The cliff and staircase at this Landing would be considered highly picturesque any where but at the side of Niagara. The hundred stairs clinging to the rock, the wild vines overgrowing the temporary shed under which travellers take shelter from the spray, the descending and ascending figures, and the athletic boatmen, whose occupation of pulling across this troubled ferry requires herculean strength and proportions, all form a subject for the painter, which could only be disregarded amid the engrossing scenes of Niagara. There is another staircase extending down the precipitous front of Goat Island, between the two cataracts, which is less picturesque in itself, but much more daring in its position. One marvels at first how it ever was constructed; but a story told in an old book of travels, published in London in 1750, shows that human feet have stood on the isolated and quaking cliff below, and returned again to the summit without the aid of mechanical science. The narrator is a Mr. Peter Kalm, a Swedish gentleman, then on his travels in America:— “It was formerly thought impossible for any body living to come at the island that is in the middle of the Fall; but an accident that happened twelve years ago made it appear otherwise. The history is this:—Two Indians of the Six Nations went out from Niagara Fort to hunt upon an island that is in the middle of the river, or strait, some miles above the great Fall, on which there used to be abundance of deer. They took some French brandy with them from the fort, which they tasted several times as they were carrying their canoe around the Fall; and when they were in the canoe, they now and then took a dram, and so went along up the strait toward the island where they proposed to hunt; but growing sleepy, they laid themselves down in the canoe, which getting loose, drove back with the stream farther and farther down, till it came nigh that island that is in the middle of the Fall. Here, one of them, awakened by the noise, cries out to the other that they were gone!—yet they tried if possible to save life. This island between the Falls was nighest, and with much working they got there. At first, they were glad; but when they had considered every thing, they thought themselves hardly in a better state than if they had gone down the Fall, since they had now no other choice than either to throw themselves down the same, or to perish with hunger: but hard necessity put them on invention. At the lower end of the island the rock is perpendicular, and there is a break in the fall. The island having plenty of wood, they went to work directly and made a ladder, or shrouds, of the bark of linden tree, which is very tough and strong, so long, that it would reach to the edge of the water below. One end of this bark ladder they tied fast to a great tree that grew at the side of the rock above the Fall, and let the other end down to the water.