Home › Contents › The World's Greatest Natural Wonder
The World's Greatest Natural Wonder
HE great natural wonder As the current approaches Goat Island of the world is the Falls it seems to flow with redoubled velocity. of Niagara, discovered It is impossible to conceive anything by Père Hennepin in equal to the force and swiftness of its the year 1678. The progress to the ledge of rocks over which Niagara River, forming it is propelled, till it impetuously tumbles the boundary line be- into the bed of the river beneath, with a tween Canada and the noise louder than thunder. When the States, flows almost north for a distance waters fall into the deep basin, they reof thirty-six miles, of which twenty-two bound into the air in immense spherical are above and fourteen are below the Falls. Above the Falls the river encircles a large island, known as Grand Island, its course thus far being quiet. figures, white as snow and sparkling as diamonds. These figures, after rising and apparently remaining stationary for a moment, explode at the top and emit columns of spray to an astonishing height.
Presently, however, it begins to feel the influence of the coming leap, and sweeps They then subside and are succeeded by along more impetuously, and soon breaks others which disappear in the same into furious rapids. Reaching the head manner. of Goat Island, it separates into two From that part of the Table Rock branches; that on the American side which yet remains, the spectator comrushing straight forward to the brink in mands one of the grandest and most a mass a thousand feet broad, and shoot- romantic views in Nature. The tremening over into the gulf below. That on dous rapids above the Falls-Goat Island the Canadian side of Goat Island sweeps in their midst, covered with trees, which around, and plunges over a cliff in the seem at every moment about to be swept form of a horseshoe (hence the name of away; the Horseshoe Fall, immediately this Fall), the two parts of the river below Table Rock; Fort Schlosser Fall, mingling at the foot of the Fall. The beyond Goat Island; and the frightful height of the American Fall is one hun- gulf beneath, boiling with perpetual rage dred and eighty feet. That of the Horse- and shooting upwards immense volumes shoe Fall is slightly less, owing to the of sparkling foam, smoking with apparent smaller height of the crest. Its leap is intensity of heat-are a few of the great one hundred and seventy-three feet. objects which are forced upon his attention.
Another place from which the Falls dense it is still more dangerous to enassume, if possible, a more striking and gage in the bold attempt of exploring the awful appearance, is at the bottom of the stable foundations of the river, for people cataract. The precipice leading to this spot is descended by means of a ladder, the perpendicular height of which is upwards of sixty feet; you proceed along the edge of the river, which is covered with broken rocks, wrecks of boats, and other rubbish, until you arrive at the bottom of the Horseshoe Fall.
From this place visitors frequently proceed on foot several hundred yards, within a prodigious sheet of caverned vater, which is formed by the overshooting of the cataract. But they must be men of the firmest nerve who venture on such a daring enterprise, for the most undaunted resolution is in danger of being shaken on looking upward at the impending rock, which continually seems to bend and groan beneath the rolling flood, to which it serves as a fearful support.
From the projecting edge of this rock the mass of waters is impelled forward, and