8 - The Rapids above the Falls of Niagara

Summary

During the last Canadian war, Genpral Putnam, the famous partisan soldier, made the first descent upon Goat Island. A wager had been, laid, that no man in the army would dare to cross the Rapids from the American side; and with the personal daring for which he was remarkable, above all the men of that trying period, he undertook the feat. Selecting the four stoutest and most resolute men in his corps, he embarked in a batteau just above the island, and with a rope attached to the ring-bolt, which was held by as many muscular fellows on the shore, he succeeded by desperate rowing in reaching his mark. He most easily towed back, and the feat has since been rendered unnecessary by the construction of the bridge from which the accompanying view is taken.

Many years since, a Tonemanta chief, after a violent quarrel with his squaw, lay down to sleep in his canoe. The little bark was moored just out of the tide of Niagara river, at the inlet to the creek which takes its name from his tribe, and the half-drunken chief, with his bottle of rum in his bosom, was soon fast asleep among the sedges. The enraged squaw, finding, after several attempts, that she could not get possession of the bottle without waking him, unmoored the canoe, and swimming out of the creek, pushed it before her into the swift tide of the river.