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Show 494 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. been erected here, and a toll for passing the bridge is paid, once for all, for the whole time you may remain here. The toll-keeper sells refreshments and various curiosities of the country, minerals, Indian rarities, and the like. A second bridge leads from Bath Island to Goat Island, which is about seventy acres in extent, entirely covered with a beautiful forest of sugar maples, beeches, horn-beams, elms, birches, &c, beneath which the asarabaca, mayapple, and various other plants, are growing; none of them were, however, in flower. The shores of this island are shaded by old pines and very large white cedars, such as we should in vain look for in Europe, and many fine shrubs grow on the banks. There were formerly a great number of Virginian deer in this beautiful forest, but they grew so familiar, and became so troublesome by running after strangers, that they were removed. The blueheaded jay and the Hudson's Bay squirrel are numerous. From the bridge which leads to Goat Island there is a convenient path, on the right hand, which goes along the shore through the wood; and, after proceeding a short distance, the stranger suddenly finds himself on the rather steep declivity, immediately above the fall of the right or southern arm of the river, which is called the American branch. The sight is striking, and much grander than all the descriptions I had read of it led me to conceive. The broad expanse of bright green water falls perpendicularly 144 to 150 feet into the abyss below, which is entirely concealed by the vapour, the whole torrent of falling water being completely dissolved into foam and mist in the midway of its descent. Below the fall, and before its surface is quite calm, it recovers its green colour, which is, of course, totally lost in the rapidity of its descent. To make my description more clear, I subjoin a little plan of the cataracts drawn by Mr. George Catlin, and published in Featherstonehaugh's "Essay on the Ancient Drainage of North America, and the Origin of the Cataract of Niagara," in the Monthly American Journal of Geology, Vol. I., July, 1831. The southern or American part of the fall, c, is divided above by a narrow rocky island, /, to which a bridge has been thrown. This rocky island is closely overgrown with white cedar |