Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The History of the Niagara River
The Niagara river ?ows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The shore of Erie is more than 300 feet higher than the shore of Ontario; but if you pass from the higher shore to the lower, you do not descend at a uniform rate. Starting from Lake Erie and going northward, you travel upon a plain not level but with only gentle undulations until you approach the shore of Lake Ontario, and then suddenly you find yourself on the brink of a high bluff or cliff overlooking the lower lake, and separated from it only by a narrow strip of lping plain. The birds-eye view in Plate I is constructed to Show the relations of these various features, the two lakes, the broad plateau lying a little higher than the shore of Lake Erie, the cliff, which geologists call the Niagara Escarpment, and the narrow plain at its foot.
Where the Niagara river leaves Lake Erie at Buffalo and enters the plain, a low ridge of rock crosses its path, and in traversing this its water is troubled; but it soon becomes smooth, spreads out broadly, and indolently loiters on the plain. For three-fourths of the distance it can not be said to have a valley, it rests upon the surface of the plateau; but then its habit suddenly changes. By the Short rapid at Goat Island and by the cataract itself the water of the river is dropped 200 feet down into the plain, and thence to the cliff at Lewiston it races headlong through a deep and narrow gorge. From Lewiston to Lake Ontario there are no rapids. The river is again broad, and its channel is scored so deeply in the littoral plain that the current is relatively slow, and the level of its water surface varies but slightly from that of the lake.
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