suicidal habits and vices are the results of development, the end of small beginnings of evil, and of departures, at first slight, from the order of nature. The American Continent is covered with the remains of an ancient civilization which has passed away, and which for the most part had already passed away long before it suffered any violence from external enemies. The history of its destruction is to a great extent unknown. But such indications of that history as can be derived from what we know of the aboriginal races point directly to American savagery as the result of vices evolving their own natural consequences through a long lapse of time. As we passed, in the course of a few hours, through an extent of country which it took Mrs. Grant, with her father's detachment of the 55th Regiment, nearly three weeks to traverse, it was difficult to realize the change which had been brought about during an interval of time so short in the life of nations. The peaceful homesteads of the Mohawk valley, and its thriving towns, presented a contrast with its past even more absolute than that which is presented by the scenes of our own old Border warfare; and the beautiful lines in which this contrast has been presented by the great Border Minstrel come involuntarily to one's mind: Sweet Teviot, on thy silver tide As if thy waves since Time was born, Since first they rolled upon the Tweed, Had only heard the shepherd's reed, Nor started at the bugle horn.* As we emerged from the valley of the Mohawk into the open rolling country whose streams fall into Lake Ontario, I was struck with the vast extent of pasture land, apparently of the finest quality. The number of cattle visible on its surface seemed strangely below its capabilities of feeding. It gave me the impression of a country very much understocked, and cultivated, when cultivated at all, in the most careless manner. It was here I first saw an American forest clearing and nothing more dreary can * "Lay of the Last Minstrel," canto iv. well be imagined. The stumps of the trees, some eight or ten feet high, are left in the ground; some charred quite black, others bleached quite white-all looking the picture of decay. The edges of the surrounding woods are of course ragged-the trees shabby and unhealthy, as trees always are which have grown up in thickets, and are then left to stand in the open. This is the aspect of country of which I had expected to see a great dealand no doubt in many districts large tracts must be in this condition. But it is the condition only of the country where the processes of settlement are in their first stage. In a few years the soil, pregnant with seeds of all kinds, soon sends up a rich and tangled arboreal vegetation on every spot which is not kept in continual cultivation. The shades of night had blotted out the landscape long before we reached Niagara. The north-western horizon, however, had been for some time illuminated by summer lightning, which soon became forked and very brilliant. As we crossed the Suspension Bridge, seeing nothing but a dim whiteness in the distance, a flash unusually long and vivid lit up the whole splendor of the Falls with its pallid and ghastly light. There is perhaps no natural object in any part of the world which when seen answers so accurately to expectation as the Falls of Niagara. Pictures and photographs without end have made them familiar in every aspect in which they can be represented. Those in what they cannot be represented are the last to be seen, and the last to be appreciated. The first approach to them is perhaps the least imposing view of all. They are seen at the distance of about a mile. They are seen, too, from an elevation above the level of the top of the Falls, and the great breadth of the river, as compared with the height of the precipice, makes that height look comparatively small. Nevertheless, the effect of the whole, with the two great columns. of spray from the " Horse-shoe," suddenly revealed by a flash of lightning, is an effect which can never be forgotten. The power and beauty of Niagara are best seen from the point on the Canadian bank whence the "Table Rock" once projected. This arises from the fact that the deepest convexity of the "Horse-shoe" is only well seen from that point, and it is along the edges of that convexity that the greatest mass of water falls, with an unbroken rush, which is only to be seen here, and in the heaviest billows of the Atlantic when their crests rise transparent against the light. The greens and blues of that rush are among the most exquisite colors in nature, and the lines upon it, which express irresistible weight and force, are as impressive as they are delicate and indefinable. The awfulness of the scene is much increased when the wind carries the spray-cloud over the spectator and envelops him in its mists; because, while these are often thick enough wholly to conceal the foaming water at the bottom of the Falls, they are rarely thick enough to conceal the mighty leap of the torrent at the top. The consequence is that the water seems to be tumbling into a bottomless abysswith a deafening roar, intensified by the same currents of air which carry the drenching spray. I am inclined to think, however, that the most impressive of all the scenes at Niagara is one of which comparatively little is said. The river Niagara above the Falls runs in a channel very broad, and very little depressed below the general level of the country. But there is a steep declivity in the bed of