searchlights in all the colors of the rainbow dancing up and over the falling waters and other factitious means of producing a spectacle will never compensate the loss. ”

“ By and by, when we feel a little tired, we can take a carriage for the rest of the way.”
May soon felt the dreamlike sensation come over her again, as they wandered slowly along the steep cliffs of shade, and came from time to time on some specially charming view of the white foaming sheet of the American Falls, so dazzlingly pure in its virgin beauty, as it vaults over the hollow cliff into the soft veil of mist that perpetually rises about its feet—always dispersing and ever rising anew. ”

“ One can never forget his morning visit to the American Falls when the sunlight comes from the required angles, heightening the beauty of the whole wild mass of waters, sifting in ravishing splendor through the clouds of drifting spray. ”

“ The view from it is magnificent; to the left the furious river, confined in a narrow space, rushes in rapids to the Whirlpool; and to the right the Horse-shoe Fall pours its torrent of waters into the dark and ever invisible abyss. When we reached the American side we had to declare to a custom-house officer that we were no smugglers; and then by an awful road, partly covered with stumps, and partly full of holes, over the one, and through the other, our half-tipsy driver jolted us, till we wished ourselves a thousand miles from Niagara Falls. ”

“ He who sees them instantly forgets humanity. They are not very high, but they are overpowering. They are divided by an island into two parts, the Canadian and the American.
Half a mile or so above the Falls, on either side, the water of the great stream begins to run more swiftly and in confusion. It descends with ever-growing speed. It begins chattering and leaping, breaking into a thousand ripples, throwing up joyful fingers of spray. ”

“ After driving to a bridge just above the American Falls, [30] we made a partial circuit of Goat Island on foot, halting at all the chief points of interest. A staircase on the right led first to Luna Island, where, standing by a railing close to the edge of the precipice, we beheld the vast, swift, overwhelming waters of the American Falls, 169 feet high, immediately beside us, rushing in a tremendous torrent right over the brink, down into the fearful gulf below. ”

“ The whole distance from the American to the British shore is fourteen hundred yards, of which three hundred and eighty belong to the American falls, three hundred and thirty to Goat-Island, and seven hundred yards to the Canada or Horse-shoe falls. On I.77 the British side, opposite to the falls are two taverns, in the larger of which, Forsyth’s Hotel, we took lodgings until the next day, when we intended to pay a visit to the governor of Upper Canada, Sir Peregrine Maitland, who resides at his country seat within a few miles of the falls. ”

“ And here I would say that this river runs from these falls to the Cascades in one bed of solid Basaltic Rock, in many places, and in fact, amost of the way, they rise I should think, some six hundred to two thousand feet above the water, there being but a very few places where it can be visited. The worst of our road was from about the American Falls. All the way on, south of the Snake, the road runs over this basaltic rock, and a kind of volcanic ashes, or decomposed rock, which is nothing but dust, [18] and it is from 3 to 6 inches deep all of the way, enough to sufocate man and beast. ”

“ The tract of 475 acres selected for the new town site was the only practical and available place to which the part of the town to be flooded could be moved, so as to be united with the one-quarter of the old town which would be left. American Falls is a large settlement for that sparsely settled country, and it was many miles from a town of any size in any direction. It was a natural and proper part of the construction of the dam and reservoir to make provision for a substitute town as near as possible to the old one. ”

“ Their route lay to the west, down along the left side of Snake River; and they were several days in reaching the first, or American Falls. The banks of the river, for a considerable distance, both above and below the falls, have a volcanic character: masses of basaltic rock are piled one upon another; the water makes its way through their broken chasms, boiling through narrow channels, or pitching in beautiful cascades over ridges of basaltic columns. ”

“ In an address in Washington before the United States Geological Survey, Professor Gilbert gave the following interesting information regarding the recession of the ground under Niagara Falls: The estimate is that for the past forty-four years the falls have receded at the rate of twenty-four feet in a year. The Horseshoe Falls are at the head of the gorge and the American Falls at the eastern side, but the time was when both were together, before the little point called Goat Island was reached. The recession is more rapid at the center than on the sides. ”

“ It is evident from the descriptions of Father Hennepin and of Baron La Hontan, that the upper stratum of rock over which the water falls must have projected beyond the face of the rock below much farther than it now does. The large masses of fallen rock lying at the foot of the American and Horse-shoe Falls are evidence of this fact. Travelers still go behind the sheet on the Canadian side, and into and through the Cave of the Winds, on the American side. But they do not expect to keep dry in so doing, nor to sun themselves on the rocks below, like the "rattlesnakes" of former days. ”

“ The above represents State Street, one of the principal thoroughfares, and the Palmer House, one of its leading hotels. NIAGARA FALLS, New York.—The above falls constitute perhaps the most striking natural wonder in the world. Above the falls, the river is divided by Goat Island, forming the Horseshoe Falls, with a perpendicular descent of one hundred and fifty-eight feet. The height of the American Falls is one hundred and sixty-seven feet. ”

