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WONDERS OF NATURE
Niagara Falls. Nature miracle
The Great Lakes of North America - Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario - are the largest lake "constellation" of our planet. The waters of the first four of them are carried away to the fifth - Ontario - by the powerful and fast Niagara River. Its length is small (only fifty-six kilometers), but in this short distance between Lakes Erie and Ontario, the river descends almost a hundred meters! Moreover, she loses half of this height in one violent jump, which is called Niagara Falls. The fame of this water jump is so great that for many it has become, as it were, a synonym for the word "waterfall". For more than three hundred years, people have been walking, swimming, traveling and flying here to see this most beautiful place. Sixteen million people visit Niagara every year, and there is no traveler on Earth who has not heard about this unique natural pearl and has not dreamed of seeing it with his own eyes.
A mighty high-water stream, a thousand two hundred meters wide, is cut at the waterfall by the Goat Island into two parts. On the right, from the side where the border river washes the territory of the United States, the American Falls rush down, demonstrating, one might say, the classic type of a large waterfall and most often appearing in photographs. And closer to the left, Canadian bank of Niagara, a smooth nine-hundred-meter arc of the Canadian Falls, or Horseshoe, as it is often called, curved. Unfortunately, a thick cloud of water spray rising up from the foot of the Horseshoe prevents this part of Niagara from appearing before the viewer in all its glory. In addition to these two well-known components of the famous waterfall, there is also a third part of it, less known, but until recently it gave tourists such thrills that Canadian and American waterfalls could not give them. Near Goat Island, closer to the USA, there is a tiny island called Lunny. A jet twenty meters wide, falling between them, is called the Central, or Lunar, waterfall. Until a few years ago, a traveler could walk down a spiral staircase, wearing waterproof overalls, along a ledge between a limestone cliff and a falling wall of Moon Falls. . There were always plenty of people who wanted to visit this "Cave of the Winds", as it was called, but the authorities banned these risky excursions, fearing that the fragile edge of the ledge would break off at the most inopportune moment. Similar cases have already happened on the American side of Niagara. In January 1931, a block weighing seventy-five thousand tons collapsed. And in July 1954, an almost 200-ton hulk fell down. In the end, it was even necessary to block the river above the waterfall for a while so that all the water flowed through the Horseshoe, and to overhaul with concrete the limestone ledge from which the American Falls falls. Each side of the famous waterfall has its own merits. The horseshoe shakes with the power of the falling water mass (nine-tenths of all Niagara water flows through it) and the roar of crashing waterfall jets. No wonder the Canadian Falls have another name - "Thunderer". The waters of a huge river gently roll towards a rocky ledge and with majestic calm fall into the abyss from a height of fifty meters. In high water, the thickness of the water flow on the crest of the waterfall reaches five meters. The top of the water wall seems to be motionless. Its smooth surface resembles dark green glass. And below, the water boils and rages, forming giant whirlpools. Above this wild apotheosis of bubbling and menacingly roaring jets, a white column of water dust rises a hundred meters up, covering the entire middle of the Horseshoe. Below, the waterfall carved a trench fifty meters deep in the stone bed of the river. It is clear that hollowing out such a "giant cauldron", as geologists call such depressions, would be beyond the power of water alone. But under the solid layer of limestone, from which the waterfall falls, there are clays and sandstones, with which the water copes effortlessly. Over time, voids form under the limestone, and then the edges of the reservoir break off. The fallen blocks, rotated by the furious falling jets, act on the rocks of the river bottom like a drilling tool, year after year biting into the sandstone underlying Niagara. The American Falls is shorter, but it looks better from the side, especially in sunny weather. The uneven, slightly wavy and as if tousled wall of foamy water breaks very effectively against huge pieces of fallen stone blocks piled up below. And at night, hundreds of multi-colored spotlights, illuminating the continuously moving wall of water, create a truly fabulous illumination that enhances the already amazing impression of this part of Niagara. The American waterfall is almost ten meters higher than the Canadian one, but the layer of water on its crest is only half a meter, which is why it manages to be illuminated so beautifully. The rumble of Niagara is heard twenty-five kilometers away, so a person standing next to the waterfall does not hear anything. No wonder the Iroquois Indians who lived nearby gave this miracle of nature such a name (in Iroquois "niagara" - "rumbling water"). Like any waterfall, Niagara changes its appearance depending on the time of year, day, and even changes in the nature of cloudiness. In spring and summer, the white-foamy bluish water wall is set off by the lush greenery of the banks, in autumn - by the flaming leaves of Canadian maples, in winter - by the white calmness of the snow cover of the embankments and the roofs of the surrounding buildings. By the way, only the edges of the river freeze in winter. From the rocks protruding on the crest of a waterfall that is impoverished at this time, icicles, huge, like gigantic stalactites, gradually grow, sparkling against the background of raging water. An even more impressive picture unfolds before the traveler who arrived in