the stream for a considerable distance above the precipice, and this constitutes what are called the Rapids. The consequence is that when we stand at any point near the edge of the Falls, and look up the course of the stream, the foaming waters of the Rapids constitute the sky-line. No indication of land is visible-nothing to express the fact that we are looking at a river. The crests of the breakers, the leaping and the rushing of the waters, are all seen against the clouds, as they are seen in the ocean when the ship from which we look is in the "trough of the sea." It is impossible to resist the effect on the imagination. It is as if the fountains of the great deep were being broken up, and as if a new Deluge were coming on the world. The impression is rather increased than diminished by the perspective of the low wooded banks on either shore, running down to a vanishing point and seeming to be lost in the advancing waters. An apparently shoreless sea tumbling toward one is a very grand and a very awful sight. Forgetting there what one knows, and giving one's self up to what one only sees, I do not know that there is any thing in nature more majestic than the view of the Rapids above the Falls of Niagara. Un If A very curious question, and one of great scientific interest, arises out of this great difference between the course of the Niagara River above and below the Falls. It has, in my opinion, been much too readily assumed by geologists that rivers have excavated the valleys in which they run. In innumerable cases the work thus attributed to rivers is a work wholly beyond their power. der certain conditions, no doubt, the cutting power of running water is very great. When the declivity is steep, and when the stream is liable to floods carrying stones and gravel along with it, the work of excavation may be rapid. On the other hand, when the declivity is gentle, when the quantity of water is not liable to sudden increase, and when it carries little foreign matter, it may run for unnumbered ages without producing more than the most insignificant effect. Much also depends on the disposition of the rocks over which a river runs. these, from their texture or from their stratification, present edges which are easily attacked or undermined, even a gentle stream may cut rapidly for itself a deeper bed. On the other hand, when the rocks do not expose any surfaces which are easily assailable, a very large body of water may be powerless to attack them, and may run over them for ages without being able to scoop out more than a few feet, or even a few inches. Accordingly, such is actually the case of the Niagara River in the upper part of its course from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. In all the ages during which it has run in that course for fifteen miles it has not been able to remove more than a few feet of soil or rock. The country is level, and the banks are very low-so low that in looking up the bed of the river the more distant trees on either bank seem to rise out of the water. But suddenly in the middle of the comparatively level country the river encounters a precipice of 165 feet deep, and thenceforward for seven miles runs through a profound cleft or ravine, the bottom of which is not less than 300 feet below the general level of the country. Now the question arises how that precipice came to be there? This would be no puzzle at all if the precipice were coincident with a sudden declivity in the general level of the country on either side of the river. And there is such a declivity-but it is not at Niagara. It is seven miles farther on. At the Falls there is no depression in the general level of the banks. Indeed, on the Canadian shore the land rises very considerably just above the Falls. On the American shore it continues at the same elevation. The whole country here, however, is a table-land, and that table-land has a termination-an edge over which the river must fall before it can reach Lake Ontario. But that edge does not run across the country at Niagara, but along a line much nearer to Lake Ontario, where it is a conspicuous feature in the landscape, and is called the Queenstown Heights. The natural place therefore, so to speak, for the Falls would have been where the river came to that edge, and from that point the river has all the appearance of having cut its way backward, in the course of time. The process is still going on, and arises from a cause which fully explains the powerful action of the river in its lower course, and its very feeble action in its upper course. The bed of rock over which the water flows from Lake Erie is a hard limestone, and it lies nearly flat. This is precisely the kind and the position of rock in which water acts most slowly. But underneath this bed of limestone there is another bed of a soft incoherent shale. At the edge of the table-land, of course, this bed becomes exposed when the vegetation of the declivity is washed away by a river falling over it. In a climate so severe as that of Canada, even in our own time, the annual freezing of the spray, and of the dripping water, and the annual thawing of it again in spring, have the effect of making the bed of shale crumble away very rapidly; consequently the upper bed of limestone becomes constantly more or less undermined. Its own hardness and tenacity enable it to stand a good deal of this undermining, and it stands out and pro 66 jects as a table rock." But at last the weight of water passing over it extoo much of its support