We visited the Falls, at the American side by moonlight.  There was then an air of grandeur and sublimity in the scene which I shall long remember.  Yet at this side they are not seen to the greatest advantage.  Next morning I crossed the Niagara river, below the Falls, into Canada.  I did not ascend the bank to take the usual route to the Niagara hotel, at which place there is a spiral staircase descending 120 feet towards the foot of the Falls, but clambered along at the base of the cliffs until I reached the point immediately below the stairs.  I here rested, and indeed required it much, for the day was excessively warm, and I had unfortunately encumbered myself with my gun and shot pouch.  The Falls are here seen in all their grandeur.  Two immense volumes of water glide over perpendicular precipices upwards of 170 feet in height, and tumble among the crags below with a roaring that we distinctly heard on our approach to the village, at the distance of five miles up the river:  and down the river it can be heard at a much greater distance.  The Falls are divided by Goat Island into two parts.  The body of water which falls to the right of the island is much greater than that which falls to the left; and the cliffs to the right assume the form of a horse-shoe.  To the left there is also a considerable indentation, caused by a late falling in of the rock; but it scarcely appears from the Canadian side.  The rushing of the waters over such immense precipices—­the dashing of the spray, which rises in a white cloud at the base of the Falls, and is felt at the distance of a quarter of a mile—­the many and beautiful rainbows that occasionally appear,—­united, form a grand and imposing coup d’oeil.

The Fall is supposed to have been originally at the table-land near Lewiston; and indeed, from the nature of the ground, and its present condition below the Falls, no reasonable objection can be entertained to that supposition.  The upper part of the cliffs is composed of hard limestone, and underneath is a bed of schistus.  Now this schistus is continually worn away by the water’s dashing against it.  This leaves the upper part, or immediate bed of the river, without foundation.  When, therefore, from extraordinary floods, the pressure of the incumbent fluid becomes more than usually great, the rock gives way; and thus, gradually, the Falls have receded several miles.

I at length ascended the stairs, and popped my head into the shanty, sans ceremonie, to the no small amazement of the cunning compounder of “cock-tails,” and “mint julaps” who presided at the bar.  It was clear that I had ascended the stairs, but how the deuce I had got down was the question.  I drank my “brandy sling,” and retreated before he had recovered from his surprise, and thus I escaped the volley of interrogatories with which I should have been most unsparingly assailed.  I walked for some distance along the Canadian heights, and then crossed the river, where I met my friend waiting my return under a clump of scrub oak.