NIAGARA FALLS.
ON the following Wednesday morning I took the accommodation train for
Niagara Falls. When I say “accommodation train,” do not fancy that we
went jogging along at the rate of six or eight miles an hour. That is
not the style of the New York Central. The accommodation trains make
twenty miles an hour, including numerous stoppages, which is better time
than is made by the express trains of some roads I have traveled on.
So, I arrived at Niagara, eighty miles from Rochester, by nine o’clock;
where I left my trunk at an hotel and walked out to see the sights.
It would be presumptuous in any man to attempt a regular description of
Niagara Falls, with the expectation of doing the subject justice—much
more so in the unpretending John Smith. No one can form a fair idea of
the mighty cataract without having seen it. Nor will one mere glance be
sufficient. You may spend whole days there before you arrive at a just
appreciation of it. The mind cannot grasp it at once.
A friend had told me that I should, on first visiting Niagara,
experience a sense of disappointment—that the Falls would not appear
quite equal to their reputation and my consequent anticipations; but
that, by and by, as I should come to contemplate them more maturely, I
should be led to regard them as infinitely grander and more majestic,
than my loftiest anticipations had painted them. I found it true. As the
train approached, I heard the roar of the cataract, and saw the green
waters tumbling down with their white robes of spray; but I somehow
thought they did not come up to my expectations, or rather experienced a
vague, indescribable impression that I had seen the like before. But
when I walked down to the bank, stood in the midst of the mighty
thunder, felt the earth tremble beneath the giant leap of the great
river, saw the dashing spray, arising like clouds of smoke and dust from
the sudden ruin of some great city; when I remembered that for ages and
ages, from time lost in dim obscurity, day and night, winter and summer,
never ceasing, never tiring, the mighty waters had been tumbling and
plunging down from the dizzy height, as now; and when I thought of the
future, when I mused of the unknown ages to come, fancied generation
after generation to have passed away; when I imagined this great round
sphere to have made thousands of annual revolutions around the sun, and
pictured the grand old cataract, with none of its vigor lost in the maze
of centuries, still thundering away, with the same old strength, young,
mighty, glorious, majestic as ever: then did I begin to realize the
magnitude of the lofty cataract, the work of the Almighty Maker of
heaven and earth, and feel the littleness, the nothingness, of man!
The following lines written in the immediate presence of the great
cataract, by David Paul Brown, Jr., Esquire, of the Philadelphia Bar,
are highly worthy of perusal:
“Niagara! O Niagara! long thy memory will remain
A source of mingled wonder, of happiness and pain.
When burst thine awful grandeur on my raptured, ravished sight,
My senses broke from Reason’s chain, in frenzied, wild delight;
But as the God-like attribute resumed its sovereign sway,
A calmer feeling soothed my breast—its tumult passed away,
The spirit bowed, and then a tear—my Nature was subdued,
A thrill of awe swept through my frame, I worshiped as I viewed;
A moment more I silent gazed, then humbly bent the knee,
As, in Niagara’s mightiness, I felt God’s majesty!
I saw His glory shining round where tremblingly I stood,
I cast a glance to His bright realm then on the foaming flood:
And is there strength, I humbly asked, in the Almighty will
To calm this boisterous element, and bid its rage be still?—
To sweep it e’en from Nature’s face, with but a single breath,
Resistlessly as human life is swept away by death?
And can Niagara not rebel, with all its force and power,
When crumbling Nature shall give way at the appointed hour?
Must its fierce torrent tamely hush—its giant rocks then fall?
The still voice of my soul replied, ‘Yes, yes, frail mortal, all!’
Then let me meekly bow the head before such Power Divine—
The only Power that never ends—NIAGARA’S GOD AND MINE!”
I am sure you will not quarrel with me, reader, for introducing these
graphic and eloquent lines, and for growing sentimental over my
remembrance of Niagara Falls. They are too grand to be passed over
lightly. Thus far, since my arrival at Niagara, you have not found much
of the John Smithian tone in my narrative.
I had heard a good deal about the “Cave of the Winds,” and thought I
would like to visit it. So, after standing for a full hour, wrapped up
in the glories of the thundering cataract, I inquired of a
respectable-looking gentleman where the “Cave of the Winds” was?
“You must go over on Goat Island to see that,” he said; “but I hope you
don’t think of going down?”
“O, yes,” I replied.
“What——on one leg?”
“Yes, I shall certainly take it with me.”
“But it is dangerous. You will have to go down a steep flight of wooden
steps, and pass behind the sheet of water where you cannot stand up. The
spray will blind you, and the wind will take your breath and lift you
off your feet——”
“_Foot_,” I interrupted.
“Yes, will lift you off your _foot_; and one mis-step is certain death.
Many strong men with two legs are afraid to try it.”
“They have two feet, and are therefore just twice as apt to slip or make
a mis-step.”
“Well,” said he, “go and see it, and I don’t believe you will venture
down. A look down into it will satisfy you. It will remind you of all
the accounts you have heard of Hades——”
“Where I thought _water_ was not so plenty,” I interrupted.
“You are ahead of me again,” said he, laughing. “Well, follow the bank
of the river till you reach a bridge: that will take you over to Goat
Island.”
“Thank you.”
I walked up the shore of the river a little way and came to the bridge—a
suspension bridge of four or five spans—and went over to Goat Island.
This island divides the turbulent river, just before it takes its
fearful plunge, into two cataracts. That on this side is termed the
“American Fall;” that between Goat Island and Canada being termed the
“Horse-shoe Fall,” because of its shape. The American Fall is nine
hundred feet wide and one hundred and sixty-four feet high; while the
Horse-shoe Fall is two thousand feet wide and one hundred and
fifty-eight feet high. By far the larger portion of the water tumbles
over on the Canada side of the island, no doubt because the rocky bed of
the river is six feet lower on that side; the cataract on either side,
however, is stupendous enough for all practical purposes.
In this connection I am reminded of an anecdote, with which I will
conclude this chapter. Two Yankees, one of a sentimental and the other
of a practical turn of mind, were standing side by side, gazing on this
prodigy of Nature.
“How sublime!” exclaimed the former. “To think that it falls one hundred
and sixty-four feet at a single leap!”
“What’s to hinder it?” responded the other.