is eaten away: erts a leverage upon its outer edge: it tumbles down, and the edge of the waterfall thus 'retreats to the point where the underlying shale is still able to support the limestone ledges. The rate at which this cutting back of the Falls of Niagara is still going on is sufficiently rapid to be observable in the memory of man; and it is obvious that, assuming sible to calculate the number of years this rate to have been constant, it is poswhich have elapsed since the river began to tumble over the precipice at Queenstown. Sir Charles Lyell came to the conclusion that the rate of cutting back is about one foot in each year. rate the river would have taken 35,000 At that years to effect its retreat from Queenstown to the present position of the to throw out into the abysmal depths of Falls. This is a very short fathom-line geological Time. But it is one of the very few cases in which something like a solid datum can be got for calculating even approximately the date at which the present configuration of the terrestrial surface was determined, and the time occupied in effecting one of the very last, and one of the very least, of dergone. Of course, it is quite possible the changes which that surface has unthat the rate of cutting may not have been at all uniform, that a greater severity of climate, some ten thousand or twenty thousand years ago, may have produced as much effect in one of those years as is produced in ten or twenty years under existing conditions. But making every ple of the calculation seems to be a allowance for this possibility, the princithe Niagara River runs from the Falls to sound one. The deep groove in which the Queenstown Heights does seem to be a clear case of a ravine produced by actual operation. As far as I could see, a known cause which can be seen now in there is nothing to indicate that the ravine is due to a ing from subterranean disturbance. And 66 fault" or a crack aristhe hollow, it seems nearly certain that even if some such cause did commence by far the greater part of the work has been done by the process which has been all, by no means a very startling one. described. The result as to years is, after Thirty-five thousand years is an insignificant fraction of the time which has certainly been occupied in some of the most recent operations of geological time. If the Cataract of Niagara had continued to be where it once was, it would have given additional splendor to one of the most beautiful landscapes of the world. Instead of falling, as it does now, into a narrow chasm, where it cannot be seen a few yards from either bank, it would have poured its magnificent torrent over a higher range of cliff, and would have shone for hundreds of miles over land and sea. Of this landscape I confess I had never heard, and I saw it by the merest accident. In the war of 1812 the Americans invaded Canada at Queenstown and seized the steep line of heights above that town, which form the termination or escarpment of the comparatively high table-land of the upper lakes. The American forces were attacked and speedily dislodged by the British troops under the command of General Brock. This brave officer, however, fell early in the action, and a very handsome monument, consisting of a lofty column, has been erected to his memory on the summit of the ridge. Being told at the hotel that "Brock's Monument" was an object of interest, and that from it there was a "good view," we drove there from Niagara. We found a "good view" indeed. scene we met with in America has left such an impression on my mind. It is altogether peculiar, unlike any thing in the Old World, and such as few spots so accessible can command even in the New. One great glory of the American Continent is its lakes and rivers. But they are generally too large to make much impression on the eye. The rivers are often so broad as to look like lakes without their picturesqueness, and the lakes are so large as to look like the sea without its grandeur. Another great glory of America is its vast breadth of habitable surface. But these again are so vast that there are few spots indeed whence they can be seen and estimated. But from the heights of Queenstown both these great features are spread out before the eye after a manner in which they can be taken in. The steep bank below us is covered with fine specimens of the Thuja occidentalis, commonly No called the cedar in America. Looking to the north-east, the horizon is occupied by the blue waters of Lake Ontario, which form the sky-line. But on either side the shores can be seen bending round the lake to an illimitable distance and losing themselves in fading tints of blue. To the left, turning toward the north-west, the fair province of Ontario stretches in immense plains and in escarpments of the same table-land. The whole of this immense extent of country has the aspect of a land comfortably settled, widely cultivated, and beautifully clothed with trees. Towns and villages are indicated by little spots of gleaming white, by smoke, and a few spires. To the left, on the Canadian shore, and seen over a deep bay, the city of Toronto is distinctly visible when the atmosphere is clear. At our feet the magnificent river of the Niagara emerges from its ravine into the open sunlight of the plains, and winds slowly in long reaches of a lovely green, and round a succession of lowwooded capes, into the vast waters of Ontario. The contrast is very striking between the perfect restfulness of its current here and the