CHAPTER XXXVII.
The Niagara is not a stream, not even a river; it is simply a weir sluice, a canal thirty-six miles long, which empties the waters of the Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie into the Ontario. The difference in the level of these last two lakes is three hundred and forty feet; this difference uniformly proportioned the whole of the width would hardly have created a "rapid;" but the Falls alone absorb half the difference in level, whence their formidable power.
This Niagarine trench separates the United States from Canada. Its right bank is American and its left English; on one side policemen, on the other not the shadow of one.
On the morning of the 12th of April, at break of day, the Doctor and I walked down the wide street of Niagara Falls, which is the name of the village situated on the banks of the Falls. It is a kind of small watering-place, three hundred miles from Albany, built in a healthy and charming situation, provided with sumptuous hotels and