“ The limestone edge of both falls is wearing away in the center, the Canadian fall now being V-shaped, and the American fall showing the same tendency, although its process of recession has begun more recently. For some distance below the falls there is smooth current, the mass of water which pours over the precipice sinking and only coming to the surface two miles below, where the rapids, more magnificent and wilder than those above the falls, begin, and culminate in the rapids of the Upper Whirlpool. ”

“ A novel beauty o’er the landscape throws,
Where gentle waters softly murmuring glide.
At Utica the gentlemen hired a stage to visit the Falls of Trenton, distant fourteen miles. They were accom­panied in this route by a number of passengers from New-York and North Carolina. They crossed the Mohawk upon a covered wooden bridge. After this the road gradually ascended to a forest, which was in part cleared for new fields. At a little distance from the falls is a tavern, where they left the carriage, and went on foot through thick woods, from which a pair of stairs conducted to the falls. ”

“ It has sometimes happened, that the bodies of persons who have had the misfortune to get into the rapids above the Falls, and to be drawn down the awful cataract, or who have been drowned between the two points, after the usual process of decomposition has lightened their specific gravity, and raised them to the surface, have been seen for days floating around this whirlpool, and making the customary and successive plunges, to which every thing, that comes within its reach, is doomed without the possibility of rescue. ”

“ The highest point in the American Fall, the salient and beautiful projection near the shore at Prospect Park, is upheld by a more substantial foundation than is revealed at any other accessible portion of the face of the precipice. This is made manifest on entering the "Shadow-of-the-Rock," where the spectator sees a [Pg 12] massive wall of thoroughly indurated limestone, disposed in regular layers more than two feet in thickness, with faces as smooth as if dressed with the chisel. ”

“ In the third and last section the shale continues its downward dip, and at several places entirely disappears. The rock lying upon it is quite compact, and some of it very hard. The deep water into which the falling water was formerly received partially protected the shale, so that many centuries must have elapsed before the excavation of this section was completed. Its average width is eleven hundred feet.
Sixty rods below the American Fall is the upper Suspension Bridge. ”

“ There, in its wild tumult, it is tossed up into fanciful cones and mounds, which are crowned with a flashing coronal of liquid gems by the isolated drops and delicate spray thrown off from the whirling mass, and rising sometimes to the height of thirty feet. Standing on the bridge and looking down-stream, the spectator will see near by, on the American shore, a very good illustration of the manner in which the shale, there cropping out above the surface of the water, is worn away, leaving the superposed rock projecting beyond it. ”

“ Rock of Ages and Whirlwind Bridge
They are fortunate who can see the Falls first from the ferry-boat on the river below, and about one-third of the way across from the American shore. The writer has frequently tried the experiment with friends who were willing to trust themselves, with closed eyes, to his guidance, and wait until he had given them the signal to look upward.
Those who may be at Niagara a few nights before and [Pg 115] after a full moon should not fail to go to Goat Island to see the lunar bow. It is the most unreal of all real things—a thing of weird and shadowy beauty. ”

“ The Saut de St. Marie, it may be understood, is the name given by the French traders to the Falls, or rapids, which let the waters of Lake Superior down to the level of Lake Huron. Anglice: the Falls, or jump, or bound of St. Mary—or by personification, St. Mary’s leap down from her dominion over the waters above to assert her empire over the waters below. Whether I have got the exact clue to the imagination of the French Catholics, in their application of this name, and am right in my interpretation, I am not quite sure. ”

“ If we should allow fifty feet for a soft-surface limestone, full of cleavages and seams which might be easily broken down, still the new fall would be five feet higher than the old one. But, so far as can now be discovered, there is no geological necessity, so to speak, for making any such allowance. In the new cataract the American Fall would still be the higher, and its line across the channel nearly straight. The Canadian Fall would undoubtedly present a curve, but more gradual and uniform than the present horseshoe. ”

“ This ridge consists of a series of rocks, which form the chain of mountains which commences north of Lake Erie, stretches eastward to the Niagara river, confines it, and forms its falls; then continues its course, and forms the different falls which are north of Lake Ontario, and is at length lost in the neighbourhood of the Hudson. The canal runs a distance through sombre forests, when they reached Lockport on the 20th of August, about seven o’clock in the morning. ”

“ It is a notable fact that the great river of rivers, which drains a larger territory than any other on the globe, the Amazon proper, has a fall of only two hundred and ten feet in a course of three thousand miles, and while it has a deep channel and a uniform current of three miles an hour for its whole length, it has no broken rapids. But in its many great affluents rapids are numerous, though not so famous as those found in other South American rivers. ”

“ And the deep chasm between the falls and the heights, occupied by the river after its fall, four miles in length, before the agitated current finds a breathing place in the open plains below, and prepares itself to glide placidly into the lake, is supposed by geologists to have been formed by the wear and tear of this tremendous cataract, for a succession of ages not to be counted. For the geologist, especially if he be a Frenchman, does not deem himself obliged to regard the world’s history, as suggested by the scriptural account of the Deluge, and of the antediluvian periods. ”

“ Here the lullaby for the weary is the ceaseless roar of the mighty Nevada Falls, which come thundering down the cliffs in a sheer leap of 700 feet, losing themselves in a deep rock-pool, fringed with tall pines, which loom ghostly and solemn through the ever-floating tremulous mists of fine spray. ”