The things we do!

)
Once upon the upper plateau, they marched through the wintry forest and at
length, in "solitude unprofaned as yet by the pettiness of man," they
beheld the "imperial cataract"--the "thunder of water," as the Indians
called it--or, as Hennepin described it, that "vast and prodigious cadence
of water which falls down after a surprising and most astonishing manner,
insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel, those of Italy
and Switzerland being but sorry patterns." To this priest, Hennepin, we
owe the first description and picture of Niagara, [Footnote: "Four leagues
from Lake Frontenac there is an incredible Cataract or Waterfall, which
has no equal. The Niagara river near this place is only the eighth of a
league wide, but it is very deep in places, and so rapid above the great
fall that it hurries down all the animals which try to cross it, without a
single one being able to withstand its current. They plunge down a height
of more than five hundred feet, and its fall is composed of two sheets of
water and a cascade, with an island sloping down.


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