On the morning of Sept. 4th, some friends took us in a carriage to see the beautiful Falls of Montmorenci, nine miles distant, where the river of that name, after leaping for miles over a rocky bed, rushes with great velocity to the edge of the high rocks over which it falls, and pours its snowy cataract 250 feet into the valley below. Quebec is beautifully situated, and is a place of great historic interest. Near the town are the "Plains of Abraham," and the spot where General Wolfe fell. A monument erected to his memory and to that of Montcalm, stands upon it. The Citadel, sometimes called the "Gibraltar of America," is a fortress upon the summit of a very high rock, from which there is a magnificent view of the St. Lawrence, and of the surrounding neighbourhood. At 6 o'clock on the evening of the 4th, we went on board a river steamer, and, after a favourable night passage, at 7 the next morning, arrived at Montreal, where some brethren waiting on the landing-stage asked us to remain; we did not, however, accept their kind invitation, and at 9 o'clock started for Toronto, where, after a long railway journey of 333 miles, we arrived at half-past 11 the same night. On the 6th we went on, viâ Hamilton, to Niagara, and--having decided to remain there till the next day--spent the afternoon in surveying the wonders of the celebrated "Falls," situated on the River Niagara, a strait connecting the floods of Lake Erie and Ontario.
The first distant view of them was rather disappointing; but a closer inspection revealed their magnitude and grandeur to the full. "The waters for which the Niagara (a name signifying Thunder of Waters) forms an outlet cover an area of 150,000 square miles, floods so grand and inexhaustible as to be totally unaffected by the loss of the hundreds of millions of tons which they pour every hour through succeeding centuries over rugged, perpendicular cliffs into the depths beneath."
After driving to a bridge just above the American Falls, we made a partial circuit of Goat Island on foot, halting at all the chief points of interest. A staircase on the right led first to Luna Island, where, standing by a railing close to the edge of the precipice, we beheld the vast, swift, overwhelming waters of the _American_ Falls, 169 feet high, immediately beside us, rushing in a tremendous torrent right over the brink, down into the fearful gulf below. "This, we thought, surpasses everything; surely this must be the grandest Cataract in the world." But it was not; for a few more steps brought us full upon the great Horse Shoe Fall, on the Canadian side of the river, a mighty Cataract 150 feet high, and 1,900 feet in breadth, where with overwhelming velocity and force, "1,500 millions of cubic feet of water" (according to Professor Lyell) rush every hour over the ledge of rocks, forming a huge, boiling cauldron at the bottom of the cliffs. And then the "Rapids!" those wondrous Rapids--which some think equal to the great Cataracts themselves--especially attracted our attention. Just above the Falls, the bed of the Niagara descends about 51 feet in three-quarters of a mile, and there, over rough ridges of rock, great masses of stone and large boulders, its waters surge and foam, in ten thousand fantastic shapes, and in the wildest turmoil, as though frantically eager to rush over the precipices into the abyss below. After seeing the "Rapids" we crossed the river by the new Suspension Bridge, and returned to the Clifton Hotel.