Morning journal and courier., 1882-05-12
The Falls of Niagara.

Ths sdict has gone forth from Buffalo that Niagara Falls shall be no more The water is to be turned of, and the rainbow will cease to hang in the spray below Goat Island. The great horseshoe will be left to vither and crack in the sun, the young man will never more hold the timid girl by the waist to keep her from falling of from Table rock, the cave of winds will be open to all the airs of heaT- sn, the whirlpool will become placid resort for bull heads and the Maid of the Mist will go out of commission BUffalo wants all the water, and must have 1t. She wants it to whirl millions of spindles which are to twist the cotton crop of the South into yarn enough every day to make an equator of to drive looms that will make cloth for all crea- ton; to run factories in every known branch of human industry; to give power for pro polling cable-cars on the streets. for produ- cing electric light to accommodate five mil lions of people in doors and out, for punp- ing water for public and private use, for bot ting up compressed air for the ConSsLsence of everybody, and, in short, for all nsss to which an inexhaustible mechanical force can be applied. To be sure, Buffalo does not at present possess the spindles or looms or man ufaeturing establishments and neither has she as yet tenth part of the entire Popula- ton of the country but all these things are to come in consequence of the unriEslled water power which, it may also be stated, she does not yet control. But it Is well known that the level of Lake Erie in front of Buffalo is about two hundred and twenty eight feet above the level of Niagara river at the foot of the falls, and that from the lake down stream for twenty miles or so, till the rapids are reached, the fall is very slight amounting to only about sixteen feet 1t is also known that, underlying the river and the adjacent country, there is a huge field of rock through which the constantly reeeding falls have been ploughing deep gorge for several thousand years. Now, if an immense tun- nel, such ss has been bored through Hoosac mountain. or even larger, were to be opened in the rocky side of the almost perpendicular wall just below the falls, and nearly down to the level of the water there, and extended in the direction of Buffalo at about the same depth, with branches running here and there, immediately over which lines of manufactur- ing establishments could be set up, it Is evil dent that by sinking a perpendicular shaft down from the surface so as to intersect either the main tunnel or any one of it's branches, and then turning stream of water through an ordinary Hume or race from the river so that 1t would fall into this shaft, there would be miniature of the American falls with quantity of water that could easi- ly bs regulated and managed. and what more clear than that a turbine wheel set at the bottom of this pit, with water-head of say one hundred and fifty feet, would furnish power enough for the largest cotton mill un- der the sun? Such, in brief outline, is the elaborate plan set forth in that eminently progressive paper. the Buffalo Express. There would practically be no limit to these wheel pits except the discharging capacity of the main tunnel until the entire body of water in ths river should be used up. For the first year or two after the system goes into operation it is not supposed that the river bed will be laid bare, but before the end of the present century it is confidently believed that the falls will be run, like the saEmiIls on a mountain stream, only in time of fresh cts, and that during the greater part of each year the thirsty operatives from the thou sands of Buffalo mills can walk over the river bed and get drink of Canada whiskey dry shod. Since tke opening of the Erie canal, more than fifty years ago. there has been no such boom for Buffalo as the one to be inau- gurated by the great Niagara tunnel. The town will become the chief manufacturing centre of the world, and the Schlismann of the future will not delve through the prairie mud of Illinois to find where Chicago stood, or in the delta of the Mississippi to find the only remaining relics of St. Louis and New Orleans that have been washed down by the spring floods which finally swept those cities away nor through the pasture lands of Man haitian island to test the tradition of the loca- tion of New York, but he will explore the network of tunnels that stretch out under the site of ancient Buffalo, and marvel at the magnitude of the underground sewers which weresbuilt by the curious inhabitants of the old world