At one time, in 1764, when provisions were being forwarded to the West for the use there of Gen. Bradstreet's Army, it is recorded that over 5,000 barrels of provisions alone lay at Fort Schlosser, the upper terminus of Niagara's portage, awaiting shipment to the West. By Niagara also went--had to go, for besides being the only feasible route, it was the only safe way, for it had military protection,--all the traders, with their boat loads of cheap merchandize; men who spent months at a time in journeying among the tribes in the Northwest, trading their wares for valuable furs; all of which peltries, in turn, they had to bring east "by Niagara." With the opening of the Erie Canal, in 1826, all that portaging business at Niagara disappeared; and Niagara, that is the territory immediately adjoining the Cataract, became a famous Watering Place; which character it has ever since retained, and always will retain. In the early days of that scenic glory it still preserved a tinge of its ancient aspect, as "An Aboriginal Center of Trade." For many years Indian bead-work was one of the main attractions offered in the Bazaars there. And the elder generation of visitors will recall the familiar sight of aged Indian Squaws, and dusky Indian Maidens, who daily, during the season of travel, sat at various points along the route of the tourist--on the steep banks of the road leading up the hill to Goat Island, beneath the trees, close to the rapids, on Luna Island, alongside the path leading down the bank on Goat Island to old Terrapin Tower, and at various points around the Ferry House, and what is now Prospect Park--offering for sale, crude bead work, pincushions, mocassins, etc. Often a pappoose, strapped to the board which formed the back of its picturesque but doubtless uncomfortable cradle, gazed stolidly at the pale faced visitor, as the cradle leant up against the foot of a tree, or swung suspended from some low-hanging branch. The "Braves" at home then made the toy canoes, the bows and arrows, the quivers, the war clubs and tomahawks, which the squaws also disposed of to tourists as souvenirs of Niagara. Those "Squaw Traders" were a most picturesque feature of Niagara, and the fact that those descendants of a passing Race now seldom or never sit by the roadside and offer their wares directly to the visitor is a distinct loss to the artistic environment of the Cataract. In those days also some enterprising genius devised the scheme of manufacturing trinkets--such as watch charms, seals, etc.,--out of that Niagara gypsum, or "Petrified Spray of the Falls"; thereby unconsciously reviving the Aboriginal Trade in that substance, which Docteur Gendron had so early recorded--only this time without any pretension that it possessed any healing qualities--but that trade was neither so famous nor so wide spread, nor so long continued, as the original.