"My first care, when I arrived, was to visit the most beautiful cascade that is, perhaps, in nature; but I immediately discovered that Baron la Hontain was deceived so greatly, both in its height and figure, that one might reasonably imagine he had never seen it.
"It is true, that if we measure its height by the three mountains you are obliged to ascend in going to it, there is not much abatement to be made of the 600 feet, which the map of M.
Delisse gives it, who doubtless advanced this paradox only on the credit of the Baron la Hontain, and Father Honnepin; but after I arrived at the top of the third mountain, I observed that in the space of three leagues, which I afterwards had to go to this fall of water, although you are forced sometimes to ascend, you must nevertheless descend still more, and this is what travellers do not appear to have paid proper attention to. As we can only approach the cascade on one side, nor see it but in the profile, it is not easy to measure its height by instruments: experiments have been made to do it by a long cord, tied to a pole, and after having often attempted this manner, it was found to be only 115 or 120 feet high; but it is impossible to ascertain whether the pole was not stopped by some projection of the rock; for although when drawn up again the end of the cord was always wet, yet that is no proof, since the water which precipitates from the mountain, flies up again in foam to a very great height: for my own part, after having considered it on every side that I could examine it to advantage, I think that we cannot allow it to be less than 140 or 150 feet.
"Its figure is that of a horse-shoe, and its circumference is about 400 paces; but exactly
in its middle, it is divided by a very narrow island, about half a quarter of a league long. It is true these two parts join again; that which was on my side, and of which I could only have a side view, has several projecting points, but that which I beheld in front, appeared to be perfectly even." The Baron has also mentioned a torrent, which, if not the offspring of his own invention, must fall into some channel upon the melting of the snow.
There is another cataract three miles from Albany, in the province of New-York, whose height is 50 feet perpendicular, and from which there arises a mist that occasions a faint rainbow.[325:A]
In all countries where mankind are not sufficiently numerous to form polished societies, the ground is more irregular, and the beds of rivers more extended, less equal, and often abound with cataracts. Many ages were required to render the Rhone and the Loire navigable. It is by confining waters, by directing their course, and by cleansing the bottom of rivers, that they obtain a fixed and regular course; in all countries thinly inhabited Nature is rude, and often deformed.
There are rivers which lose themselves in the sands, and others which seem to precipitate into the bowels of the earth: the Guadalquiver in Spain, the river Gottenburg in Sweden, and the Rhine itself, lose themselves in the earth. It is asserted, that in the west part of the island of St. Domingo there is a mountain of a considerable height, at the foot of which are many caverns, into which the rivers and rivulets fall with so much noise, as to be heard at the distance of seven or eight leagues.[326:A]
The number of rivers which lose themselves in the earth is very few, and there is no appearance that they descend very low; it is more probable that they lose themselves, like the Rhine, by dividing among the quantity of sand; this is very common to small rivers that run through dry and sandy soils, of which we have several examples in Africa, Persia, Arabia, &c.
The rivers of the north transport into the sea prodigious quantities of ice, which accumulating, form those enormous masses so destructive to mariners. These masses are the most abundant in the Strait of Waigat, which is entirely frozen over the greatest part of the year,