A gradual approach does not at all diminish the power of the cataract, and the mind is rather unduly excited by the aspect of the Styx-like flood--black, foam-crested, and of great volume, with every indication of profound depth--which hurries on so swiftly and so furiously below the road on which you are travelling, between banks cut down through grim, dark rock, so sheer that the tops of the upper trees which take root in the strata can be nearly touched by the traveller’s stick. The idea that the whole of the great river beneath you has just leaped over a barrier of rock prepares one’s conception for the greatness of the cataract itself. In summer time there were wild ducks flying about, and terns darted up and down the stream. Now it was deserted and desolate, looking of more inky hue in contrast with the snow. Close to the boiling cataract the fishermen’s tiny barks might then be seen rocking up and down, or the angler sought the bass which loves those turbulent depths; but no such signs of human life and industry are visible in winter. Before Niagara was, odd creatures enough lived about here, which can now be detected fossilised in the magnesian limestone. How many myriads of years it has been eating away its dear heart and gnawing the rock let Sir Charles Lyell or Sir Roderick Murchison calculate; but I am persuaded that since I saw it some months ago there has been a change in the aspect of the Horseshoe Fall, and that it has become more deeply curved. The residents, however, though admitting the occurrence of changes, say they are very slow, and that no very rapid alteration has taken place since the fall of a great part of Table Rock some years ago: but masses of stone may be washed away every day without their knowing it. One very natural consequence of a visit in the winter was undeniable--that the Falls were visibly less: they did not extend so far, and they rolled with diminished volume. The water did not look so pure, and incredible icicles and hanging glaciers obscured the outlines of the rocks and even intruded on the watercourse; whilst the trees above, laden with snow, stood up like inverted icicles again, and rendered it difficult to define the boundary between earth, air, and water.