In the endeavour to gather into one volume a proper description of the various interests that centre in and around the Niagara River the author of this book felt very sincerely the difficulties of the task before him. As the geologic wonder of a continent and the commercial marvel of the present century, the Niagara River is one of the most remarkable streams in the world. In historic interest, too, it takes rank with any American river. To combine, then, into the pages of a single volume a prop

T he Strait of Niagara, or the Niagara River, as it is commonly called, ranks among the wonders of the world. The study of this stream is of intense and special interest to many classes of people, notably historians, archæologists, botanists, geologists, artists, mechanics, and electricians. It is doubtful if there is anywhere another thirty-six miles of riverway that can, in this respect, compare with it. The term "strait" as applied to the Niagara correctly suggests the river's historic import

T hese American rivers of ours have their messages, historical, economic, and social, to both reader and loiterer. And, too, are not these streams so very much alive that through the years their personalities remain practically unchanged, while generations of loiterers come and go on forever? Are not the eccentricities of these great living forces forever recurrent, however whimsical they may seem, to us as we stop for our brief instant at the shore? The word Niagara stands to-day representing p

G eologic time presents to the scientist one of the most difficult problems with which he has to deal. When the different divisions into which he would divide the ages are numbered by thousands and even millions of years, the human mind is appalled at the prospect; and when the calculations of different geologists vary by hundreds of thousands of years, the lay mind can not help growing somewhat credulous, and at times be tempted to discard the whole mass of scientific data relating to the subje

N o one acquainted with the Niagara of to-day can imagine what were the conditions existing here before the days of the New York State Reservation and Queen Victoria Park. That old Niagara of private ownership, with a new fee for every point of vantage, was a barbarous incongruity only matched by the wonder and beauty of the spectacle itself. The admission to Goat Island was fifty cents, and to the Cave of the Winds, one dollar. To gain Prospect Park, the "Art Gallery," the inclined railway, or

L ord Kelvin, when visiting Niagara Falls, was not moved by that which appeals to the ordinary tourist, the roaring of the cataract, the waters in their mad rush from the Falls to the whirlpool and thence to Lake Ontario, nor the mists rising night and day from the waters churned into foam. For him, Niagara was a monster piece of machinery, accomplishing nothing but the pounding out of its own life on the rocks which formed its bed. In his mind's eye there appeared vast factories, deriving their

T he swirling waters of Niagara have ever been a challenge to a vast army of adventurers who found in their own daring heedlessness a means here of gaining money and a mushroom glory. Of all these "Niagara Cranks," as they are known locally, the tight-rope walkers undoubtedly have the strongest claim to our admiration for the utter daring of their feats, however mercenary may have been the motives. "Tut, tut! my friends," would reply one of these brave, popular heroes if you had mentioned fear,

W hat has been loosely called the "Niagara Frontier" embraces all the beautiful stretch of territory south of Lakes Ontario and Erie, extending westward quite to Cleveland, the Forest City on the latter lake. It would be difficult to point to a tract of country in all America the history of which is of more inherent interest than this far-flung old-time frontier of which the Niagara River was the strategic key. The beautiful cities now standing here, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toronto, as well as t

R eceiving authority to explore the Mississippi to its mouth, as well as a grant made in 1675 of Fort Frontenac and surrounding lands as a seigniory, La Salle returned from France in 1678, and began the wonderful career that will hand his name down through countless years as the greatest explorer in the annals of America. He allied with him Tonty and Father Hennepin, the latter already known, as we have seen, along the Niagara frontier. La Salle at once advanced to Fort Frontenac, which was to b

T he abdication of De Nonville at Niagara marks, as nothing else perhaps can, the rise of English influence along the Lakes and among the crafty Iroquois. Slowly but surely this influence made itself felt among the Six Nations in the attempt to swing the entire current of the fur trade from the north-west through the Long House to New York. With the destruction of the little fort built by De Nonville, however, it becomes clear that when on the same basis the English were no match for the French,

G eneral Isaac Brock, the Hero of Upper Canada, was the kind of man men delight to honour—honest, capable, ambitious, faithful, kind. Nothing less than a tremendous gorge, such as separates Queenston from Lewiston Heights, could keep the people of one nation from knowing and loving this hero of another; since Brock's day this gorge has been spanned by beautiful bridges, and it is full time now, as the centennial of the second war with England approaches, that the appreciation of the characters o

W e have explained the influence of the life and death of General Brock in the upper province sufficiently for the reader to conceive, perhaps, an unusual interest in the course of the war that soon was raging, in reality or in burlesque, as it sometimes appeared, along the northern border; no one can take any interest in Brock's career without wondering whether his province was invaded or conquered despite the sacrifices of this undefeated but dead hero. Upon Brock's return from Detroit he foun

I t is believed that the word Toronto is of Huron origin, and that it signified "Place of Meeting." This has been contested; in any case it should be spelled To-ron-tah . The word is also interpreted as "Oak Trees beside the Lake," a derivation rather divergent from the above version and we must leave this to the learned etymologists. Glancing over maps of the middle of the eighteenth century designed after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), we see the names of many forts and posts intended t