Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-12-18
PROBABILITIES OF NIAGARA.
Changes That Are Liable to Take Place
Estimated on the Past.

Changes That Are Liable to Take Place,
Estimated on the Past.
If the rate of retrocession remains during
the next 500 years as it has been for the last
forty five years, the inner edge of the Horse
shoe Fall will have passed to the east of
Goat Island, and as the line Of deepest water
is near the Canadian shore all the waters Of
the river will pass over the Horseshoe Fall,
celebrating the American Fall entirely and
transforming Goat Island intoa peninsula,
On which the smaller islands of today, Bath,
Luna, Chaplin, etc, will appear as little hill
tops
The fall will then, perhaps, be higher than
today because the present descent of fifty
feet over the rapids will be added to the
height of the cataract, minus the number of
feet needed to give the necessary current to
the river below, which at present is fifteen
feet TO the mile Considering that even now
the Horseshoe Fall no longer recedes south
but more east than south, which recession
will be more casterly yet in the course Of
time, it will have to travel about five
miles in that direction before the
Niagara shale, which now occupies the lower
half Of the face Of the fall, is under water;
and the retrooession by means Of undermin-
ing is stopped For at present the changes
that take place are due to the fact that the
upper eighty feet of the face is formed of
hard limestone while the lower eighty feet
is composed of soft, easily crumbling shale,
which the spray can wash away with ease to
such an extent that the everything limestones
lose their support, break off and tumble
down with corresponding change In the ap-
pearance of the edge of the falls. Then the
changes will be accomplished simply by the
eroding power of the water and the falls will
remain near the northern end of Grand Island
for a practically unlimited time. We thus
see that after the falls Of today have receded,
perhaps three-quarters of mile, there will
be only one fall; when that one fall has trav-
eled east and south four miles more and
reaches Grand Island, it will again be divided
into an American and Canadian cataract,
this time separated by Grand Island, and,
like the falls Of today, the western branch
will carry the largest amount of water, will
recede faster and be the lower of the two in
height. The hope of finally having the falls
at Buffalo must be abandoned, for from that
point of Grand Island to the city of Buffalo
only rapids can exist on account Of the nature
OF the underlying rock, which is soft.
AS the retrocession of the Falls Of Niagara
began in what may be called, geologically,
the most recent period, the time necessary
for it to arrive at It's present site has had a
very important bearing upon the question of
the age of man on the American continent.
As long as it was considered necessary to
claim several hundred thousand years for the
age OF Niagara alone, the age of the human
race had to be computed at perhaps half a
million Of years; no matter how little such
high figures agreed with other discoveries,
the rocky gorge of the Niagara always pre-
sented an insurmountable obstacle against
any reduction of time. But since we have
discovered that after all the work of excava-
ton could have been accomplished in per-
haps 5000 years, our computation Of the age
of the human race has settled down to rea-
sonable figures, which give to the beds Of
sand and gravel in which the oldest human
implements have been found an ago of per-
haps 10000 to $4,000 years, and anthropolo-
gists claim that ali the facts so far collected
agree well with the latter figure.-ProfeSsor
Julius Pohlmau