Four of the men were left hanging to the wires, which were swaying backwards and forwards in the hurricane in the most frightful manner. Their cries for help could scarcely be heard, from the noise of the Rapids and the howling of the wind, but the workmen on shore, seeing the perilous condition of their comrades, sent a basket, with a man in it, down the wire to rescue them from death. Thus, one by one, they were saved. Leaving the Bridge, and proceeding to the vicinity of the Whirlpool, still keeping the American side of the river, we pitched the camera, not _over_ the precipice, as I heard of one brother photographer doing, but on it, and took a view of the Bridge and the Rapids looking up towards the Falls, but a bend in the river prevented them being seen from this point. Not very far above the angry flood we saw the _Maid of the Mist_ lying quietly at her moorings. We next turned our attention to the great Whirlpool, which is about a mile below Suspension Bridge. Photographically considered, this is not nearly of so much interest as the Falls; but it is highly interesting, nevertheless, as a connecting link between their present and past history. It is supposed that ages ago--probably before the word went forth, "Let there _be_ light, and there _was_ light"--the Falls were as low down as the Whirlpool, a distance of over three miles below where they now are, or even lower down the river still. Geological observation almost proves this; and, that the present Whirlpool was once the great basin into which the Falls tumbled. In fact, that this was, in former ages, what the vortex at the foot of the Great Horse Shoe Fall is now. There seems to be no doubt whatever that the Falls are gradually though slowly receding, and they were just as likely to have been at the foot of the Long Rapids before the deluge, as not; especially when it is considered that the general aspect of the Falls has changed considerably, by gradual undermining of the soft shale and frequent falling and settling of the harder rocks during the last fifty years. Looking at the high and precipitous boundaries of the Long Rapids, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that, ages before the red man ever saw the Falls of Niagara, they rolled over a precipice between these rocky barriers in a more compact, but not less majestic body. The same vast quantity of water had to force its way through this narrower outlet, and it doubtless had a much greater distance to fall, for the precipices on each side of the river at this point are nearly 250 feet high, and the width of the gorge for a mile above and below the Whirlpool is not more than 700 feet. Considering that the Falls are now spread over an area of nearly three-quarters of a mile, and that this is the only outlet for all the superfluous waters of the great inland seas of Canada and America--Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie--and the hundreds of tributaries thereto, it may easily be conceived how