Captain Webb's body has been found at Lewiston, on the
Niagara River, seven miles below the Falls. There was a bad fracture of the skull. But the doctors profess to have dis- covered that this injury was inflicted after death, and that Captain Webb was not drowned, but suffocated by the force of the Niagara Whirlpool, which, by its pressure on the nerve- centres, robbed him of all power of directing his own motions, and probably of all power of breathing. This may be so, and perhaps it enhances the terrors of the Niagara Whirlpool thus to represent it. But perhaps most human beings would be con- tent to know that Captain Webb's head was fractured by the violence with which he was hurled against the rocks, and would be as much deterred by that catastrophe from following his very mad example, as they would even be by learning that his nerve- centres were so oppressed by the whirlpool that he could neither breathe nor direct his own motions.
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