The Falls of Niagara and Other Famous Cataracts

by George W. Holley

Fall of Table Rock

On the 25th of June, 1850, occurred the great downfall which reduced Table Rock to a narrow bench along the bank. The portion which fell was one immense solid rock two hundred feet long, sixty feet wide, and one hundred feet deep where it separated from the bank. The noise of the crash was heard like muffled thunder for miles around. Fortunately it fell at noonday, when but few people were out, and no lives were lost. The driver of an omnibus, who had taken off his horses for their midday feed, and was washing his vehicle, felt the preliminary cracking and escaped, the vehicle itself being plunged into the gulf below.

In 1850, a canal-boat that became detached from a raft, went down the Canadian Rapids, turned broadside across the river before reaching the Falls, struck amidships against a rock projecting up from the bottom and lodged. It remained there more than a year, and when it went down took with it a piece of the rock apparently about ten feet wide and forty feet long. At the foot of Goat Island some smaller masses have fallen, and three extensive earth-slides have occurred.

In the spring of 1852 a triangular mass, the vertex of which was just beyond or south of the Terrapin Tower, while its altitude of more than forty feet lay along the shore of the south corner of Goat Island, fell in the night with the usual grinding crash. And with it fell some isolated rocks which lay on the brink of the precipice in front of the tower, and from which the tower derived its name. Before the tower was built, some person looking at the rocks from the shore suggested that they looked like huge terrapins sunning themselves on the edge of the Fall. A few days after the fall of the triangular mass, a huge column of rock a hundred feet high, about fourteen feet by twelve, and flat on the top, became separated from the bank and settled down perpendicularly until its top was about ten feet below the surface rock. It stood thus about four years, when it began gradually to settle, as the shale and stone were disintegrated beneath it, and finally it tumbled over upon the rocks below, furnishing an illustration of the manner in which we suppose the rocks which once accumulated below the Whirlpool must have been broken down. In the spring of 1871 a portion of the west side of the sharp angle of the Horseshoe, apparently about ten by thirty feet, went down, producing a decided change in the curve.

On the 7th day of February, 1877, about eleven o'clock of a cold, cloudy day, there occurred the most extensive abrasion of the Horseshoe Fall ever noted. It extended from near the water's edge at Table Rock, more than half the distance round the curve, some fifteen hundred feet, and at the most salient angle the mass that fell was from fifty to one hundred feet wide. By this downfall the contour of the Horseshoe was decidedly changed, the reëntering angle being made acute and very ragged. Less than three months afterward the abrasion was continued some two hundred feet toward Goat Island.

The trembling earth and muffled thunder gave evidence of the immensity of the mass of fallen rock, but no one saw it go down. For several months after the fall, until the mass of rock got thoroughly settled in the bed of the Falls, the exhibition of water-rockets, sent up a hundred feet above the top of the precipice, was unique and beautiful. The greatest angle of retrocession, which had previously been wearing toward Goat Island, is again turning toward the center of the stream.

On the 29th of March, 1848, the river presented a remarkable phenomenon. There is no record of a similar one, nor has it been observed since. The winter had been intensely cold, and the ice formed on Lake Erie was very thick. This was loosened around the shores by the warm days of the early spring. During the day, a stiff easterly wind moved the whole field up the lake. About sundown, the wind chopped suddenly round and blew a gale from the west. This brought the vast tract of ice down again with such tremendous force that it filled in the neck of the lake and the outlet, so that the outflow of the water was very greatly impeded. Of course, it only needed a short space of time for the Falls to drain off the water below Black Rock.

The consequence was that, when we arose in the morning at Niagara, we found our river was nearly half gone. The American channel had dwindled to a respectable creek. The British channel looked as though it had been smitten with a quick consumption, and was fast passing away. Far up from the head of Goat Island and out into the Canadian rapids the water was gone, as it was also from the lower end of Goat Island, out beyond the tower. The rocks were bare, black, and forbidding. The roar of Niagara had subsided almost to a moan. The scene was desolate, and but for its novelty and the certainty that it would change before many hours, would have been gloomy and saddening. Every person who has visited Niagara will remember a beautiful jet of water which shoots up into the air about forty rods south of the outer Sister in the great rapids, called, with a singular contradiction of terms, the "Leaping Rock." The writer drove a horse and buggy from near the head of Goat Island out to a point above and near to that jet. With a log-cart and four horses, he drew from the outside of the outer island a stick of pine timber hewed twelve inches square and forty feet long. From the top of the middle island was drawn a still larger stick, hewed on one side and sixty feet long.

There are few places on the globe where a person would be less likely to go lumbering than in the rapids of Niagara, just above the brink of the Horseshoe Fall. All the people of the neighborhood were abroad, exploring recesses and cavities that had never before been exposed to mortal eyes. The writer went some distance up the shore of the river. Large fields of the muddy bottom were laid bare. The shell-fish, the uni-valves, and the bi-valves were in despair. Their housekeeping and domestic arrangements were most unceremoniously exposed. The clams, with their backs up and their open mouths down in the mud, were making their sinuous courses toward the shrunken stream. The small-fry of fishes were wriggling in wonder to find themselves impounded in small pools.

This singular syncope of the waters lasted all the day, and night closed over the strange scene. But in the morning our river was restored in all its strength and beauty and majesty, and we were glad to welcome its swelling tide once more.