continued to and through their Huron tract to Goderich. A good road leads over a fine fertile country from Ancaster to Niagara, and another from Ancaster crosses the Ouse, and joins the main road leading from Niagara along Lake Erie to Detroit. The whole of the country lying west of Niagara is uncommonly fertile, and the climate will ripen in perfection apples, pears, prunes, nectarines, melons, and various other fruits. Grapes may also be raised in great abundance. At the mouth of the Niagara, close to the little town of the same name, we have a fort of feeble pretensions, called Fort George, opposite, and within gunshot of which, the Americans have a stone fort called Fort Niagara. Queenston is a small place, the consequence of which has greatly diminished since the North-west fur trade has been directed to Hudson Bay, and since the opening of the Welland Canal, which renders it unnecessary to re-land goods for the upper country. Immediately above Queenston stands Brock's monument, on the heights where the battle was fought in which that hero was killed.* His body was removed to it from Fort George in 1824. The view from the top of this fine column is probably the most beautiful in Upper Canada.* Near this is the village of St. Catherine's, where there are valuable salt springs, from which excellent salt is made.

As the Falls of Niagara interrupt the inland navigation of Canada, which otherwise might be continued without obstruction from Ontario to the Falls or Rapids of St. Mary's, between Lakes Huron and Superior (which might also be obviated at little expense, and throw open an inland ocean extending 500 miles farther west), the bold project of ascending by a canal from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie was proposed.

A company was accordingly incorporated in 1824, under the title of the Welland Canal Company, for the purpose of constructing a canal sufficiently large to allow vessels of about 120 tons to pass between Lakes Ontario and Erie; and five years after the work was commenced, three schooners entered the canal from Lake Ontario, at Twelve Mile Creek, passed through the village of St. Catherine's, then ascended the height west of Queenston, by locks, and then, following the canal to the River Welland, descended the Niagara, and proceeded to Black Rock Harbour, at the lower end of Lake Erie.

CHAP. IX.

CATARACT OF NIAGARA.

MANY celebrated travellers who have visited Niagara* have attempted to describe the Falls, yet none have succeeded, for it is beyond the power of language ever to portray the tremendous grandeur of this sublime phenomenon. Volney's description is the most philosophical, Captain Basil Hall's delineations the best detailed: Chateaubriand and others have either revelled in the regions of poetry, or raved in the giddy confusion that overwhelms the senses amidst the vast sublimities of Niagara.

Further attempts at description might therefore be deemed unnecessary, if some account of Niagara would not be considered a desideratum in a work treating of America.

As cataracts owe their formation to the configuration of the countries in which they occur, we may observe, that all the territory between the Ohio and Lake Erie is one vast plain, the level of which is higher than most parts of the continent.

This plain extends west beyond the Mississippi, and eastward to the Alleghany Mountains; but after passing Lake Erie for some distance to the north, the surface rapidly descends about 340 feet into another plain, in the level of which lies Lake Ontario.

* The Indian word Niagara, pronounced Ni-hau-garah.

The surface of Lake Erie is 330 feet above that of Ontario; so that, if the waters of Lake Erie should rise ten or twelve feet perpendicular, the adjacent flat country of Canada and New York would be overflowed.

On approaching the river Niagara from Lake Erie, we have in view, on each side, a level country. Nothing like mountain appears, except a few low distant summits over Presqu'île. Following the Niagara downwards, the river is at first level with its banks, and flows smoothly along for some miles among islets, until Grand Island * divides it for about ten miles, forming Black Rock Harbour on the American side, and leading down on the British to Chippawa; near which both streams unite, at Navy Island. The river is here about two miles broad, but a little below it contracts suddenly to less than a mile, and then its current rapidly increases from three to seven or eight miles. Farther down than this, the Canadian boatmen, with all their intrepidity, dare not venture. We now hear a distant noise resembling the peculiar sound of the ocean, when, as the precursor of a storm, the sea rolls in upon the shores in fine weather. This noise is more or less loud according to the direction of the wind; but loudest when all else is calm. A mile farther down, the river bends to the east, and we then perceive it at some distance, divided by Goat Island; leaving, however, by far the greater body of water on the British side, and

rushing and foaming furiously among shoals and rocks. Beyond the rapids a cloud of vapour is seen rising from an immense chasm; no further trace of the river appears; no fall is yet presented; but the sound grows louder and louder, and the banks rise from the water, first ten or twelve feet, and soon to twenty, thirty, and fifty feet.

The banks appear to rise, but it is the declivity of the rapid, being about fifty feet in half a mile, leaving heights and precipices on each side; and the acceleration of the current continues to gain force, until we reach the fall; where the whole vast volume of waters, incased between two lofty rugged banks, is hurled, with all the impetuous violence of its extraordinary and peculiar power, over a perpendicular height of 160 feet, into a vast and terrific gulf. On reaching the side of the falls, the senses are overwhelmed by the magnificent grandeur of this most gigantic, awful, and sublime of all cataracts.

From a jutting shelf, called the Table Rock, which is level with the edge of the cataract, the falls are usually viewed by travellers; but all agree that the grandeur of the spectacle is more striking at the bottom, below the falls, on the British side. The descent is partly down the less steep part of the bank, and partly by a spiral ladder, from the bottom of which a kind of path leads among rocks and under the precipitous banks to the crescent or great horseshoe fall.

The scene before which the spectator then stands, no one can justly describe. If asked if we are disappointed in our anticipations, no answer can ever be better, than the reply quoted by Captain Hall,