in time, and by dint of much exertion, the greater part was
recovered, but the proprietor has not dared publicly to exhibit them
since.

He is now forming a menagerie, and also has a collection of fossils and
minerals from the neighbourhood, with a camera obscura. He is, in short,
a specimen of what untiring industry can accomplish, even when
unassisted.

There are some tulip-trees near the Falls, but this plant does not grow
to any size so far north; and, although native to the soil, it is,
perhaps, the extreme limit of its range. The snake-wood, a sort of
slender bush, is found here, with very many other rare Canadian plants,
which are no doubt fostered by the continual humidity of the place; and,
if you wish to sup full of horrors,[4] Mr. Barnett has plenty of live
rattlesnakes.

[Footnote 4: This puts me in mind of the vulgar received opinion that my
godfather Fuseli supped on pork-steaks, to have horrid dreams.
Originally said in joke, this absurd story has been repeated even by
persons affecting respectability as writers. His Greek learning alone
should have saved his memory from this.]

To wind up all, the Americans are going to put up another immense
gin-palace on the opposite shore; and, as a climax to the excellent
taste of the vicinage, they are about to place a huge steamboat to cross
the rapids at the foot of the Manchester Falls. The next speculation, as
I hinted above, must be to turn the Niagara into the Erie, or into the
Welland Canal, and make it carry flour, grind wheat, and do the duty
which the political economists of this thriving place consider all
rivers as alone created for.

One traveller of the Utilitarian school has recorded, in the traveller's
album at the Falls, the number of gallons of water running over to
waste per minute; and another writes, "What an almighty splash!"

I went once more to see the Burning Spring, and have no doubt whatever
that the City of the Falls, that great pre-eminent humbug, if it had
been built, might have easily been lit by natural gas, as it abounds
every where in the neighbourhood, the rock under the superior Silurian
limestone being a shale containing it, as may be evidenced by those
visitors, who are persuaded to go under "the Sheet of Water," as the
place is called where the Table Rock projects, and part of the cataract
slides over it; for, on reaching the angle next to the spiral stair, a
strong smell is plainly perceptible, something between rotten