The falls, as I have said, are made by a sudden breach in the level of the river.  All cataracts are, I presume, made by such breaches; but generally the waters do not fall precipitously as they do at Niagara, and never elsewhere, as far as the world yet knows, has a breach so sudden been made in a river carrying in its channel such or any approach to such a body of water.  Up above the falls for more than a mile the waters leap and burst over rapids, as though conscious of the destiny that awaits them.  Here the river is very broad and comparatively shallow; but from shore to shore it frets itself into little torrents, and begins to assume the majesty of its power.  Looking at it even here, in the expanse which forms itself over the greater fall, one feels sure that no strongest swimmer could have a chance of saving himself if fate had cast him in even among those petty whirlpools.  The waters though so broken in their descent, are deliciously green.  This color, as seen early in the morning or just as the sun has set, is so bright as to give to the place one of its chiefest charms.

This will be best seen from the farther end of the island—­Goat Island as it is called—­which, as the reader will understand, divides the river immediately above the falls.  Indeed, the island is a part of that precipitously-broken ledge over which the river tumbles, and no doubt in process of time will be worn away and covered with water.  The time, however, will be very long.  In the mean while, it is perhaps a mile round, and is covered thickly with timber.  At the upper end of the island the waters are divided, and, coming down in two courses each over its own rapids, form two separate falls.  The bridge by which the island is entered is a hundred yards or more above the smaller fall.  The waters here have been turned by the island, and make their leap into the body of the river below at a right angle with it—­about two hundred yards below the greater fall.  Taken alone, this smaller cataract would, I imagine, be the heaviest fall of water known; but taken in conjunction with the other, it is terribly shorn of its majesty.  The waters here are not green as they are at the larger cataract; and, though the ledge has been hollowed and bowed by them so as to form a curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss as it does at the horseshoe up above.  This smaller fall is again divided; and the visitor, passing down a flight of steps and over a frail wooden bridge, finds himself on a smaller island in the midst of it.

But we will go at once on to the glory, and the thunder, and the majesty, and the wrath of that upper hell of waters.  We are still, let the reader remember, on Goat Island—­still in the States—­and on what is called the American side of the main body of the river.  Advancing beyond the path leading down to the lesser fall, we come to that point of the island at which the waters of the main river begin