tormented violence of its course at the Falls, at the Rapids, and at the Whirlpool. The six or seven miles of road between Niagara and the heights of Queenstown afforded me my first opportunity of seeing a bit of Canadian country in detail. The farms seemed to be of very considerable size-the cultivation careless, so far as neatness is concerned, and manifesting that complete contempt of economy of surface which is conspicuous over the whole of North America. Straggling fences, wide spaces of land along the roads left unappropriated, irregular clumps, and masses of natural wood-odd corners left rough and wild all these features proclaimed a country where economy in culture was wholly needless and never attended to. The vast landscape from Brock's Monument along both shores of Lake Ontario, as far as the eye could reach, exhibited the same characteristic features. They are features eminently picturesque, combining the aspects of wildness with the impression of exuberant fertility and of boundless wealth. Of the country between Niagara and Kingston that is to say, of the whole northern shores of Lake Ontario-I saw nothing except what could be seen from a railway train. It had evidently a great uniformity of character, except at the north-western corner of the lake, round the head of the deep bay, between Hamilton and Toronto. Here one gets a glimpse of a considerable extent of land which is still "uncleared," and covered with a forest vegetation which is predominantly pine-with margins, however, everywhere, and with watery creeks occasionally, rich in the lovely foliage of tangled birch and oak and aspen. In striking contrast with these indications of a land not yet redeemed from a state of nature, we dashed past, near Toronto, the most elaborate and admirable preparations for a great agricultural exhibition on the most advanced type of European civilization. Of the scenery of the St. Lawrence between Kingston and Montreal I can only say that its sole attraction is in the majesty of the river, and that where that majesty is lost by the river becoming merely a series of lakes, the view is irredeemably monotonous. The banks are very low; the houses visible upon them are too often like wooden boxes; and it is only at a few spots that the trees exhibit any effective masses of foliage. A labyrinth of little rocky islets, rising out of tranquil water, and divided from each other by intricate channels and creeks and bays, with changing vistas of lights and shadows and reflections, must always be beautiful in its own way. But the famous "Thousand Islands" of the St. Lawrence cannot be compared with the analogous scenery in many of the lakes of Europe, and especially of Scotland. The general uniformity of elevation in the islands themselves, and the utter flatness of the banks on either side, give a tameness and monotony to the scene which contrasts unfavorably indeed with the lovely islets which break the surfaces of Loch Lomond and Loch Awe. But, on the other hand, wherever the St. Lawrence reveals itself to the eye, not as a series of lakes, but as a rushing river-then, indeed, its course becomes wonderfully impressive. It is worth crossing the Atlantic to see the Rapids of the St. Lawrence. Such volumes of water rushing and foaming in billows of glorious green and white can be seen no They speak where in the Old World. to the eye of the distances from which they come; of the Rocky Mountains which are their far-off water-shed in the West; of the vast intervening continent which they have drained; of the great inland seas in which they have been stored and gathered. These Rapids are the final leaps and bounds by which they gain at last the level of the ocean, and the history of their triumphant course seems as if it were written on their face. Few cities in the world are more finely situated than Montreal. For many miles above it the monotony of the banks of the St. Lawrence is relieved by distant views of the Adirondack Hills-a remarkable isolated group rising out of the great plains which stretch far southward into the State of New York. In front also, that is, in the direction of the river, but also on its right bank, a long mountain range appears. These are the mountains in the hollows of which lie the Lakes Champlain and George. The Canadian shore likewise presents distant elevations which break the horizon, and give it interest. As we approach Montreal the steep hill from which it derives its name rises finally above the river, which rushes swiftly round pleasant islands, and past the handsome quays and public buildings of the city. Built along the slope of the hill, and rising along that slope to a very considerable elevation, the houses much mixed with trees, and the top of the hill richly clothed with wood, full of the towers and spires of handsome churches, the city of Montreal occupies a position of conspicuous beauty; nor do its attractions diminish on a closer inspection. Long lines of handsome streets, with comfortable and substantial houses or villas, and generally shaded by double rows of trees, lead us up to the higher levels, where gardens and shrubberies are pleasantly intermixed. hospitable guidance of Dr. Campbell, an old and hereditary friend, we were driven round "the mountain," which has been secured by the municipality as a public park. From the whole of this fine hill the prospect is magnificent. For many miles above, and for many miles below, the course of the noble river is to be seen, which is here more than a mile Under the |