After repairing the damage and making other canoes, they began their expedition; and, having paddled for several days, one calm and beautiful evening they were astonished at the sight of Lake Ontario.
As far as the eye could reach they could only see what appeared to them boundless water, which lay without the slightest ripple on its glassy surface, undisturbed by the softest breath of wind. They then continued paddling round the shore, looking out for a place where they might safely moor their canoes during the night, and, among the many small inlets, they soon discovered one fitted for their purpose, which they immediately entered.
At sunrise they again advanced on their adventurous expedition. As they coasted along, the deer would sometimes look at them from among the thickets which fringed the borders of the lake; and at other times they saw them swimming across the mouths of the various creeks or rivers which they passed in their progress. They were, however, too much engaged in admiring the lonely magnificence of the surrounding scenery to interrupt the playful gambols of the deer by endeavoring to wound them, which they did only when their necessities compelled.
Thus they paddled onward for several days without perceiving anything that might lead them to suppose they were approaching the spot to which the old Indian had alluded, when one hazy morning, having proceeded many miles before the sun had power to dispel the thick mists, they were delighted at seeing themselves, as the air at noon cleared, about to enter a large river, which flowed rapidly into the lake.
As this in some measure coincided with the first part of what had been related to them, they determined on entering it; but after paddling up it for some time the current grew so strong that they were compelled to disembark and continue their journey by land on the edge of the high precipitous bank.
The wind, softly blowing, rustled among the trees, but sometimes they fancied that a distant rumbling could be distinguished.
Having followed the course of the stream along the edge of the cliff for some distance, Price proposed that one of them should ascend a tree and follow the course of the river upward with his eye, and try if he could discover whence the sound that reached them arose.
Maiook, therefore, told one of his Indians to climb up a lofty pine which grew apart from the rest, and he had hardly ascended half-way when, uttering a cry of astonishment, he hastened to the ground and told his comrades that he had seen immense clouds of spray rising far above the trees, but he could not perceive from what cause they arose.
The Cataract at Last!
Encouraged by this report, after refreshing themselves (being much wearied by their toilsome march), they hastened along the edge of the cliffs, while the rushing sound that had been gradually increasing was every instant becoming more and more tremendous, and the velocity of the stream made them imagine that they were in the vicinity of a furious rapid, when, on advancing from the thick bushes, they suddenly found themselves on a bare ledge of rock which overhung an immense chasm into which two streams and a mighty river were tumbling with a noise that drowned all their exclamations of surprise, and which was louder than the voice of the ocean in a storm.