The surface of Niagara River below the cataract is for some distance comparatively calm, so that small boats can move about and pass almost under the mass of descending waters. The deep and narrow gorge stretches far to the north with two ponderous international railroad bridges thrown across it in the distance, carrying over the Vanderbilt and Grand Trunk roads. An electric road is constructed down the bottom of the gorge on the American bank, and another along its top on the Canadian side. The water flows with occasional eddies, its color a brilliant green under the sunlight, the gorge steadily deepening, the channel narrowing, and when it passes under the two railroad bridges, which are close together, the river begins its headlong course down the Lower Rapids leading to the Whirlpool. With the speed of an express train, the torrent runs under these bridges, tossing, foaming and rolling in huge waves, buffeting the rocks, and thus it rushes into the Whirlpool. Viewed from the bottom of the gorge alongside the torrent, the effect is almost painful, its tempestuous whirl and headlong speed having a tendency to make the observer giddy. The rushing stream is elevated in the centre far above the sides, the waves in these rapids at times rising thirty feet, tossing wildly in all directions, and coming together with tremendous force. Huge rocks, fallen in earlier ages, evidently underlie the torrent. It was in these terrible rapids that several daring spirits, and notably Captain Webb in 1883, attempted, unprotected, to swim the river, and paid the penalty with their lives. More recently these rapids have been safely passed in casks, peculiarly constructed, although the passengers got rough usage. The Whirlpool at the end of the rapids is a most extraordinary formation. The torrent runs into an oblong pool, within an elliptical basin, the outlet being at the side through a narrow gorge not two hundred and fifty feet wide, above which the rocky walls tower for three hundred feet. Into this basin the waters rush from the rapids, their current pushing to its farthest edge, and then, rebuffed by the bank of the abyss, returning in an eddy on either hand. These two great eddies steadily circle round and round, and logs coming down the rapids sometimes swim there for days before they are allowed to get to the outlet. Upon the left-hand side of this remarkable pool the eddy whirls around without obstruction, while that upon the right hand, where the outlet is, rebounds upon the incoming torrent and is thrown back in huge waves of mixed foam and green, the escaping waters finally rushing out through the narrow opening, and on down more brawling rapids to the end of the deep and wonderful gorge, and thence in placid stream through the level land northward to Lake Ontario. NIAGARA INDUSTRIES AND BATTLES.