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 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