The Buffalo suburbs are gridironed by railroads, and their terminals spread along the water-front and the sinuosities of Buffalo Creek. The grain elevators, as in all the lake cities, are a prominent feature, and they stand like huge monsters, forty of them, with high heads and long trunks along the creek and canal basins as if waiting for their prey. The fleets of vessels come over the lakes laden with grain from the West; tugs take them to one of these monsters, and down out of the long neck is plunged a trunk deep into the vessel's hold, which sucks up all the grain. It is stored and weighed and sent on its journey eastward. If this is by canal, the barge waits on the other side, and the grain runs down into it through another trunk; if by railway, the cars are run under or alongside the elevator and quickly filled. Then the lake vessels are laden with coal for the return voyage. While an American gives these elevators scant attention, being used to them, not so the foreigner, who regards them with the greatest curiosity. Thus wrote Anthony Trollope about them: "An elevator is as ugly a monster as has yet been produced. In uncouthness of form it outdoes those obsolete old brutes who used to roam about the semi-aqueous world and live a most uncomfortable life, with their great hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws. Rivers of corn and wheat run through these monsters night and day. And all this wheat which passes through Buffalo comes loose in bulk; nothing is known of sacks or bags. To any spectator in Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of course; but this should be explained, as we in England are not accustomed to see wheat travelling in this open, unguarded and plebeian manner. Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels always in its private carriage."
The extensive commerce of Buffalo is varied by iron manufacturing, breweries, distilleries, oil refineries and other industries, but the elevators, coal chutes and railroad and canal business seem to overshadow everything else. The city has wide tree-lined streets, and is most handsome with its many fine buildings. There is an extensive system of attractive parks connected by boulevards; broad streets lined with well-built residences, and in the newer parts the level surface is filled with ornamental homes, some most expensively constructed and elaborately adorned. The well-kept lawns and gardens are fully open to view, and Delaware Avenue, thus bordered, is one of the most attractive streets. On the Main Street, among many impressive structures, is the huge Ellicott Square Building, said to be the largest office-building in the world, housing a business community approximating five thousand persons. There are also two public Libraries and many handsome churches.
The locality of greatest interest in Buffalo is probably the little Prospect Park out at the edge of Lake Erie, where its waters flow into Niagara River. The basins and harbor making the beginning of the Erie Canal, which we have traced all across New York State, are down at the edge of the lake, and a steep bluff, rising about sixty feet, makes the verge of the Park, and continues around along the bank of the river. Here it is crowned by an esplanade surrounding the remains of old Fort Porter, a dilapidated relic of bygone days of frontier conflicts. A couple of superannuated cannon point their muzzles across the water towards Canada, but otherwise the locality is peaceful. A small military force is kept here, probably to watch the British Fort Erie over on the opposite river bank, a few hundred yards off, but the worst conflicts now are bouts at playing ball. The protecting harbor breakwater is out in front, and seen down the Niagara River are the light trusses of the International Railway Bridge, spanning its swift current, and the Erie Canal alongside the bank. Into the narrow river sweeps the drainage of the Great Lakes, an enormous mass of water, and in the centre the city has placed a large crib, tapping the clear current for its water-supply. The powerful torrent flows steadily northward out of Lake Erie, with a speed of six or seven miles an hour, to make the Niagara cataract, twenty miles away, and show its tremendous force in the Niagara gorge. In the words of Goethe:
"Water its living strength first shows,
When obstacles its course oppose."
NIAGARA.
