In the middle these
waters foam and boil in a fearful manner. They thunder continually, and
when the wind blows in a southerly direction the noise which they make is
heard for more than fifteen leagues. Four leagues from this cataract, or
fall, the Niagara river rushes with extraordinary rapidity especially for
two leagues into Lake Frontenac."--Hennepin, "Description of Louisiana,"
pp. 71-73.] probably now more familiar to the world than any other natural
feature of this continent. He has somewhat magnified the height of these
falls, making it five hundred feet in the edition of 1683, and raising it
to six hundred in 1697; but they are impressive enough to acquit him of
intentional falsification and powerful enough to run virtually all the
manufacturing plants in the United States, if they could be gathered
within its easy reach.
As it is, less than 9 per cent of the water that overflows from the four
upper Great Lakes into the lower lake, once known as Lake Frontenac and
now as Ontario, is diverted for utilitarian purposes; it supplies the
Americans and the Canadians almost equally between the two shores five
hundred thousand horse-power.
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