SECRET OF NIAGARA FALLS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1540, 26 August 1924, Page 6

SECRET OF NIAGARA FALLS

The open secret of Niagara Falls is that Lake Ontario is some 300 feet below the 'level of Lake Erie, and that the river, instead of flowing seawards on an inclined plane or a series of rapids, has eaten into the relatively soft rock of the six miles of gorges, making a cliff which has gradually receded up -the current (writes Professor J. A. Thomson in the Star). Part of the recession, which has taken several thousand years to bring the Falls to their present location, is due to actual wearing of the rock by ice blocks and stones carried by the river in its grip, but most of it is caused by under cutting ; of the cliff. There is rather softer rock below, it is eaten away and then a slice of the cataract cliff slips down. The cutting back proceeds at a rate varying from six to twelve feet yearly, and it has been calculated that in a thousand years the falls will be a mile nearer Lake Erie. This will be a little hard on the new hotel. What will happen when the cataract reaches Lake Erie, only geologists know. When we arrived at the Falls we were surprised to find that the whole surface of the river between the cataracts and the bridges was thickly covered with heaped up ice, so that one could have theoretically made one’s way across, after the fashion described so vividly in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Apart from grandeur and beauty, the most impressive feature of* Niagara Falls is man’s mastery of them. It is, we suppose, a supreme instance of the transformation of gravitational energy. The energy of the rushing water is used to light the streets and drive the mills of towns 200 miles away, and more. One is pleased to see that this justifiable utilisation is being associated with a genuine though by no means wholly successful endeavour to conserve the beauty of one of the greatest wonders of the world.