impression unlike anything else in nature. GOAT ISLAND. Niagara presents other spectacles; the islands scattered among the upper rapids; their swiftly flowing, foaming current rushing wildly along; the remarkable lower gorge, where the torrent making the grandest rapids runs finally into the Whirlpool basin with its terrific swirls and eddies--these join in making the colossal exhibition. Added to all is the impressive idea of the resistless forces of Nature and of the elements. Few places are better fitted for geological study, and by day or night the picture presents constant changes of view, exerting the most powerful influence upon the mind. Goat Island between the two falls is a most interesting place, covering, with the adjacent islets, about sixty acres, and it was long a favorite Indian Cemetery. The Indians had a tradition that the falls demand two human victims every year, and the number of deaths from accident and suicide fully maintains the average. There have been attempts to romantically rename this as Iris Island, but the popular title remains, which was given from the goats kept there by the original white settlers. It was from a ladder one hundred feet high, elevated upon the lower bank of Goat Island, near the edge of the Canadian fall, that Sam Patch, in 1829, jumped down the Falls of Niagara. He endeavored to gain fame and a precarious living by jumping down various waterfalls, and not content with this exploit, made the jump at the Genesee falls at Rochester and was drowned. A bridge crosses from the American shore to Goat Island, and it is recorded that two bull-terrier dogs thrown from this bridge have made the plunge over the American falls and survived it. One of them lived all winter on the carcass of a cow he found on the rocks below, and the other, very much astonished and grieved, is said to have trotted up the stairs from the steamboat wharf about one hour after being thrown into the water and making the plunge.