The rivers which flow into the great lakes are, for the most part, smal, and unimportant. A permanent communication between their waters and those of the Mississippi might be formed by means of a short canal from the Fox or Chicago rivers, both of which empty into Lake Michigan. The Fox river rises near the Ouisconsin branch of the Mississippi, and afterwards flows within one and a half miles of its channel, separated from it only by a short portage over a prairie. During the season of high water, the intervening ground is overflowed, so that loaded boats may pass over it.

Saganaw River is a large and deep stream, with bold shores, and numerous tributaries, which water a large extent of very delightful and fertile country. The banks of this stream are inhabited by detached bands of Chippeway and Ottaway Indians, who have long derived an easy subsistence from the abundance of game and fish to be found in their neighborhood. The Saganaw empties into a fine bay of the same name, which is by far the largest of the numerous inlets which indent the very irregular shores of Lake Huron.

The Gennessee rises in Pennsylvania, and runs north across the west part of New York into Lake Ontario. Five miles from its mouth, at Rochester, are falls of ninety-six and seventy-five feet in descent; above these falls the stream is navigable for boats nearly seventy miles, where two other falls occur, of sixty and ninety feet, one of which is formed by the slope of land which extends from Lewiston on Niagara river. Black Ricer receives its name from the color of its water. It rises in the highlands, north of the Mohawk, and its branches interlock with those of the Hudson; it pursues a northerly course of one hundred and twenty miles, and falls into Lake Ontario, near its outlet. It is a deep but sluggish stream, and the navigation is interrupted by falls; a series of which, called the Long Falls, extend fourteen miles. The land upon this stream is generally a rich, dark colored mould. The Oswegatchie consists of two branches, which unite four miles above their entrance into the St. Lawrence. The east branch is about one hundred and twenty miles long, and the west nearly one hundred; they are very crooked streams. The Oswego issues from Oneida Lake, and runs north-westerly into Lake Ontario; it is about forty miles long and is a rapid stream; its navigation is assisted by locks and canals. The Maumee rises in the north-eastern part of Indiana, and flows through the north-western part of Ohio into Lake Erie; it is broad and deep, but has an obstruction from shoals and rapids thirty-three miles above its mouth. The Sandusky rises in the northern part of Ohio, and flows northerly into Lake Erie; it is one hundred miles in length, and is navigable.

GENERAL REMARKS ON RIVERS.

The beds of rivers are the lowest parts of great chasms, formed by the same revo lutions which produced the mountains. Running waters unceasingly wear away their beds and banks in places where their declivity is very rapid; they hollow out and deepen their channels in mountains composed of rocks of moderate hardness; they draw along stones, and form accumulations of them in the lower part of their course; and thus their beds are often gradually elevated in the plains, while they are deepened and

canoes and baggage some distance along the banks until we reached a smooth space of current, when we crossed, and by that means surmounted the difficulties of their respec tive embouchures. —Adventures on Columbia River.

depressed in the mountains. But these changes, though continually going on for thou sands of years, could only give form to the banks of rivers; they in no wise created the banks themselves. Many great rivers flow with an almost imperceptible declivity. The river of the Amazons has only ten feet and a half declivity upon two hundred leagues of its course, making one twenty-seventh of an inch for every thousand feet. When a river is obstructed in its course by a bank of solid rocks, and finds beneath them a stratum of softer materials, its waters wear away the softer substance, and thus open for themselves a subterraneous passage, more or less long. Such are the causes which have formed the magnificent Rock Bridge in Virginia, an astonishing vault uniting two mountains, separated by a ravine two hundred and seventy feet in depth, in which the Cedar Creek flows. In Louisiana, trees, or rather whole forests, have been observed to fall on a river, covering it nearly with vegetable earth; and thus giving rise to a natural bridge which for leagues has hid the course of the river.

