Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820

by active 19th century James Flint

The New York canal is a work not only interesting to a large portion of the United States, but also to Upper Canada. Already ninety miles of the line is completed and in operation, and the continuance of the present exertions must in a short time finish the whole. Should the government of Britain continue to neglect the improvement of the inland navigation of Canada, and persist in excluding the colonies from the advantages of a free trade, and give their grain a nominal preference in the British market, while that market is in reality shut against it, a new interest must arise in the upper province. England may still give Canadian lands gratis, and garrison the frontier posts with an idle soldiery, but she cannot shut the eyes of her subjects against the facilities to be derived {290} from an uninterrupted navigation to the port of New York, which is free to the flags of all nations, and open to the sea at every season of the year.

Opposite to Buffalo is Port Erie, on the Canadian side of the river,—pleasant situation, but apparently without any thing like the bustle that animates the southern shore.

At Black Rock, the river Niagara is about a mile in breadth, and runs at the rate of eight knots per minute, and its greatest depth is said to be about ten fathoms.[163] The lake, forming an extensive reservoir, greatly equalizes the discharge of water, particularly as this river is without the floods that characterize most other streams.

One of the passengers on board the steam-boat, a Captain of the United States army, on his way to Fort Niagara, agreed to travel along with me. We hired a two-horse waggon to carry ourselves and baggage. The actual portage to the falls of Niagara is only seven miles; but as we found that there was no boat in readiness to sail from Black Rock, we resolved to proceed the whole way by land, which is thirty-four miles. The gentleman with whom I travelled was on his return from Green Bay, an inlet of Lake Michigan, where he had gone with some soldiers who were banished to that place. Green Bay is a place of exile, so far removed from the other settlements of the United States, that culprits have it not in their power to escape from thence.

Our journey down the southern bank of the river was extremely pleasant. The banks are low {291} and verdant to the water’s edge, and the margin, in most parts, forming fine curves, smooth as if finished by art. The islands are also low and covered with luxuriant timber. It is the extent of water-prospect, bounded in every direction by woods, that constitutes the grandeur of this part. At the lower extremity of Grand Island, the sheet of water seems to be about three miles broad. The soil is good, and yields better pasturage and hay than the lands of the more southern parts of the continent. A happy compensation for the severity of the northern winter.

On approaching within two or three miles of the falls, a cloud of spray is to be seen rising 600 or 700 feet into the air. At that distance, the noise of the waters has something like the effect of a strong wind among the trees of a forest.

Immediately above the precipice, there is an island beautifully wooded, with a mixture of white cedars and other evergreen trees, which divides the river into two unequal parts, leaving the principal channel toward the Canadian shore. The head of this island, and the beach of the United States side of the river, are connected by a rude wooden bridge, which must have been constructed with great difficulty, as the bottom is of rock, and the water runs with great velocity. On both sides of the island the declivity is great, and the furious stream is broken at intervals by falling over shelving rocks. The division of the rapids toward the Canadian side, would have been remarked as highly interesting, had it been situated somewhere else than immediately adjoining to the great falls of Niagara.

The stranger, on arriving at the point of land close at the head of the cataract, and that juts over {292} the tremendous abyss, is in a moment arrested by the awful grandeur of the scene, or if he is at all inclined to motion, it is to recede from the precipice. The sight of an immense volume of water poured over a perpendicular cliff, situated almost under his feet,[164] into the chasm below, and the thundering noise, are calculated to excite a degree of astonishment that borders on dismay.

The part of the river which passes between the island and the south-easterly shore, falls over the abrupt edge of a precipice that has a few small gaps in it; the water discharged is necessarily deep in these, and forms green columns, which descend twenty or thirty feet before they assume the whiteness that is uniform over other parts of the sheet that here spends its fury on a heap of large blocks which have been undermined and detached from the rocks above. A vast body of dense spray deflected from those large masses of stone, flies off horizontally, and in every other direction, and completely obscures the bottom of the fall, and a considerable portion of the chasm adjoining.

The chasm, from the falls downward, is bounded on both sides by perpendicular cliffs. After descending seventy or eighty feet by a wooden stair, the way to the water’s edge is down a steep foot-slope, amongst large blocks of stone, and small trees of white cedar which line the banks, and add much to the beauty of this grand ravine.