The Falls of Niagara and Other Famous Cataracts

ce where we were,--ten or twelve leagues distant,--but also from the other side of Lake Ontario, opposite its mouth" (Toronto, forty miles distant).

Of the rattlesnakes on the mountain ridges he says: "There are many in this place as large as your arm, and six or seven feet long, and entirely black."

From Ganastoque Sonontona the party separated, the two priests, with their guides and attendants, designing to move to the west, along the north shore of Lake Erie, and La Salle apparently to return to Montreal, but in reality, as is supposed, to prosecute by a more southerly route the grand ambition of his life--the discovery of the Mississippi River--a purpose which he executed with even more than the "bigot's zeal," and literally, as it proved in the end, with the "martyr's constancy," for he was assassinated on the plains of Texas, some few years after, while endeavoring to secure to France the benefits of his great discovery.

After separating from his companions at the Indian village, he