other cataracts, like those of Tunguska, in Siberia, have
gradually lost their elevation by the wearing away of the rocks,
and have now only a rapid descent."--_Maltebrun_, vol. i.

The Engraving includes the falls of the river, with the village
of Rochester, seven miles south of Lake Ontario. This place, for
population, extent, and trade, will soon rank among the American
cities: it was not settled until about the close of the last war;
its progress was slow until the year 1820, from which period it has
rapidly improved. In 1830 it contained upwards of 12,000 inhabitants:
the first census of the village was taken in December, 1815, when the
number of inhabitants was three hundred and thirty-one. The aqueduct
which takes the Erie canal across the river forms a prominent object
of interest to all travellers. It is of hewn stone, containing eleven
arches of 50 feet span: its length is 800 feet, but a considerable
part of each end is hidden from view by mills erected since its
construction.

On the brink of the island which separates the main stream of the
river from that produced by the waste water from the mill-race,
will be seen _a scaffold or platform_ from which an eccentric but
courageous adventurer, named _Sam Patch_, made a desperate leap into
the gulf beneath. Patch had obtained some celebrity in freaks of this
description, though his feats be not recorded, like the hot-brained
patriotism of Marcus Curtius in olden history. At the fall of Niagara,
Patch had before made two leaps in safety--one of 80 and the other of
130 feet, in a vast gulf, foaming and tost aloft from the commotion
produced by a fall of nearly 200 feet. In November, 1829, Patch
visited Rochester to astonish the citizens by a leap from the falls.
His first attempt was successful, and in the presence of thousands of