Two miles below the cataract the river is compressed within eight hundred feet, and a mile farther down, at the outlet of the Whirlpool, where a sharp right-angled turn is made, the enormous current is contracted within a space of less than two hundred and fifty feet. In the seven miles distance, these lower rapids descend about one hundred and four feet, and then with placid current the Niagara River flows a few miles farther northward to Lake Ontario. The view of Niagara is impressive alike upon sight and hearing, and this impressiveness grows upon the visitor. From the bridge just below the American fall, and from the Canadian side, the whole grand scene is in full display, and quickly convinces that no description can exaggerate Niagara. The Indians first told of the falls, and they are indicated on Champlain's map of 1632. In 1648 the Jesuit missionary Rugueneau wrote of them as a "cataract of frightful height." The first white man who saw them was Father Louis Hennepin, the Franciscan, in 1678, who described them as "a vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. The waters which fall from this horrible precipice do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous noise more terrible than that of thunder, for when the wind blows out of the south their dismal roaring may be heard more than fifteen leagues off." Upon Charles Dickens the first and enduring effect, instant and lasting, of the tremendous spectacle, was: "Peace--peace of mind, tranquility, calm recollections of the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness." The falls had a sanative influence upon Professor Tyndall, for, "quickened by the emotions there aroused," he says, "the blood sped exultingly through the arteries, abolishing introspection, clearing the heart of all bitterness, and enabling one to think with tolerance, if not with tenderness, upon the most relentless and unreasonable foe." After Anthony Trollope had looked upon the cataract he wrote: "Of all the sights on this earth of ours, I know no other one thing so beautiful, so glorious and so powerful. That fall is more graceful than Giotto's Tower, more noble than the Apollo. The peaks of the Alps are not so astounding in their solitude. The valleys of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica are less green. The finished glaze of life in Paris is less invariable; and the full tide of trade around the Bank of England is not so inexorably powerful." GEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF NIAGARA.