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THE SHORE ABOVE THE ISLAND BRIDGE

Showing the condition in 1879, before the reforms of the Niagara Commissioners

same level, as a single great basin, forever full, forever receiving the discharge of rivers and streams, and forever overflowing through Niagara to Lake Ontario, three hundred and twenty-six feet below. Now, if you tap the basin at its upper side, the first effect will be to check the overflow. Not until the overflow has altogether ceased will the level of the great basin begin to sink. In a quite untechnical way, that is the case of the lakes. It is the old story of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Niagara is the woeful Peter.

Unfortunately, robbing Peter is tempt ing business. Chicago, having successfully filched some three thousand cubic feet of water per minute, now plans to extend her Drainage Canal-already an artificial river forty miles long, twenty-six feet deep, and three hundred feet widesixty-six miles further to the Illinois River, pouring into it a stream which will swell it to sixteen times its present volume. Engineering objections seem likely at least to delay the completion of this plan, which involves a deepened river channel as far as Cairo, and from there a cross-country cut to the mouth of the Mississippi. But this is not all. Canada, in furtherance of her little plot to divert the commerce of the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence, proposes to carve out a deep waterway between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River, thus shortening the lake route by

five hundred miles. Add to these plans the scheme for a deep-water connection between the lakes and the Hudson, between Winnipeg Lake and Lake Superior, and between Toronto and Lake Huron ; the demand of Pittsburg and Cincinnati to be made (by proxy of canals) lake ports; Wisconsin's plea for a canal across her borders from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi; the scheme to cut a canal from Lake Superior at Duluth to the Mississippi at Minneapolis-give all these lake-tappers, these meddlers with God's map, their way, and what would become of the Niagara River? As if this were not enough, the genius of modern engineering, beginning to see the evil results of the tapping process, proposes to mend the mischief by a plugging process. That is, they propose to raise the lowered level of the Great Lakes by damming the Niagara River at the head of the rapids, or at Buffalo, or both. Mr. Moore, whose lake wisdom I have already quoted, says that were the Niagara dammed so that the four upper lakes had no outflow, he does. not believe that their level would be really affected. But whether or not the projected dam would raise the level of the lakes, it would assuredly lower the level of Niagara, and during the dry season at least practically drain Niagara Falls. The most hopeful feature of the case is the multitude of plotters and amateur geographers, for they cannot assuredly all be

satisfied without making of our inland seas a great American desert. The time must come when an international protest will call a halt. But will it come soon enough to save Niagara?

Although their foster fathers at Albany have cast them off, the falls are not altogether without friends. The men who fought so valiantly for the rescue of Niagara from swindlers and showmen in 1884-5 are fighting as valiantly now for the river's very existence. Perhaps Niagara Falls has no more whole-hearted champion than the venerable President of the Commission of the State Reservation-Andrew H. Green, the "father of Central Park." From the first he has strenuously opposed all encroachments upon the reservation and all injuries to the river. First it was the Gorge Railway, which proposed to cut the débris slope within the limits of the reservation. Then, in 1889, it was the Hydraulic Power Company, which asked of the Legislature the right to place turbines in the very heart of the American Fall. They proposed to turn aside the water where it rolls over the precipice at Prospect Park; then, by blasting, to construct a vault or cave in the rock and behind the fall. Here were to be placed dynamos to be operated by water descending through a tube or well upon turbine wheels. That audacious proposition was actually reported favorably in both Houses, but it was side-tracked for that session and eventually defeated. From the granting of the charter of the Niagara Falls Power Company in 1886, the Commissioners have exhausted themselves in efforts to persuade the lawmakers that

they had no right to grant away without compensation what belonged to the people, and that by so doing they were endangering the very existence of the Falls of Niagara. But to no purpose. Almost every session saw the passage of fresh grants. Convinced at last that the Legislature was completely under the influence of the corporations, Mr. Green pushed his efforts further back. In 1894 a convention was held to revise the State Constitution, and to this body Mr. Green offered a resolution looking toward the appointment of a committee to consider the advisability of an amendment to the Constitution preventing the diversion of Niagara's water above the Falls. The resolution passed; the committee was appointed, and, after investigation, presented to the Convention a vigorous and convincing report, calling the attention of that body to the fact that the reservation had cost the State $2,500,000, that not a penny of revenue was accruing to the State from the valuable franchises granted, and protesting that "if corporate and individual ambition be not checked and made subject to public rights, there was certainly danger that the Falls of Niagara, like the Falls of Minnehaha, may live in the tradition of song and story, but will be sadly deficient in the amount of water flowing over their brink;" and closed by proposing an amendment restraining the Legislature from granting to corporations or individuals the right to divert the waters of the Upper Niagara. Through the extraor dinary efforts of the corporations inter(sted, this amendment was defeated.