The Indians who first looked upon the world's greatest cataract gave the best idea of it in their appropriate name, "The Thunder of Waters." There is no setting provided for it in the charms of natural scenery; it has no outside attractions. All its beauty and sublimity are within the rocky walls of its stupendous chasm. The approaches from every direction are dull and tedious, the surrounding country being flat. The forests are sparse and there are few fine trees, these being confined to the verge of the abyss, and being generally of recent planting. The Niagara River flows northward from Lake Erie through a plain. The Lake Erie level is five hundred and sixty-four feet above the sea, and in its tortuous course of about thirty-six miles to Lake Ontario, the Niagara River descends three hundred and thirty-three feet, leaving the level of Ontario still two hundred and thirty-one feet above the sea. More than half of all the fresh water on the entire globe—the whole enormous volume from the vast lake region of North America, draining a territory equalling the entire continent of Europe, pours through this contracted channel out of Lake Erie. There is a swift current for a couple of miles, but afterwards the speed is gentler as the channel broadens, and Grand Island divides it. Then it reunites into a wider stream, flowing sluggishly westward, small islands dotting the surface. About fifteen miles from Lake Erie the river narrows and the rapids begin. They flow with great speed for a mile above the falls, in this distance descending fifty-two feet, Goat Island dividing their channel at the brink of the cataract, where the river makes a bend from the west back to the north. This island separates the waters, although nine-tenths go over the Canadian fall, which the abrupt bend curves into horseshoe form. This fall is about one hundred and fifty-eight feet high, the height of the smaller fall on the American side being one hundred and sixty-four feet. The two cataracts spread out to forty-seven hundred and fifty feet breadth, the steep wooded bank of Goat Island, separating them, occupying about one-fourth the distance. The American fall is about eleven hundred feet wide and the Canadian fall twice that width, the actual line of the descending waters on the latter being much larger than the breadth of the river because of its curving form. Recent changes, caused by falling rock in the apex of this fall, have, however, made it a more symmetrical horseshoe than had been the case for years. The Niagara River, just below the cataract, contracts to about one thousand feet, widening to twelve hundred and fifty feet beneath the new single-arch steel bridge recently constructed a short distance farther down. For seven miles the gorge is carved out, the river banks on both sides rising to the top level of the falls, and the bottom sinking deeper and deeper as the lower rapids descend towards Lewiston, and in some places contracting to very narrow limits. Two miles below the cataract the river is compressed within eight hundred feet, and a mile farther down, at the outlet of the Whirlpool, where a sharp right-angled turn is made, the enormous current is contracted within a space of less than two hundred and fifty feet. In the seven miles distance, these lower rapids descend about one hundred and four feet, and then with placid current the Niagara River flows a few miles farther northward to Lake Ontario.
The view of Niagara is impressive alike upon sight and hearing, and this impressiveness grows upon the visitor. From the bridge just below the American fall, and from the Canadian side, the whole grand scene is in full display, and quickly convinces that no description can exaggerate Niagara. The Indians first told of the falls, and they are indicated on Champlain's map of 1632. In 1648 the Jesuit missionary Rugueneau wrote of them as a "cataract of frightful height." The first white man who saw them was Father Louis Hennepin, the Franciscan, in 1678, who described them as "a vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. The waters which fall from this horrible precipice do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous noise more terrible than that of thunder, for when the wind blows out of the south their dismal roaring may be heard more than fifteen leagues off." Upon Charles Dickens the first and enduring effect, instant and lasting, of the tremendous spectacle, was: "Peace—peace of mind, tranquility, calm recollections of the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness." The falls had a sanative influence upon Professor Tyndall, for, "quickened by the emotions there aroused," he says, "the blood sped exultingly through the arteries, abolishing introspection, clearing the heart of all bitterness, and enabling one to think with tolerance, if not with tenderness, upon the most relentless and unreasonable foe." After Anthony Trollope had looked upon the cataract he wrote: "Of all the sights on this earth of ours, I know no other one thing so beautiful, so glorious and so powerful. That fall is more graceful than Giotto's Tower, more noble than the Apollo. The peaks of the Alps are not so astounding in their solitude. The valleys of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica are less green. The finished glaze of life in Paris is less invariable; and the full tide of trade around the Bank of England is not so inexorably powerful."
GEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF NIAGARA.
The estimate is that nine hundred millions of cubic feet of water pour over Niagara every hour, and great as this mass is, there is a belief that half the water passing into Lake Erie from the upper lakes does not go over the falls, but finds its way into Ontario through a subterranean channel. Nothing demonstrates this theory, but it is advanced to account for the difference between the amount of water accumulated in the upper lakes and that going over the falls. The actual current is sufficiently enormous, however, and steadily wearing away the rocks over which it descends, it has during the past ages excavated the gorge of the lower rapids. The land surface, which is low at Lake Erie, scarcely rising above the level of its waters, gradually becomes more elevated towards the north, till near Lewiston it is about forty feet above Erie. The Niagara River thus flows in the direction of the ascent of this moderately inclined plane. Beyond this the surface makes a sudden descent towards Lake Ontario of about two hundred and fifty feet down to a plateau, upon which stands Lewiston on the American side and Queenston on the Canadian side of the river. There thus is formed a bold terrace looking out upon Ontario, from which that lake is seven miles away, and from the foot of the terrace the surface descends gently one hundred and twenty feet farther to the lake shore. The gorge through which the river flows is three hundred and sixty-six feet deep at this terrace. There is no doubt the first location of the great cataract was on the face of the terrace near Lewiston, and it has gradually retired by the eating away, year after year, of the rocky ledges over which the waters pour. This, however, has not been done in a hurry, for the geologists studying the subject estimate that it has required nearly thirty-seven thousand years to bring the falls from Lewiston back to their present location. In fact, from the stratification, Professor Agassiz expressed the opinion that at one time there were three distinct cataracts in Niagara River.