Rivers in running into the sea present a great variety of interesting phenomena; many form sand-banks, as the Senegal and the Nile; others, like the Danube, run with such force into the sea, that one can for a certain space distinguish the waters of the river from those of the sea. The waters of the little river Syre in Norway are discernable for a considerable distance in the sea. It is only by a very large mouth, like that of the Loire, the Elbe, or the Plata, that a river can peacefully mingle with the sea. Rivers even of this nature, however, sometimes experience the superior influence of the sea, which repels the waters into their bed. Thus the Seine forms at its mouth a bar of considerable extent; and the Garonne, unable to discharge with sufficient rapidity the waters which it accumulates in a kind of gulf between Bordeaux and its mouth, exhibits this aquatic mountain, stopped by the flow of the tide rolling backwards, inundating the banks, and stopping vessels in their progress both up and down. This phenomenon, termed the Mascaret, is only the collision of two bodies of water moving in opposite directions. The most sublime phenomenon of this kind which presents itself is that of the giant of rivers Orellana, called the river of the Amazons. Twice a day it pours out its imprisoned waves into the bosom of the ocean. A liquid mountain is thus raised to the height of one hundred and eighty feet; it frequently meets the flowing tide of the sea, and the shock of these two bodies of water is so dreadful that it makes all the neighboring islands tremble; the fishermen and navigators fly from it in the utmost terror. The next day, or the second day after every new or full moon, the time when the tides are highest, the river also seems to redouble its power and energy; its waters and those of the ocean rush against each other like the onset of two armies. The banks are inundated with their foaming waves; the rocks drawn along like light vessels, dash against each other, almost upon the surface of the water which bears them on. Loud roarings echo from island to island. It has been said that the Genius of the River and the God of the Ocean contended in battle for the empire of the waves. Indians call this phenomenon Pororoca.

COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE RIVERS OF THE WORLD.

The

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CHAPTER V.-CATARACTS AND CASCADES.

THE Falls of Niagara have been very frequently and minutely described, though it must be acknowledged, as has been well said by the celebrated Audubon, that all the pictures you may see, all the descriptions you may read of these mighty falls, can only produce in your mind the faint glimmer of a glow-worm compared with the overpowering glory of the meridian sun. 'What!' said he, 'have I come here to mimic nature in her grandest enterprise, and add my caricature of one of the wonders of the world to those which I here see? No.-I give up the vain attempt. I will look on these mighty cataracts, and imprint them where they alone can be represented,on my mind! The following very full and accurate description by Mr. Schoolcraft, is the best with which we are acquainted.

'On the first of May, I visited the celebrated Falls of Niagara.* Keeping the American shore, the road lies over an alluvial country, elevated from ten to twenty feet above the water of the river, without a hill or a ledge of rocks, and with scarce an undulation of surface, to indicate the existence, or prepare the eye for the stupendous prospect which bursts, somewhat unexpectedly, into view. The day was clear and warm, with a light breeze blowing down the river. We stopped frequently on our approach to listen for the sound of the Fall, but at the distance of fifteen, ten, eight, and even five miles, could not distinguish any, even by laying the ear to the ground. It was not until within three miles of the precipice, where the road runs close to the edge of the river, and brings the rapids in full view, that we could distinctly hear the sound, which then, owing to a change in the wind, fell so heavily upon the ear, that in proceeding a short distance, it was difficult to maintain a conversation as we rode along. On reaching the Falls, nothing struck me with more surprise, than that the Baron La Hontan, who visited it in August, 1688, should have fallen into so egregious a mistake, as to the height of the perpendicular pitch, which he represents at seven or eight hundred feet. Nor does the narrator of the discoveries of the unfortunate La Salle, Monsieur Tonti, approach much nearer the truth, when he states it at six hundred feet. Charlevoix, whose work is characterized by more accuracy, learning, and research, than those who had preceded him, and who saw the Falls in 1721, makes, on the contrary, an estimate which is surprising for the degree of accuracy he has attained. "For my own part," he says, "after examining it on all sides, where it could be viewed to the greatest advantage, I am inclined to think we cannot allow it less than a hundred and forty or fifty feet." The latter, (one hundred and fifty,) is precisely what the Fall on the Canadian side is now estimated at. There is a rapid of two miles in extent above, and another of seven miles, extending to Lewiston, below the Falls. The breadth across, at the brink of the Fall, which is serrated and irregular, is

This is an Iroquois word, said to signify the thunder of waters, and the word as still pronounced by the Senecas, is O-ni-áá-gáráh, being strongly accented on the third syllable, while the interjection O, is so feebly uttered, that, without a nice attention, it may escape notice

estimated at four thousand two hundred and thirty feet, or a little more than three fourths of a mile. The Fall on the American shore is one hundred and sixty-four feet, being the highest known perpendicular pitch of so great a volume of water. The fall of the rapid above, commencing at Chippewa, is estimated at ninety feet, and the entire fall of Niagara river from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, a distance of thirty-five miles, at three hundred feet. Goat Island, which divides the water into two unequal sheets, has recently been called Iris, (in allusion to the perpetual rainbows by which it is characterized) by the commissioners for settling the boundaries of the United States, acting under the treaty of Ghent.

