The Niagara above the Falls - by our special artist G. H. Andrews, 1860. The Niagara River, forming part of the boundary line between the United States and Canada, issues from the north-east end of Lake Erie, and flows into Lake Ontario, which is 834 feet lower than Lake Erie. The river descends through this difference in level in the space of about thirty-three miles. Near the place where it issues from Lake Erie the river runs through a level country, and its banks are not much elevated above the surface of the water. The current is gentle, hardly exceeding two miles and a half an hour. The width of the river is about one mile, and it preserves this width until it arrives at Grand Island, by which it is divided into two arms. About ten miles lower down, at Navy Island, both arms reunite, and at this place the river is about two miles wide. A little lower down, at the mouth of the Welland or Chippeway River, it suddenly contracts to less than a mile, and its current rapidly increases from three to seven or eight miles an hour. The course of the river in this part is nearly due west, and its banks begin to rise, first to ten or twelve feet, and soon to twenty, thirty, and fifty feet, above the surface of the water. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.