standing in Canada, and the other in the United States, there
would be a company immediately formed for hydraulic purposes, to convey
a waste pipe from the tips of the fingers as far as Buffalo; and another
to light the paltry village of Manchester, all mills and mint-juleps,
with the natural gas which would be made to feed the lamp. A grogshop
would be set up in his head; telescopes would be poked out of his eyes,
and philosophers would seat themselves on his toes, to calculate whether
the waters of the British Fall could not be dammed out, so as to turn a
few cotton mills more in Manchester, as it is called, which scheme some
Canadian worthy would upset, by resorting to Mr. Lyell's proof that the
whole river might once have flowed, and may again be made to flow, down
to St. David's--thus, by expending a few millions, cutting off
Jonathan's chance.

But it is of no use to joke on this subject; Niagara is, both to the
United States and to England, but especially to Canada, a public
property. It is the greatest wonder of the visible world here below,
and should be protected from the rapacity of private speculations, and
not made a Greenwich fair of; where pedlars and thimble-riggers, niggers
and barkers, the lowest trulls and the vilest scum of society,
congregate to disgust and annoy the visitors from all parts of the
world, plundering and pestering them without control.

The only really pretty thing on the British side is the Museum, the
result of the indefatigable labours of Mr. Barnett, a person who, by his
own unassisted industry, has gathered together a most interesting
collection of animals, shells, coins, &c., and has added a garden, in
which all the choicest plants and flowers of North America and of
Britain grow, watered by the incessant spray of the Great Fall. In this
garden I saw, for the first time in Canada, the English holly, the box,
the heath, and the ivy; and there is a willow from the St. Helena stock.

It requires unremitting watchfulness, however, to keep all this
together, for _loafers_ are rife in these parts. He had gathered a very
choice collection of coins, which was placed in a glass case in the
Museum. A loafer cast his eye upon them, visited the Museum frequently,
until he fully comprehended the whereabouts, and then, by the help of a
comrade or two, broke a window-pane, passed through a glazed division of
stuffed snakes, &c., and bore off his prize in the dead of the night. By
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