which have often
led to disappointment.

A record of a voyage in 1535 by a French mariner named Jacques
Cartier, contains, it is said, the first printed allusion to Niagara.
In 1603 the first map of the district was constructed by a Frenchman
named Champlain. In 1648 the Jesuit Rageneau, in a letter to his
superior at Paris, mentions Niagara as 'a cataract of frightful
height.' [Footnote: From an interesting little book presented to me at
Brooklyn by its author, Mr. Holly, some of these data are derived:
Hennepin, Kalm, Bakewell, Lyell, Hall, and others I have myself
consulted.] In the winter of 1678 and 1679 the cataract was visited
by Father Hennepin, and described in a book dedicated 'to the King of
Great Britain.' He gives a drawing of the waterfall, which shows that
serious changes have taken place since his time. He describes it as
'a great and prodigious cadence of water, to which the universe does
not offer a parallel.' The height of the fall, according to Hennepin,
was more than 600 feet. 'The waters,' he says, 'which fall from this
great precipice do foam and boil in the most astonishing manner,
making a noise more terrible than that of thunder. When the wind
blows to the south its frightful roaring may be heard for more than
fifteen leagues.' The Baron la Hontan, who visited Niagara in 1687,
makes the height 800 feet. In 1721 Charlevois, in a letter to Madame
de Maintenon, after referring to the exaggerations of his
predecessors, thus states the result of his own observations: 'For my
part, after examining it on all sides, I am inclined to think that we
cannot allow it less than 140 or 150 feet,'--a remarkably close
estimate. At that time, viz. a hundred and fifty years ago, it had
the shape of a horseshoe, and reasons will subsequently be given for
holding that this has been always the form of the cataract, from its
origin to its present site.

As regards the noise of the fall, Charlevois declares the accounts of
his predecessors, which, I may say, are repeated to the present hour,
to be altogether extravagant. He is perfectly right. The thunders of
Niagara are formidable enough to those who really seek them at the
base of the Horseshoe Fall; but on the banks of the river, and
particularly above the fall, its silence, rather than its noise, is
surprising. This arises, in part, from the lack of resonance; the
surrounding country being flat, and therefore furnishing no echoing
surfaces to reinfor