Niagara in the spring, during the flood. Huge ice floes, like icebergs, swim up to the edge of the cliff and fall down, shattering with a roar and rumble and disappearing into the abyss. In 1848, the ice of Lake Erie blocked the source of the Niagara in a dense mass, and the water in the waterfall dried up. Local residents, not understanding the reasons for the strange behavior of the river, in a panic expected anything, up to the end of the world. For a whole day, none of them closed their eyes. Finally, after thirty hours, the water broke through the ice bridge and rushed down with all the accumulated mass. The overthrow of water mixed with blocks of ice, according to stories, resembled a volcanic eruption with an earthquake to boot. Behind the waterfall, the river narrows almost ten times - up to one hundred and thirty meters - and rushes forward at a terrible speed. A dark rocky canyon, eleven kilometers long, allows Niagara to demonstrate all its indomitable power before it comes out onto the plain and quietly flows into Lake Ontario. On both banks, shafts are dug in the thickness of the rocks, in which elevators are arranged. Tourists dressed in rubberized raincoats descend to the very foot of Niagara and, being some one and a half meters from the grandiose wall of water collapsing down, feel awe at the unbridled power of natural forces. Guides tell travelers the Iroquois legend of the Maid of the Mist, the ritual sacrifice of Niagara. According to legend, the Indians annually chose the most beautiful girl and sacrificed her to the god Manit, who lived in the abyss under the waterfall. For this, a beautifully dressed beauty was put in a pirogue without oars and pushed away from the shore above Niagara. And the Maiden of the Mist, as the victim was called, smiled and sang as she swam towards the waterfall, for she had the great fortune to meet the almighty deity! But one day the choice fell on the beautiful daughter of the great leader of the Iroquois. Unable to bear the separation from his beloved daughter, he threw himself into the abyss from the edge of the cliff and died in the Niagara whirlpools. Since then, the Iroquois, having lost the wisest and bravest leader, forever put an end to the terrible rite, so that such tragedies would not happen again. Some believe that the Iroquois did not have such a legend and that it was simply invented by cunning guides for the entertainment of tourists. But it seems to me that even if this is so, the poetic legend has a right to exist. The appearance of the furious water element is so formidable, its frenzied strength is so limitless and harsh that the traveler's imagination really demands fatal and terrible stories related to the past of the waterfall. Meanwhile, the real history of Niagara is also full of hidden dramas and tragedies, only geological ones. All her life, ten thousand years, she slowly moves back upstream, eroding and undermining the edge of the ledge from which she falls down. During this time, the waterfall traveled eleven kilometers, forming the same canyon in which the river now rages after its dizzying jump. The rate of retreat in our time is more than a meter per year. This applies primarily to the Horseshoe, in which its middle part is destroyed especially quickly. The American Falls, as already mentioned, recedes in leaps due to catastrophic collapses of the ridge. A particularly large collapse occurred here in 1886, when the area around Niagara trembled, as in an earthquake. The catastrophes of 1931 and 1954, which we described above, also caused serious damage to the American part of the waterfall ledge. If the retreat of Niagara continues at the same rate, then in thirty thousand years it will reach Lake Erie and drain its waters into Ontario. Now, however, part of the waters of Niagara at night are diverted through the side channels to the turbines of power plants, and the power of the river flow then becomes less, but still not far off the time when the receding wall of the cliff will be higher than Goat Island, two waterfalls will merge into one , which will continue to retreat to Lake Erie and, most likely, will become far from being so beautiful and tall. Probably, in the not too distant future, man will have to save the wonderful creation of nature from the sad fate that awaits him. Many tragedies, and the most real, not hypothetical ones, have happened over the past century and a half to people who dreamed of becoming famous thanks to Niagara. The first to decide to play on the nerves of numerous tourists who came to the waterfall was Jean Blondin, a well-known tightrope walker in the last century. In 1859, he announced that he would walk four hundred meters on a rope stretched over a canyon a kilometer below the Canadian Falls. At least a hundred thousand people gathered to watch this spectacle. On the river below the falls floated a small tourist boat (named, of course, "Maid of the Mist"), crowded with those who wanted to see the upcoming triumph (or tragedy) of Blondin from the bottom. When Blondin stepped onto the rope, which had sagged to a height of fifty meters above the gorge, half of the spectators were sure that he would break. The circus performer walked a third of the way and sat down on the rope to rest - his legs were shaking so much. Then he walked another third of the length of the rope and again decided to sit. He waved to the passengers of the Maid of the Mist below, gestured for her to come and stand directly below him, and then lowered down the rope to which the ship had tied a bottle of whiskey. Picking it up, the tightrope walker drank the contents of the vessel and continued on his way. The whole passage through the gorge took Blonden fifteen minutes. The glory of Blondin almost eclipsed the glory of the waterfall itself. For two years he continued to amaze the audience with new tricks over Niagara. The Frenchman walked on a tightrope with a bag on his head, pushed a wheelbarrow in front of him, tumbled backwards over a