THE FALLS OF NIAGARA.

To him who has seen the mighty waters of the Western Hemisphere, our British lakes and streams would, but for the halo thrown around their names by the genii of history, poetry, and romance, shrink into insignificance.

In a map of the world, which, with nice distinctness, and all the accuracy of "the latest discoveries," outlines the coasts of the great Canadian lakes, and follows the windings of the St. Lawrence, their mighty outlet to the mightier ocean, we must look narrowly for some short line meant to point out the course of our "royal-towered Thames." There our "Severn swift" appears too small to drown a fly; while Trent,

"That like some earth-born giant spreads

His thirsty arms along the indented meads,"

has probably escaped the engraver's touch altogether. The beauties of Windermere and Ullswater, and the sterner glories of Loch Lomond, if they appear at all, appear but as microscopic spots, too minute for any distinction of form or direction.

But let us direct our attention to a map of the northeastern portion of the great continent of America. See how deeply is its coast indented with bays and inlets— how, from Hudson's Bay and the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland in the east, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains in the "far west," the surface of the country is studded with lakes of every variety of form and size-and what a net-work of streams connects these with each other, and with the main ocean! Let us, in fancy, ascend the ridge of the Rocky Mountains, the northern extremity of that vast chain, which, under various names, runs southward for nine thousand miles, throughout the length of the two western continents, until it sinks into the ocean depths, amid the frowning desolation of Terra del Fuego.

Clouds, from the waters of the Pacific, gather around the summits where we stand; they roll down the eastern side of the range, and, descending into the plains at our feet, in snow, and mist, and rain, they form and feed the countless waters which lie between us and the Atlantic. Down many a cascade they leap-they flow through many a winding river, and widen into many a lake, until they are poured into that mighty mass of waters, broad and deep, known pre-eminently as the "Great Lakes" of Canada.

It has been calculated that these, with the St. Law

rence, by which their waters flow into the Atlantic, contain one-third of all the fresh water on the globe-at any rate they form by far the largest connected body of fresh water on its surface. The large inland seas of the old world-the Caspian, the Euxine, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic, are all nearly as salt as the ocean itself. The cause of this difference has been variously stated; but, however interesting, it would lead us into too wide a range of subjects for discussion here.

The three higher lakes-Superior, Michigan, and Huron, together cover an extent of fifty-eight thousand square miles, and their average depth is about nine hundred feet. Erie, which forms the next outlet towards the sea, is much shallower; its mean depth being only one hundred and twenty feet, and this depth has been gradually decreasing; so that it is almost certain, that in the course of years, what is now the basin of the lake will be filled up, presenting, instead of its present broad sheet of water, a fertile alluvial plain, watered by the St. Lawrence and its tributary rivers, which would then connect the lakes Huron and Ontario by a stream of between two hundred and three hundred miles in length.

At the northeastern end of Erie, its shores approach, until they leave an outlet of only three quarters of a mile