[70] See Chamberlain's "Biography of Millard Fillmore," p. 136.
[71] For the knowledge that the first mention of Niagara Falls is in Champlain's "Des Sauvages," we are indebted to the Hon. Peter A. Porter of Niagara Falls, who recently discovered, by comparison of early texts, that the allusions to the falls in Marc Lescarbot's "Histoire de la Nouvelle France" (1609), heretofore attributed to Jacques Cartier, are really quotations from "Des Sauvages," published some five years before. There is, apparently, no warrant for the oft-repeated statement that Cartier, in 1535, was the first white man to hear of the falls. That distinction passes to Champlain, who heard of them in 1603, and whose first book, printed at the end of that year or early in 1604, gave to the world its first knowledge of the great cataract.—See "Champlain not Cartier," by Peter A. Porter, Niagara Falls, N. Y., 1899.
[72] Champlain a bien été jusqu'à Mexico, comme on peut le voir dans son voyage aux Indes Occidentales; mais il ne s'est pas rendu au Pérou, que nous sachions.—Note in Quebec reprint, 1870. Nor had he been to Niagara.
[73] Mocosa est le nom ancien de la Virginie. Cette expression, saults Mocosans, semble donner à entendre que, dès 1603 au moins, l'on avait quelque connaissance de la grande chute de Niagara.—Note in Quebec reprint, 1870.
[74] "Lescarbot écrit, en 1610, une pièce de vers dans laquelle il parle des grands sauts que les sauvages disent rencontrer en remontant le Saint-Laurent jusqu'au voisinage de la Virginie."—Benj. Sulte, "Mélanges D'Histoire et de Litterature" p. 425.
[75] The pronunciation of "Niagara" here, the reader will remark, is necessarily with the primary accent on the third syllable; the correct pronunciation, as eminent authorities maintain; and, as I hold, the more musical. "Ni-ag'-a-ra" gives us one hard syllable; "Ni [or better, -nee]-a-ga'-ra" makes each syllable end in a vowel, and softens the word to the ear. "Ni-ag'-a-ra" would have been impossible to the Iroquois tongue. But the word is now too fixed in its perverted usage to make reform likely, and we may expect to hear the harsh "Ni-ag'-a-ra" to the end of the chapter.
[76] Dr. Samuel Johnson, as is well known, was responsible for a number of lines in "The Traveller." In the verses above quoted the line
"To stop too fearful and too faint to go"
is attributed to him. Thus near does the mighty Johnson, the "Great Cham of Literature," come to legitimate inclusion among the poets of Niagara!
[77] This is not necessarily hyperbole, by any means. Before the Niagara region was much settled, filled with the din of towns, the roar of trains, screech of whistles and all manner of ear-offending sounds, Niagara's voice could be heard for many miles. Many early travelers testify to the same effect as Moore. An early resident of Buffalo, the late Hon. Lewis F. Allen, has told me that many a time, seated on the veranda of his house on Niagara Street near Ferry, in the calm of a summer evening, he has heard the roar of Niagara Falls.