gorge, danced, walked on stilts, jumped up and down. But Blondin did not repeat a single trick twice. He stood on his head, walked over the gorge with his hands and feet chained, stood on a rope, holding a hat in his hand, and a man from the shore shot at her with a gun, walked over Niagara at night, lighting his way with a lantern ... To top it off, Blondin managed to walk the tightrope while carrying his manager on his shoulders. It is said that when he did this, two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered at the waterfall! The desperate circus performer went down in history as the conqueror of Niagara Falls. In this capacity, he then toured all over the world, visiting, in particular, Russia. The glory of the brave Frenchman caused a wave of people who wanted to repeat his exploits, but his followers were much less lucky. The Italian Ballini stumbled in the middle of the path and flew into the water from fifty meters. Miraculously, he survived. But the next tightrope walker, Steve Peer, was the first circus performer on the list of Niagara's victims. However, the most risky ventures in the history of Niagara were associated with numerous attempts to descend the falls in some unusual vessel. The legend of the "Maid of the Mist" obviously haunted the seekers and adventurers. The first on the list of Niagara adventurers was, oddly enough, a woman - forty-three-year-old teacher Anna Taylor. As a vessel, the newly-minted "Maid of the Mist" chose a barrel of whiskey. To begin with, the teacher let her cat go on a desperate flight. The barrel remained intact, but the cat died. This did not stop Anna Taylor, and on October 4, 1901, she climbed into her barrel, lined with pillows inside. An anvil was attached to the bottom of her "float" to keep the barrel upright. Anna later said that she remembers how she swam to the waterfall, how she fell, but at the moment when the barrel entered the water under the waterfall, she lost consciousness. Seventeen minutes after the fall, the barrel washed up on the Canadian coast. To cheers, Taylor climbed out of the barrel: she was completely wet, blood was flowing from a broken jaw. For half an hour she was in shock, and then changed clothes and triumphantly appeared before the public. In 1911, another English adventurer, Bobby Leach, jumped from Niagara in a steel drum with an airtight hatch. He was less fortunate: he broke his jaw and both kneecaps and spent six months in the hospital. For the next fifteen years, Leach traveled the world with stories of his exploits and died from an accidental bruise in New Zealand, slipping on an orange peel. Seventeen years later, Canadian Jean Lussier built a metal structure, covered on the outside with car tires, and went on it along the route of Indian beauties. He was pulled ashore completely unharmed. On a similar unit, a professional Niagara lifeguard Hill tried to jump from a waterfall in 1951. But the tires on his "watercraft" were torn even on the rapids to the waterfall. The crippled body of the daredevil was found only a day later. Since then, the police have carefully monitored the river above the falls and prevented new adventurous attempts. But no prohibitions and no tragic endings can cool hot heads. In 1984, Canadian Karel Suchek became the fifth person to survive a barrel jump into Niagara. And in 1989, a certain DeBernardi followed his example, who managed to descend from the Canadian Falls. But the most incredible event took place, as often happens, against the will of those who became its participants. What happened on July 9, 1960 is still called the "Niagara miracle" to this day. Local resident James Honeycutt decided that day to ride on the river the children of a friend who came to him: seven-year-old Roger Woodward and his seventeen-year-old sister Deanne. It took place eight kilometers above Niagara. On the rapids, the boat hit a stone, and the engine failed. It was not possible to row out on the oars, and the boat was carried down to the waterfall. Honeycutt and Roger were thrown out of the boat by the wave. Dinn managed to hold on until the boat capsized. The girl tried to swim to Goat Island. Hundreds of people gathered at the fence to see what would happen next, but only one - black policeman John Hayes decided to climb over the fence and, clinging to it with his feet, extended his hand to Dean. She managed to grab his finger when she was already five meters from the waterfall. Hayes held it, but could not pull it out. He called for help, but the audience preferred to watch, waiting for the denouement. Finally, another daredevil - John Quattroki - climbed over to Hayes, grabbed Dean by the other hand and pulled it out. "My brother, my brother," she whispered weeping. Roger, surprisingly, also survived. The captain of a steamboat carrying tourists under a waterfall accidentally noticed something orange on the water in the distance when he was about to turn the ship back to the pier. The bright spot turned out to be a life jacket worn by the boy. He was taken aboard the steamer and brought to shore. Honeycutt crashed on the rocks at the foot of the waterfall. It is amazing how fortune, not too merciful to seekers of cheap glory, turned out to be unexpectedly favorable to teenagers in trouble. Of course, the history of Niagara, rich in dramas and tragedies, further fuels the interest of tourists in it. But still, the main thing that attracts travelers here is the triple waterfall itself, stunning in its picturesqueness, the height of a twenty-story house at the entrance to the canyon on the mighty fast river. Niagara is not the highest or widest waterfall in the world. And in terms of the amount of flowing water, it is also only the fifth on the planet. But those who have visited it, even if they have already seen other great waterfalls of the Earth, unanimously admit that you will not see a more beautiful sight, perhaps, on any river of the northern hemisphere. Author: B.Wagner
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