The earliest references to Britain pertain exclusively to the peninsula of Cornwall and the neighbouring islands, whither the fleets of the Mediterranean were attracted in ages of vague antiquity, and the traders from Gaul resorted in quest of its metallic wealth. The mineral regions of the New World disclose some corresponding records of its long-forgotten past; and some idea of their present condition is indispensable for preparing the mind to appreciate the changes wrought by time on localities which are now being rescued once more from the wilderness. The vast inland sea, which constitutes the reservoir of the chain of lakes whose waters sweep over the Falls of Niagara, and find their way by the St. Lawrence to the ocean, has been as yet so partially encroached upon by the pioneers of modern civilisation, that the general aspect of its shores differs but little from that which they presented to the eye of its first European explorers in the seventeenth century: or indeed to its Indian voyagers before the Spaniard first coasted the island shores of the Bahamas, and opened for Europe the gates of the West. With its wide extent of waters, covering an area of thirty-two thousand square miles, a lengthened period of sojourn in the regions with which it is surrounded, and many facilities for their exploration, would be required, in order to satisfy the curiosity of the scientific inquirer. But even a brief visit discloses much that is interesting, and that serves at once to illustrate, and to contrast with what comes under the observer’s notice elsewhere.