Formation -- Appearance of Niagara -- Goat Island -- Luna Island -- Cave of the Winds -- Terrapin Rocks -- Three Sisters Islands -- The Horseshoe -- Condemned Ship Michigan -- Lower Rapids -- Whirlpool -- Niagara Electric Power -- Massacre of Devil's Hole -- Battles of Queenston Heights, Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. THE FALLS AT COHOES. The valley of the Mohawk River provides one of the best routes for crossing the Empire State, from the Hudson over to Lake Erie. Within sight of the Hudson, the Mohawk pours down its noble cataract at Cohoes. This is a waterfall of nearly a thousand feet width, the descent being seventy-eight feet. The banks on either side are quite high, with foliage crowning their summits, and between is a perpendicular wall of dark-brown rocks making the cataract, having a sort of diagonal stratification that breaks the sombre face into rifts. In a freshet this is a wonderful fall, the swollen stream becoming a dark amber-colored torrent with adornments of foam, making a small Niagara. The river is dammed about a mile above, so that at times almost the whole current is drawn off to turn the mill-wheels of Cohoes, making paper and manufacturing much wool and cotton, one of its leading establishments being the "Harmony Knitting Mills." In digging for the foundations of its great buildings alongside the river, this corporation several years ago exhumed one of the most perfect skeletons of a mastodon now existing, which is in the State Museum at Albany. Cohoes has about twenty-five thousand population, and its name comes from the Iroquois word Coh-hoes, meaning a "canoe falling." A brisk rapid runs above the falls, and a touching Indian legend tells how the rapid and fall were named. Occuna was a young Seneca warrior (one of the Iroquois tribes), and with his affianced was carelessly paddling in a canoe at the head of the rapid, when suddenly the current drew them down towards the cataract. Escape being impossible, they began the melancholy death-song in responsive chants, and prepared to meet the Great Spirit. Occuna began: "Daughter of a mighty warrior; the Great Manitou calls me hence; he bids me hasten into his presence; I hear his voice in the stream; I see his spirit in the moving of the waters; the light of his eyes danceth upon the swift rapids." The maiden responded, "Art thou not thyself a great warrior, O Occuna? Hath not thy tomahawk been often bathed in the red blood of thine enemies? Hath the fleet deer ever escaped thy arrow, or the beaver eluded thy chase? Why, then, shouldst thou fear to go into the presence of the Great Manitou?" Then said Occuna, "Manitou regardeth the brave, he respecteth the prayer of the mighty! When I selected thee from the daughters of thy mother I promised to live and die with thee. The Thunderer hath called us together. Welcome, O shade of Oriska, invincible chief of the Senecas. Lo, a warrior, and the