ain land, converted the peninsula into an
island, and actually made a canal 400 yards wide, and eight or ten feet
deep, almost at the very point where the proposed canal was to be cut,
and rendered nothing else now necessary in order to secure a safe
channel for the vessels, and a good harbor on both sides, than the
construction of a pier on the west side, to prevent the channel being
filled up with sand."--Montgomery Martin.]

[Footnote 129: "The Horse-shoe Cataract on the British side is the
largest of the Falls. The curvatures have been geometrically computed at
700 yards, and its altitude, taken with a plumb-line from the surface of
the Table Rock, 149 feet; the American fall, narrowed by Goat Island,
does not exceed 375 yards in curvilinear length (the whole irregular
semicircle is nearly three quarters of a mile), its perpendicular height
being 162 feet, or 13 feet higher than the top of the Great Fall, adding
57 feet for the fall. The rapids thus give only a total of 219 feet,
which is less than many other falls; but their magnificence consists in
the volume of the water precipitated over them, which has been computed
at 2400 millions of tons per day, 102 millions per hour! A calculation
made at Queenston, below the Falls, is as follows: The river is here
half a mile broad; it averages 25 feet deep; current three miles an
hour; in one hour it will discharge a current of water three miles long,
half a mile wide, and twenty-five feet deep, containing 1,111,400,000
cubic feet, being 18,524,000 cubic feet, or 113,510,000 gallons of water
each minute."--Montgomery Martin's _History of Canada_.]

[Footnote 130: "The total area of the four great lakes which pour forth
their waters to the ocean over the Falls of Niagara is estimated at
100,000 square miles."--Montgomery Martin.]

[Footnote 131: Colonel Bouchette observes, that, according to the
altitude of the sun, and the situation of the spectator, a distinct and
bright iris is soon amid the revolving columns of mist that soar from
the foaming chasm, and shroud the broad front of the gigantic flood.
Both arches of the bow are seldom entirely elicited, but the interior
segment is perfect, and its prismatic hues are extremely glowing and
vivid. The fragments of a plurality of rainbows are sometimes to be seen
in various parts of the misty curtain.]

[Footnote 132: Symptoms of the Falls are discerned from a vast distance.
From Buffalo, twenty miles off, two small fleec