Another beautiful point from which to view the Rapids is on Terrapin Rocks, the so-called scenic and geographical centre of Niagara. Here the power of the magnificent river, the "shoreless sea" above you, the clouds for its horizon, grows more impressive with every visit. By day the sight is marvellously impressive; by night, under some circumstances, it is yet more wonderful. Of this night view Margaret Fuller wrote, most feelingly: After nightfall as there was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge and leaned over the parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their might. It was grand, and it was also gorgeous: the yellow rays of the moon made the broken waves appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks. But they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a mightier emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I passed on to the Terrapin Bridge. Everything was changed, the misty apparition had taken off its many coloured crown which it had worn by day, and a bow of silvery white spanned its summit. The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness to the distant parts of the waters, and while the rapids were glancing in her beams, the river below the Falls was as black as night, save where the reflection of the sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blue steel. As the Falls of Niagara slowly creep backward in tune to their stupendous recessional toward Lake Erie they encroach more and more on the magnificent domain of the Rapids, nor will their gradual increase in height atone for this savage invasion nor palliate the offence committed. A thousand years more, we are told, and the visitor will view the "Horseshoe" Fall from the upper end of the Third Sister Island, and the marvellous canvas of Colin Hunter will be as meaningless as Hennepin's picture of two centuries and more ago. The American Fall, receding much more slowly than the Horseshoe Fall, will invade the beautiful rapids above Goat Island bridge at a very much later date, for, as we shall see, the greater fall recedes almost as many feet per year as the lesser recedes inches. And in this connection it is interesting to note that if the recession continued to Lake Erie and onward into that lake until the line of fall was a mile long at its crest, with the water falling 336 feet, Victoria Falls in the Zambesi River would still exceed their American rival by sixty-four feet in height! [Illustration: St. Paul's Church, Buffalo.] The accessibility of the Niagara Rapids, because of the fortunate location of the Goat Island group is, in itself, one of the great charms of the region, and this may explain in part the insuppressible desire of early visitors to reach these glorious points of vantage. The view of the rapids from the Goat Island bridge to-day is said to be the source of chief pleasure "to half the visitors to Niagara."[5]