Niagara Falls

The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has a vertical drop of more than 50 meters.

Canadian Horseshoe Falls with city of Niagara Falls, Ontario in background.

Quotes

• "Niagara! wonder of this western world,
  And all the world beside! hail, beauteous queen
  Of cataracts!" an angel who had been
  O'er heaven and earth, spoke thus—his bright wings furled—
  And knelt to Nature first, on this wild cliff unseen.
  • Maria Gowen Brooks, "Stanzas to Niagara", stanza 7, in Idomen; or, The Vale of Yumuri (New York: Samuel Colman, 1843), "The Confessions", p. 195.

• Fools-to-free-the-world, they go,
  Primeval hearts from Buffalo.
  Red cataracts of France to-day
  Awake, three thousand miles away,
  An echo of Niagara
  The cataract Niagara.
  • Vachel Lindsay, "Niagara", stanza 7, in The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), p. 46.

• Flow on for ever, in thy glorious robe
  Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on
  Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set
  His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
  Mantled around thy feet. And He doth give
  Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him
  Eternally—bidding the lip of man
  Keep silence, and upon thine altar pour
  Incense of awe-struck praise.
  • Lydia Sigourney, "Niagara" (Summer 1834), stanza 1, in Horatio A. Parsons, A Guide to Travelers Visiting the Falls of Niagara, 2nd edition greatly enlarged (Buffalo: Oliver G. Steele, 1835), p. 83.

External links

• W. Martha E. Cooke and Bruce G. Wilson, "James Peachey", Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 4 (1979)
• Andrew Zebrun III, "Natural Niagara Falls", Buffalo Rising (September 25, 2021)