"Maid of the Mist" under Steel Arch Bridge.
The history of the Great Lakes and the birth of Niagara have a different interest for us, than alone to form the connecting link between the present and a past age devoid of life. Closely connected with this geologic history is the history of the human race. Unfortunately for us, the men inhabiting these parts in prehistoric ages have not left the traces of their existence upon the rocks and sands as have the waters of Niagara and the Lakes. Meagre, however, as is our knowledge we are still confident that man has been a comrade of the river during its entire history. Much to our disappointment, he was not possessed with the means of recording his knowledge for the satisfaction of future generations. Probably no such thought ever entered his brain. All that we know is, that along the old deserted shores of Lake Ontario in New York, which now form the Ridge Road, he constructed a rude hearth and built a fire thereon. The shifting of elevation or the rising of the surface of the lake buried beneath the waters hearth, ashes, and charred sticks, and thus by a mere accident do we know that human history extends back at least as far as the Ice Age.
In these modern days, when we are prone to believe that all forms of animate existence and inanimate as well have been the result of an evolution, we cannot think of the man who possessed the art of fire as the primeval man. Whatever age may be assigned to the Niagara, whatever may be the antiquity of that great cataract, upon which we are wont to look as everlasting, the age of the human race must be considered greater.
Chapter IV
[Niagara Bond and Free]
No one acquainted with the Niagara of to-day can imagine what were the conditions existing here before the days of the New York State Reservation and Queen Victoria Park. That old Niagara of private ownership, with a new fee for every point of vantage, was a barbarous incongruity only matched by the wonder and beauty of the spectacle itself. The admission to Goat Island was fifty cents, and to the Cave of the Winds, one dollar. To gain Prospect Park, the "Art Gallery," the inclined railway, or the ferry, the charge was twenty-five cents. It cost one dollar to go to the "Shadow of the Rock," or go behind the Horseshoe Fall. The admission to the Burning Spring was fifty cents, likewise to Lundy's Lane battle-ground, the Whirlpool Rapids, the Whirlpool. It cost twenty-five cents to go upon either of the suspension bridges. In addition to this a swarm of pedlars were hawking their wares at your elbows, and tents were pitched at every vantage point, containing the tallest man or the fattest woman, or the most astonishing reptile then in a state of captivity in all the world.
