The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-03-16 00:00:00

THE FALLS OF THE NIAGARA

[lt will be remembered that in our last we expressed stiong
doubts of the correctness of the account of the destruction of
the Falls of Niagara, which we copied from a Buffalo paper ;
and it seems, from the following extract from the New York

mercial

likely to prove mereb

orning contained what is call,
Advertiser, 13ufralo, Feb. 1
etion.of the Fa

witling who probably

the fal

We will point of

z to hax

le never t

red."—Mr. Biddle ti.e.ver.l;uilt a tower at the fall

caused to be built a staircase c
n to the falls, which goes by his

4. "The water made a subterraneous passage, and burst
through the wall of Goat Island."—Absurd..
5. " The hotel is gone. It is believed no lives have been
lost."—The last clause is correct; there can have been no
lives lost, because there was no hotel to be carried away. The
nearest hotel is the Clifton-house, far below the falls.

P.S. Since the above was in type the northern mail, only
due this afternoon, has arrived, and brought us the Byffalo

Comm

r of Saturday evening, the latest which
le Albany papers of yesterday are silent

hoax was -probabl

The Falls of

pt up in this city

iagara afford a magnificent example of the
ation of a deep valley in a solid rock. That

river flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, the former lake
beiig 330 feet above the latter, and the distance between
them being 32 miles. On flowing out of the upper lake the
river is almost on a level with its banks, so that if it should

Ise perpendicularly eight or ten feet, it would lay under wa-
er the adjacent flat country of Upper Canada on the west,
,nd of the state of New York on the east. The river, where

it issues, is about three-quarters of a mile in width. Bt..
reaching the Falls it is propelled with great rapidity, being a
mile broad, about 25 feet deep, and having a descent of 50
feet in half a mile. An island at the very verge of the cata-
ract divides it into two sheets of water: one of these, called
the Horseshoe Fall, is 600 yards wide, 'and 158 feet perpen-
dicular; the other, called the American Falls, is about 200
yards in width, and 164 feet t!ti height. The breadth of
the island is n"--- • This great sheet of water

is precipitated
tal strut

out 50U yards:
)ver a ledge of 1

below which is a somewhat greater thickness
)1 soft shale, which decays and crumbles away more • ra.

pidiy, so that the calcareous rock forms an overhanging
mass, projecting forty feet or more above the hollow space
below. The blasts of wind, charged with spray, which
rise out of the pool into' which this enormous cascade
is projected, strike against the shale beds, so that their
disintegration is constant. They also waste away at certain

easons by the expansive action of frost. The superineum-
ent limestone being thus left without a foundation, falls
When these enormous

n rocky masses

sho-ek is felt at some disl

parried by a

like a distant clap of thunder

river has passed over the Fal

Hall, is iinmediatel
furiously along the

, accom-
kfter the

hu
the cont

acter, observes Capt.
aanged. It then runs
wall-sided valley, or
-trata by

itfi huge fr

in rnos'

ily perceived on approach-