iff, its existence in the limestone all over the vicinity of the
Falls has been demonstrated by means of the huge excavations that have
been made in the development of the various Power Plants at Niagara.

CHANGES OF CONTOUR

Wonderful changes have taken place in the contour of the greater Fall
at Niagara since Docteur Gendron recorded that the Indians traded in
those "Erie Stones." The additional Fall, which Father Hennepin
pictured in 1697, as pouring eastward from the Canadian end of the
Horse Shoe Fall, was formed by the waters flowing around a large rock,
which stood at the very edge of the cliff. Before the middle of the
18th Century that rock had disintegrated and been swept away; and that
separate Fall then merged itself into the greater cascade; as is shown
in a view of Niagara accompanying Peter Kalm's description thereof in
1751. But it must be remembered that in Hennepin's time that Canadian
end of the Horse Shoe Fall extended very much farther down the Gorge
than it does to-day--probably 800 feet farther. That Fall then extended
its shallow end down to where old Table Rock stood. Then the levels of
all the upper lakes were higher than they are to-day, those levels
having been considerably lowered through the white man's denudations of
the forests in the Basin of the Great Lakes. As the downpour of Niagara
thereby diminished in volume, that end of the Canadian Fall receded; so
that, as far as can be deduced, that Fall was some 400 feet shorter in
contour (all taken off its western end) in 1900 than it was when
Hennepin saw it--two and a quarter centuries before. Since 1900, the
policy of the Province of Ontario, to turn its share of Niagara into
cash--in renting out to corporations the right to use the waters of the
Cataract for the development of electrical horsepower ("at so much
per")--has resulted in still further shortening the contour of the
Horse Shoe Fall, by another 400 feet. The contour of that Fall was
given by survey in 1840 as 3,060 feet. Hence, in Hennepin's time, it
must have been about 3,500 feet. To-day, owing to the filling in of the
old river-bed, along the edge of the precipice at the Cataract's
western end, that contour line would not be more than 2,700 feet.

But it must be recalled that the recession at the apex of that Fall has
been very marked since 1840; and as that recession is V shaped it has
added somewhat--fully two hundred feet--to the figures of that old
contour line