great the rush of waters through so narrow a defile must necessarily be; their turbulence and impatience rather aptly reminding you of a spoilt child--not in size or form, but in behaviour. They have so long had their own way, and done as they liked on the upper river and at the Falls, they seem as if they could not brook the restraint put upon them now by the giant rocks and lofty precipices that stand erect, on either side, hurling them back defiantly in tumultuous waves, seething, and hissing, and roaring in anger, lashing themselves into foam, and swelling with rage, higher in the middle, as if they sought an unpolluted way to the lake below, where they might calm their angry and resentful passions, and lay their chafed heads on the soft and gently heaving bosom of their lovely sister Ontario. It is a remarkable circumstance that the waters of the Rapids, both above and below the Whirlpool, in this defile are actually higher in the middle, by eight or nine feet, than at the sides, as if the space afforded them by their stern sentinels on each side were not enough to allow them to pass through in order and on a level. They seem to come down the upper part of the gorge like a surging and panic-stricken multitude, until they are stopped for a time by the gigantic precipice forming the lower boundary of the Whirlpool, which throws them back, and there they remain whirling and whirling about until they get away by an under current from the vortex; and, rising again in the lower part of the gorge, which runs off at right angles to the upper, they again show their angry heads, and rush madly and tumultuously away towards Lake Ontario. The bed of these rapids must be fearfully rugged, or the surface of the waters could not possibly be in such a broken state, for the water is at least 100 feet deep, by measurement made above and below the Rapids. But nobody has ventured to "heave the lead" either in the Rapids themselves or in the Whirlpool, the depth of which is not known. There is not much picturesque beauty at this point. Indeed, the Whirlpool itself is rather of a fearful and horrible character, with little to see but the mad torrent struggling and writhing in the most furious manner, to force its way down between its rocky boundaries. I saw logs of wood and other "wreck," probably portions of canal boats that had come down the river and been swept over the Falls, whirling around but not coming to the centre. When they are seen to get to the vortex they are tipped up almost perpendicularly and then vanish from sight, at last released from their continually diminishing and circular imprisonment. It has sometimes happened that the dead bodies of people drowned in the upper part of the river have been seen whirling about in this frightful pool for many days. In 1841, three soldiers, deserters from the British army, attempting to swim across the river above these rapids, were drowned.