The information in this passage would be most useful for a report on which topic?
A.how to build a kite
B.how to build a bridge
C.the dangers at Niagara Falls
D.the development at Niagara Falls
The man who stepped off the stagecoach in Niagara Falls, New York, was tall and thin, with a high hat on his bushy hair and a Spanish cape over his shoulders. Some of the village boys led him to a local hotel, then gathered outside to discuss the visitor.
“That’s Charles Ellet,” said one boy. “He’s one of the world’s greatest bridge builders. He’s going to put a bridge to Canada over the Great Gorge.”
“Don’t be silly,” another said. “Nothing can get across the gorge.”
A boy named Homan Walsh felt his face flush with anger. “We’ve got to try,” he said. “This is 1848, the modern age. America is building up. We need an easy way to get across the gorge.”
Homan didn’t say it, but he couldn’t imagine how such a bridge could be built. Even at the hotel, he could hear the constant thunder of Niagara Falls, where tons of water poured over high cliffs and rushed away in rapids through a cleft called the Great Gorge. It had scared Homan even to look at it when he first arrived from Ireland. At Whirlpool Rapids, near where they hoped to build the bridge, the water ran faster than any racehorse. No one could go into the gorge to build a bridge.
Inside the hotel, Mr. Ellet was saying to a group of men, “Of course, we can’t build the usual kind of bridge. However, I have brought from Europe a new kind of bridge. It needs no support from below because—” he paused dramatically— “it hangs in the air!”
He drew a picture for the men. It showed that the bridge, instead of resting on stone or timber supports, would hang from cables above the river. It would be suspended—a suspension bridge, he called it.
Then he explained: To start building, a line would have to be stretched from the clifftop in the U.S. across the gorge to the clifftop in Canada. “The distance is too great to throw a line across,” he said, “and no one can cross the rapids in a boat, carrying the line. How shall we get it across?”
All the men made suggestions. Some thought that now that steamboats had been invented, a ship strong enough to cross the river could be made, but Mr. Ellet said this would take too long and cost too much. “A cannon!” another man exclaimed. The line could be shot from one cliff to the other. Mr. Ellet said he had been thinking of using rockets.
When the talk died down, Oscar Fisk said he had a cheaper and simpler idea. He would tell it, he said, if the others promised not to laugh at him
“Now gentlemen,” he said, “my plan and the instrument used will be the same kind used by Benjamin Franklin to draw lightning from the clouds—an instrument that any schoolboy can make in an hour. A kite.”
Mr. Ellet’s eyes glowed. “I see no reason this wouldn’t work. All we need is to get one string across the gorge. Then we can tie to it a stronger cord, pull that across, and then stronger and stronger ropes until we can pull across a cable. Let’s do it!”
“Good,” said Mr. Fisk. “And I know the lad who can.”
Mr. Fisk had noticed sixteen-year-old Homan Walsh skillfully flying his kites near the gorge. Mr. Fisk quickly found Homan and told him about the idea. A special kite would have to be made, able to support more than a thousand feet of heavy string to stretch across the gorge.
Homan began work at once. He talked to his father about the design. After a while, his father became silent and then said, “You may not realize it, Homan, but you’ve been asked to do something more important than flying a kite. Your kite string will join together two of the greatest nations on earth, the U.S. and Canada. Your string will make a union.”
Because the best winds blew from Canada, on the gorge’s western side, Homan took a ferry that crossed calm waters farther down in the gorge. He left home carrying a basket full of balls of string in one hand and his new kite in the other. He had found just the right name for the kite: the Union.
Homan set up his gear on the clifftop in Canada across the gorge from his village. His kite lifted quickly in the lively March wind. By late afternoon he was sure his kite reached the American side. Now he had to bring it down without letting the string drag in the gorge, where it might be cut by ice.
Crowds had gathered, and giant bonfires were built on both sides of the gorge to help Homan keep his kite in sight. But soon it was too dark to see, and Homan felt no pull on his line. The string had been cut and the kite was gone