One man at least took the tight-rope route across Niagara who had not practised the feat. This was a criminal who escaped his captors near this locality in 1883; the sheriff was behind him, the river in front, and only the wires of the old bridge at Lewiston to help him across. Hand over hand he began the passage. His hands quickly blistered, and then they bled. Again and again he rested his arms by hanging by his legs, and at last reached the opposite bank where he lay panting fully an hour before he continued his flight. We have seen that all the tight-rope walkers at Niagara met with extraordinary luck while crossing the Gorge; in fact, we have no record that anybody ever lost his life while performing on the wire. Peere met with an accident, and was killed in night-time; it is said he was intoxicated and tried to cross with his boots on. Ballini met his death in the Thames River. Many lives, however, have been lost in attempting to brave the waters of the canyon at Niagara. Attracted by the sensational setting adrift of the condemned brig _Michigan_ over the Falls in 1829, Sam Patch, a man who had won fame at Pawtucket Falls and other Eastern points as a high-jumper, erected a ladder on the foot-path under Goat Island, and announced to the world that he would jump into Niagara River. The hotel keepers patted him on the back, and left no stone unturned to enable him to draw the biggest crowd of the season. Patch rested the bottom of his ladder on the edge, just north of the Biddle Stairs, with the top inclining over the river, staying it with ropes to the trees on the bank. At the top was a small platform, and from this Patch dived ninety-seven feet; he jumped a second time to prove that the first feat was not a fluke. Shortly afterwards he leaped to his death from the Genesee Fall in Rochester, N. Y. Captain Matthew Webb, of Niagara fame, was born in Shropshire, England, in 1840. He went to sea at an early age and became captain of a merchantman, and first attracted notice by jumping from a Cunard steamer to save a man who had fallen overboard, for which he was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Humane Society. In 1875 he accomplished the feat of swimming the English Channel from Dover to Calais, a distance of twenty-five miles.