we see the Czettina and the Kerka, rolling down
        from terrace to terrace, and presenting sometimes a sheet, and
        sometimes a wall, of water.  Some magnificent cascades have been
        formed, at least in part, by the hands of man:  the cascades of
        Velino, near Terni, have been attributed to Pope Clement VIII.;
        other cataracts, like those of Tunguska, in Siberia, have
        gradually lost their elevation by the wearing away of the rocks,
        and have now only a rapid descent.”—­Maltebrun, vol. i.

The Engraving includes the falls of the river, with the village of Rochester, seven miles south of Lake Ontario.  This place, for population, extent, and trade, will soon rank among the American cities:  it was not settled until about the close of the last war; its progress was slow until the year 1820, from which period it has rapidly improved.  In 1830 it contained upwards of 12,000 inhabitants:  the first census of the village was taken in December, 1815, when the number of inhabitants was three hundred and thirty-one.  The aqueduct which takes the Erie canal across the river forms a prominent object of interest to all travellers.  It is of hewn stone, containing eleven arches of 50 feet span:  its length is 800 feet, but a considerable part of each end is hidden from view by mills erected since its construction.

On the brink of the island which separates the main stream of the river from that produced by the waste water from the mill-race, will be seen a scaffold or platform from which an eccentric but courageous adventurer, named Sam Patch, made a desperate leap into the gulf beneath.  Patch had obtained some celebrity in freaks of this description, though his feats be not recorded, like the hot-brained patriotism of Marcus Curtius in olden history.  At the fall of Niagara, Patch had before made two leaps in safety—­one of 80 and the other of 130 feet, in a vast gulf, foaming and tost aloft from the commotion produced by a fall of nearly 200 feet.  In November, 1829, Patch visited Rochester to astonish the citizens by a leap from the falls.  His first attempt was successful, and in the presence of thousands of spectators he leaped from the scaffold to which we have directed the attention of the reader, a distance of 100 feet, into the abyss, in safety.  He was advertised to repeat the feat in a few days, or, as he prophetically announced it his “last jump,” meaning his last jump that season.  The scaffold was duly erected, 25 feet in height, and Patch, an hour after the time was announced, made his appearance.  A multitude had collected to witness the feat; the day was unusually cold, and Sam was intoxicated.  The river was low, and the falls near him on either side were bare.  Sam threw himself off, and the waters (to quote the bathos of a New York newspaper) “received him in their cold embrace.  The tide bubbled as the life left the body, and then the