Seldom less than two miles in width, it is two and one-half miles wide where it issues from Ontario, and with several expansions which deserve the name of lake it becomes eighty miles in width where it ceases to be considered a river. The influence of the tide is felt as far up as Lake St. Peter, about one hundred miles from the gulf, while it is navigable for sea-going vessels to Montreal, eighty miles farther inland. Rapids impede navigation above this point, but by means of canals continuous communication is obtained to the head of Lake Superior. If inferior in breadth to the mighty Amazon, if it lacks the length of the Mississippi, if without the stupendous gorges and cataracts of the Yang-tse-Kiang of China, if missing the ancient castles of the Rhine, if wanting the lonely grandeur that still overhangs the Congo of the Dark Continent, the Great River of Canada has features as remarkable as any of these. It has its source in the largest body of fresh water upon the globe, and among all of the big rivers of the world it is the only one whose volume is not sensibly affected by the elements. In rain or in sunshine, in spring floods or in summer droughts, this phenomenon of waterways seldom varies more than a foot in its rise and fall. [Illustration: A Glimpse of Buffalo Harbor.] The history of the Niagara is so closely interwoven with that of the great "Queen City of the Lakes," Buffalo, that it would seem as though the famous waterway was in the suburb of the city and its greatest scenic attraction. However true this is to-day, it was very far from the case a century ago, for though the site of Buffalo was historic and important, the city, as such, is of comparative recent origin, coming to its own with giant strides in those last decades of the nineteenth century. Writes Mr. Rowland B. Mahany in his excellent chapter on "Buffalo" in _The Historic Towns of the Middle States:_ Few cities of the United States have a history more picturesque than Buffalo, or more typical of the forces that have made the Republic great. At the time of the adoption of the Federal constitution, in 1787, not a single white settler dwelt on the site of what is now the Queen of the Lakes; and it was not until after the second presidency of Washington, that Joseph Ellicott, the founder of Buffalo, laid out the plan of the town, which he called New Amsterdam.