"And for how long, citizen engineer," asked Uncle Prudent, who was
nearly exploding, "for how long do you intend to exercise that right?"

"How can you?" said Robur, ironically, "how can you ask me such a
question when you have only to cast down your eyes to enjoy a
spectacle unparalleled in the world?"

The "Albatross" was then sweeping across the immense expanse of Lake
Ontario. She had just crossed the country so poetically described by
Cooper. Then she followed the southern shore and headed for the
celebrated river which pours into it the waters of Lake Erie,
breaking them to powder in its cataracts.

In an instant a majestic sound, a roar as of the tempest, mounted
towards them and, as if a humid fog had been projected into the air,
the atmosphere sensibly freshened. Below were the liquid masses. They
seemed like an enormous flowing sheet of crystal amid a thousand
rainbows due to refraction as it decomposed the solar rays. The sight
was sublime.

Before the falls a foot-bridge, stretching like a thread, united one
bank to the other. Three miles below was a suspension-bridge, across
which a train was crawling from the Canadian to the American bank.

"The falls of Niagara!" exclaimed Phil Evans. And as the exclamation
escaped him, Uncle Prudent was doing all could do to admire nothing
of these wonders.

A minute afterwards the "Albatross" had crossed the river which
separates the United States from Canada, and was flying over the vast