Disappointed, but by no means crushed,

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Mr. Green rallied his forces and carried his case to a higher court. Since the Legislature would not restrain the corporations, nor the revisional convention the Legislature, there was no resource save an appeal to the Federal Government. Realizing, however, that restrictive action on this side the river would but serve to drive the corporations across into Canada, where a grant of two hundred thousand horse-power has already been made, it was not only for National but for international intervention that he looked.

But even should an international protectorate be established, one mighty threat would still overhang Niagara. For not only man but Nature is in conspiracy against her. This continent of ours, this firm and solid hemisphere, is gradually, leisurely tilting-rising on the north and east, and falling on the south and west. Eventually, unless the continent should change its mind, the Great Lakes will be forced to seek a new outlet by way of the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and the Niagara River will be dry. The continent is in no hurry about it. Scientific schedules vary so that one cannot be very precise.

But about two thousand years from now the Illinois River and the Niagara will compete about equally for the waters of the lakes. Twenty-five hundred years from now Niagara will have but an intermittent flow, and in three thousand years the current in the Detroit and St. Mary's Rivers will be reversed; Lake Erie will flow into Lake Huron, Lake Huron into Lake Michigan, and the Niagara River will be a thing of the past. With the aid of artificial canals, it is even possible that this result may be brought about more speedily.

Niagara, together with scores of other beautiful and picturesque things in this prosaic world of ours, is passing. Saved from the hands of the catchpenny sharper, it has fallen into the hands of the catchmillion capitalist. Rescued from the toils of a commercial conspiracy, it will but vanish under the pitiless processes of Nature.

However, the mighty geologic clock which ticks off the centuries and strikes the æons is set to a more majestic beat than the tiny pulse of human life. If can save Niagara for our children's children's children, it is worth fighting for.

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Even should the friendly measure become a law, it may require a vigorous public sentiment to see to its enforcement. Past experience would seem to indicate that the power companies will get about what they want about when they want it. And if, as the perfection of electrical science makes a cheapened power more widely in demand, the power companies want what is distinctly prejudicial to an already lowered river, it will be well even for an international commission to have the reinforcement of an awakened public opinion. The coming summer, with its exposition on the Niagara frontier, will give millions of people of the United States and Canada an opportunity to see for themselves what is going on at the Falls, and to form their own opinion of the merits of the case. Every effort will be made to confine the visitor's attention to the vast commercial significance of the "harnessing of Niagara." But if the people refuse to be hypnotized by the talk about water-power going to waste, etc., they will meet the commercial spirit with the commercial spirit, saying, "Behold all this horsepower going to waste! In New England they charge for the use of river water at the rate of $25 to $75 per horse-power. At the rate of even five dollars per horse-power, the water running through these power tunnels and canals ought to bring the State a million dollars a year, enough to pay for the State Reservation in two years and a half. The gentlemen of these corporations do not own the river. Nor is it a public stream. It is in a legal sense a navigable river, and as such the property of the State of New York, under control (for it is also an international boundary) of the Federal Government. Moreover, in a peculiar sense the Falls of Niagara and Niagara's gorge belong, not to New York State, nor even to the United States and Canada, but to the whole world. America and Canada are joint trustees of the unique legacy of the ice age. The world applauds to-day their public-spirited administration of the trust. But if they permit private individuals, for their own private profit, or individual States for the avowed benefit of commerce, to rob Niagara of all that makes a reservation worth having, they will deservedly win the derision of nations.

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When Dickens wrote "Our Mutual Friend," his description of the life of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin was thought to be by many the best part of that book. It will be remembered by all Dickens lovers that Mr. Boffin's part of the house was scantily furnished, but that Mrs. Boffin's was distinguished by a rich Turkey carpet and other luxuries which accorded with that lady's personal proclivities in living. As her husband fondly said, she was "a highflyer at fashion." Judging from the accounts of a recent visitor to Russia, the same distinction apparently characterizes Count and Countess Tolstoï. This visitor describes his interview with the celebrated novelist and reformer. Count Tolstoï was in peasant dress and received his guest in a plainly furnished study; but when later they went into the reception-room, they found Countess Tolstoï magnificent in court costume, and the ladies with her similarly attired. These things are, however, mere matters of taste, and from the events of the past month it would seem that Countess Tolstoï has a peculiar right to be heard and honored by every one. Her husband's excommunication from the Greco-Russian Church gave her an opportunity of issuing a profoundly moving public letter, upon which The Outlook has already commented. She closes this letter as follows: "God will be lenient to those who even outside the Church have lived a life of humility, renunciation of the good things of this world, love, and devotion. His pardon is surer for them than for those whose miters and decorations sparkle with precious stones. but who strike and expel from the Church those over whom they are set as pastors. Hypocrisy would vainly distort my words, for good faith does not err in judging people's real intentions."

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"THE WIDE WORLD SEEMED SUDDENLY A COLD AND FAR-OFF PLACE

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