t is taken away, tumbles into the Gorge,
shows the means by which the Falls gradually recede.

It is shown to the best advantage in the Cave of the Winds, which,
during the past thirty years, by this wind-and-water-blast process, has
been enlarged to four times its former size. Some day the layer of rock
at the top of that cave will fall; the edge of the Luna Island Fall
will be thus moved back a number of feet; the Cave of the Winds will
become merely a narrow space between the outward-curving fall of water
and the perpendicular rock; and the wind-and-water-blast will continue
its erosive work on that rocky face;--and in the course of years will
again produce a distinct cave.

The other scientific question--which the future will answer--is, How
fast does this Niagara concrete form? With that 400 feet length of
cliff on the Canadian shore--which was formerly covered by the end of
the Horse-shoe Fall--exposed to the air and to observation (the outer
end of those crevices in its face being now free from any such
deposit); with the extensive excavations on the debris slope for the
Power House below the bank, exposing new surfaces, where little such
deposit now appears; with other probable excavations in connection with
the power development, exposing similar surfaces at other points along
the Gorge; it will be possible to approximately determine the yearly
amount of accumulation and deposit of this ancient Niagara product. For
that deposit will go on as ceaselessly as it has been going on, ever
since the time--possibly many thousands of years ago--when the waters
of a great lake (which was formed by the melting of the ice sheet)
covered all this region; finally breaking over its northern barrier at
the Lewiston escarpment, where, seven miles from its present location,
Niagara was born.

STILL A TRADE CENTER

Le Sieur Gendron, of whom we know nothing more than is contained in the
printed letters, noted before, passed away many a year ago; but at this
late date, some two and a half centuries after his death, a lover of
Niagara, in his search for and his collecting of early books that in
any way refer to its famous Cataract, secured a copy of De Rocoles'
"America, the Third Part of the World," 1660, which contains the first
publication of Docteur Gendron's interesting letters from, and about,
the Huron Country, in Canada. Therein he found this remarkable
reference to the Waterfall,--which was quoted verbatim from