As an illustration of the lengths unscrupulous sensationalists will go at Niagara to satisfy the curious throngs, in September, 1883, several enterprising citizens of Niagara Falls purchased a small boat which they fitted up to represent the _Maid of the Mist_, and sent it through the Rapids. Men were stationed about the boat in effigy, but no human beings were allowed on board, although, indeed there were many applications for passage. The boat passed through the Gorge in good shape. On August 28, 1887, Charles Alexander Percy, a waggon-maker of Suspension Bridge, went over the Rapids to win fame. He had conceived the idea of constructing a boat, and, having been previously a sailor he knew how to build a staunch craft. The vessel was of hickory, seventeen feet long and four feet ten and one-quarter inches wide. It had sixty-four oak ribs, and an iron plate weighing three hundred pounds was fastened to the bottom. The boat as completed weighed nine hundred pounds, and was covered with white canvas. At 3.30 o'clock in the afternoon on the day mentioned, Percy, having with great difficulty transported his craft to the old _Maid of the Mist_ landing above the cantilever bridge, took off his coat and waistcoat, put them in a valise and stowed it away in one of the compartments. Then he sat in the middle part of the boat, which had no deck, rowed out into the Niagara, just above the cantilever, unshipped his oars and fastened them to the boat and then crawled into one of his air-tight compartments. Many people watched his white craft from the bridges and banks, but the excursion had not been advertised and many visitors to the Falls knew nothing of it. The boat shot down toward the Whirlpool. On the theory that there was an undercurrent which ran stronger than the surface current, Percy had attached a thirty-pound weight to a ten-foot line, which he threw overboard to act as a drag; this had no apparent effect; the two-mile trip to the Whirlpool occupied less than five minutes, and while the boat was submerged repeatedly, it did not turn over. When near the Whirlpool it drifted close to the American shore, Percy, thinking he was in the quiet water on the further side of the Whirlpool, stuck out his head, but closed the aperture just in time to escape a tremendous wave. The boat passed straight across the Whirlpool, and on the other side Percyl crawled out of the compartment, took his oars, and rowed leisurely around to the foot of the inclined railway on the Canadian side, where he landed, his voyage having lasted twenty-five minutes. He gave much the same account of the adventure as was given by Graham of barrel fame, and Kendall, the Boston policeman, who swam into the Whirlpool in 1886. He thought he struck rocks in the passage down, but the boat showed no marks. [Illustration: Ice Bridge and American Falls.]