The strata at Niagara dip slightly to the south, but not enough to make any serious disturbance in the problem. That at the surface, over which the water now plunges, consists of hard limestone, seventy or eighty feet in thickness, and this is continuous from the falls to the face of the escarpment at Queenston, where the river emerges from the gorge. Immediately underneath this hard superficial stratum there is a stratum of soft rock, of about the same thickness, which disintegrates readily. As a consequence, the plunging water continually undermines the hard stratum at the surface, and prepares the way for it to fall down, from time to time, in huge blocks, which are, in turn, ground to powder by the constant commotion in which they are kept, and thus the channel is cleared of _débris_. [Illustration: Fig. 105.--Section of strata along the Niagara gorge from the falls to the lake: 1, 3, strata of hard rock; 2, 4, of soft rock.] Below these two main strata there is considerable variation in the hardness of the rock, as shown in the accompanying diagram, where 3 and 5 are hard strata separated by a soft stratum. In view of this fact it seems probable that, for a considerable period in the early part of the recession, instead of there being simply one, there was a succession of cataracts, as the water unequally wore back through the harder strata, numbered 5, 3, and 1; but, after having receded half the distance, these would cease to be disturbing influences, and the problem is thus really the simple one of the recession through the strata numbered 1 and 2, which are continuous. So uniform in consistency are these throughout the whole distance, that the rate of recession could never have been less than it is now. We come, therefore, to the question of the rapidity with which the falls are now receding. In 1841 Sir Charles Lyell and Professor James Hall (the State Geologist of New York) visited the falls together, and estimated that the rate of recession could not be greater than one foot a year, which would make the time required about thirty-five thousand years. But Lyell thought this rate was probably three times too large; so that he favoured extending the time to one hundred thousand years. Before this the eminent French geologist Desor had estimated that the recession could not have been more than a foot in a century, which would throw the beginning of the gorge back more than three million years. But these were mere guesses of eminent men, based on no well-ascertained facts; while Mr. Bakewell, an eminent English geologist, trusting to the data furnished him by the guides and the old residents of Niagara, had, even then, estimated that the rate of recession was as much as three feet a year, which would reduce the whole time required to about ten thousand years.