'In approaching this cataract from Lewiston, the elevated and rocky description of country it is necessary to cross, together with the increased distance at which the roar is heard in that direction, must serve to prepare the mind for encountering a scene which there is nothing to indicate on approaching from Buffalo; and this impression unquestionably continues to exercise an effect upon the beholder, after his arrival at the Falls. The first European visiters beheld it under this influence. Following the path of the Couriers de Bois, they proceeded from Montreal up the St. Lawrence, to Fort Caderacqui, and around the shores of Lake Ontario, to the alluvial tract which stretches from the mouth of Niagara river, to the site of Lewiston. Here the Ridge, emphatically so called, commences, and the number of elevations which it is necessary to ascend in crossing it, may, without a proper consideration of the intermediate descents, have led those who formerly approached that way into error, such as La Hontan and Tonti fell into. They must have been deprived also of the advantages of the view from the gulf at the foot of the Falls, for we are not prepared to admit the possibility of a descent without artificial stairs, or other analogous laborious and dangerous works, such, as at that remote period, must have been looked upon as a stupendous undertaking; and could not, indeed, have been accomplished, surrounded as the French then were, by their enemies, the jealous and ever watchful Iroquois. The descent at the present period, with every advantage arising from the labors of mechanical ingenuity, cannot be performed without feeling some degree of personal solicitude.

It is in this chasm that the sound of the water falls heaviest upon the ear, and that the mind becomes fully impressed with the appalling majesty of the Fall. Other views from the banks on both sides of the river, and from the Island of Iris in its centre, are more beautiful and picturesque; but it is here that the tremulous motion of the earth, the clouds of irridescent spray, the broken column of falling water, the stunning sound, the lofty banks of the river, and the wide spreading ruin of rocks, imprint a character of wonder and terror upon the scene, which no other point of view is capable of producing. The spectator, who, on alighting at Niagara, walks hastily to the brink, feels his attention imperceptibly riveted to the novel and striking phenomenon before him, and at this moment is apt either to overrate or to underrate the magnitude of the Fall. It is not easy to erect a standard of comparison; and the view requires to be studied, in order to attain a just conception and appreciation of its grandeur and its beauties. The ear is at first stunned by the incessant roar, and the eye bewildered in the general view. In proportion as these become familiarized, we seize upon the individual features of the landscape, and are enabled to distinguish between the gay and the sombre, the bold and the picturesque, the harsh

and the mellow traits, which, like the deep contrasted shades of some high wrought picture, contribute to give effect to the scene.

'It was some time before I could satisfy myself of the accuracy of the accredited measurements of the height of the Fall, and not until after I had made repeated visits, and spent a considerable time in the abyss below. There appears a great disproportion between the height and the width of the falling sheet, but the longer I remained, the more magnificent it appeared to me; and hence it is, that with something like a feeling of disappointment, on my first arrival, I left the Falls after a visit of two days, with an impression of the scene which every thing I had previously read, had failed to create. At the time of my visit, the wind drove the floating ice out of Lake Erie, with the drift-wood of its tributary rivers, and these were constantly precipitated over the Falls, but we were not able to discover any vestiges of them in the eddies below. Immediately in front of the sheet of falling water on the American side, there was also an enormous bank of snow, of nearly an hundred feet in height, which the power of the sun had not yet been fierce enough to dissolve, and which, by giving an Icelandie character to the landscape, produced a fine effect. It appeared to me owe its accumulation to the falling particles of frozen spray.

What has been said by Goldsmith, and repeated by others, respecti the destructive influence of the rapids above to ducks and other wa fowl, is only an effect of the imagination. So far from being the case,

wild duck is often seen to swim down the rapid to the brink of the Falls, and then fly out, and repeat the descent, seeming to take a delight in the exercise. Neither are small land-birds affected on flying over the Falls, in the manner that has been stated. I observed the blue-bird and the wren,

The grandeur of these rapids is worthy of the cataract in which they terminate. In the greater branch, the river comes foaming down with prodigious impetuosity, and presents a surface of agitated billows, dashing wildly through the rocks and islands. This scene of commotion continues till within about thirty yards of the Fall. There the great body of the stream resumes its tranquility, and in solemn grandeur descends into the cloudy and unfathomable abyss. Never was there a nobler prelude to a sublime catastrophe.-Colonel Hamiltor