January 29.
Well! I have seen these Cataracts of Niagara, which have thundered in my
mind's ear ever since I can remember--which have been my "childhood's
thought, my youth's desire," since first my imagination was awakened to
wonder and to wish. I have beheld them, and shall I whisper it to
you?--but, O tell it not among the Philistines!--I wish I had not! I
wish they were still a thing unbeheld--a thing to be imagined, hoped,
and anticipated--something to live for:--the reality has displaced from
my mind an illusion far more magnificent than itself--I have no words
for my utter disappointment: yet I have not the presumption to suppose
that all I have heard and read of Niagara is false or exaggerated--that
every expression of astonishment, enthusiasm, rapture, is affectation or
hyperbole. No! it must be my own fault. Terni, and some of the Swiss
cataracts leaping from their mountains, have affected me a thousand
times more than all the immensity of Niagara. O I could beat myself! and
now there is no help!--the first moment, the first impression is
over--is lost; though I should live a thousand years, long as Niagara
itself shall roll, I can never see it again for the _first_ time.
Something is gone that cannot be restored.
But, to take things in order: we set off for the Falls yesterday
morning, with the intention of spending the day there, sleeping, and
returning the next day to Niagara. The distance is fourteen miles, by a
road winding along the banks of the Niagara river, and over the
Queenston heights;--and beautiful must this land be in summer, since
even now it is beautiful. The flower garden, the trim shrubbery, the
lawn, the meadow with its hedgerows, when frozen up and wrapt in snow,
always give me the idea of something not only desolate but dead: Nature
is the ghost of herself, and trails a spectral pall; I always feel a
kind of pity--a touch of melancholy--when at this season I have wandered
among withered shrubs and buried flower-beds; but here, in the
wilderness, where Nature is wholly independent of Art, she does not die,
nor yet mourn; she lies down to rest on the bosom of Winter, and the
aged one folds her in his robe of ermine and jewels, and rocks her with
his hurricanes, and hushes her to sleep. How still it was! how calm, how
vast the glittering white waste and the dark purple forests! The sun
shone out, and the sky was without a cloud; yet we saw few people, and
for many miles the hissing of our sleigh, as we flew along upon our
dazzling path, and the tinkling of the sleigh-bells, were the only
sounds we heard. When we were within four or five miles of the Falls, I
stopped the sleigh from time to time to listen to the roar of the
cataracts; but the state of the atmosphere was not favourable for the
transmission of sound, and the silence was unbroken.
Such was the deep, monotonous tranquillity which prevailed on every
side--so exquisitely pure and vestal-like the robe in which all Nature
lay slumbering around us, I could scarce believe that this whole
frontier district is not only remarkable for the prevalence of vice--but
of dark and desperate crime.
Mr. A., who is a magistrate, pointed out to me a lonely house by the
way-side, where, on a dark stormy night in the preceding winter, he had
surprised and arrested a gang of forgers and coiners; it was a fearful
description. For some time my impatience had been thus
beguiled--impatience and suspense much like those of a child at a
theatre before the curtain rises. My imagination had been so impressed
by the vast height of the Falls, that I was constantly looking in an
upward direction, when, as we came to the brow of a hill, my companion
suddenly checked the horses, and exclaimed, "The Falls!"
I was not, for an instant, aware of their presence; we were yet at a
distance, looking _down_ upon them; and I saw at one glance a flat
extensive plain; the sun having withdrawn its beams for the moment,
there was neither light, nor shade, nor colour. In the midst were seen
the two great cataracts, but merely as a feature in the wide landscape.
The sound was by no means overpowering, and the clouds of spray, which
Fanny Kemble called so beautifully the "everlasting incense of the
waters," now condensed ere they rose by the excessive cold, fell round
the base of the cataracts in fleecy folds, just concealing that furious
embrace of the waters above and the waters below. All the associations
which in imagination I had gathered round the scene, its appalling
terrors, its soul-subduing beauty, its power and height, and velocity
and immensity, were diminished in effect, or wholly lost.
* * * * *
I was quite silent--my very soul sank within me. On seeing my
disappointment (written, I suppose, most legibly in my countenance) my
companion began to comfort me, by telling me of all those who had been
disappointed on the first view of Niagara, and had confessed it. I _did_
confess; but I was not to be comforted. We held on our way to the
Clifton hotel, at the foot of the hill; most desolate it looked with its
summer verandahs and open balconies cumbered up with snow, and hung
round with icicles--its forlorn, empty rooms, broken windows, and dusty
dinner tables. The poor people who kept the house in winter had gathered
themselves for warmth and comfort into a little kitchen, and, when we
made our appearance, stared at us with a blank amazement, which showed
what a rare thing was the sight of a visitor at this season.
While the horses were cared for, I went up into the highest balcony to
command a better view of the cataracts; a little Yankee boy, with a
shrewd, sharp face, and twinkling black eyes, acting as my gentleman
usher. As I stood gazing on the scene which seemed to enlarge upon my
vision, the little fellow stuck his hands into his pockets, and, looking
up in my face, said--
"You be from the old country, I reckon?"
"Yes."
"Out over there, beyond the sea?"
"Yes."
"And did you come all that way across the sea for these here falls?"
"Yes."
"My!!" Then after a long pause, and eyeing me with a most comical
expression of impudence and fun, he added, "Now, do _you_ know what them
'ere birds are, out yonder?" pointing to a number of gulls which were
hovering and sporting amid the spray, rising and sinking and wheeling
around, appearing to delight in playing on the verge of this "hell of
waters," and almost dipping their wings into the foam. My eyes were, in
truth, fixed on these fair, fearless creatures, and they had suggested
already twenty fanciful similitudes, when I was roused by his question.
"Those birds?" said I. "Why, _what_ are they?"
"Why, them's EAGLES!"
"Eagles?" it was impossible to help laughing.
"Yes," said the urchin sturdily; "and I guess you have none of them in
the old country?"
"Not many eagles, my boy; but plenty of _gulls_!" and I gave him a
"pretty considerable" pinch by the ear.
"Ay!" said he, laughing; "well now you be dreadful smart--smarter than
many folks that come here!"
We now prepared to walk to the Crescent fall, and I bound some crampons
to my feet, like those they use among the Alps, without which I could
not for a moment have kept my footing on the frozen surface of the snow.
As we approached the Table Rock, the whole scene assumed a wild and
wonderful magnificence; down came the dark-green waters, hurrying with
them over the edge of the precipice enormous blocks of ice brought down
from Lake Erie. On each side of the Falls, from the ledges and
overhanging cliffs, were suspended huge icicles, some twenty, some
thirty feet in length, thicker than the body of a man, and in colour of
a paly green, like the glaciers of the Alps; and all the crags below,
which projected from the boiling eddying waters, were encrusted, and in
a manner built round with ice, which had formed into immense crystals,
like basaltic columns, such as I have seen in the pictures of Staffa and
the Giant's Causeway; and every tree, and leaf, and branch, fringing the
rocks and ravines, was wrought in ice. On them, and on the wooden
buildings erected near the Table Rock, the spray from the cataract had
accumulated and formed into the most beautiful crystals and tracery
work; they looked like houses of glass, welted and moulded into regular
and ornamental shapes, and hung round with a rich fringe of icy points.
Wherever we stood we were on unsafe ground, for the snow, when heaped up
as now to the height of three or four feet, frequently slipped in masses
from the bare rock, and on its surface the spray, for ever falling, was
converted into a sheet of ice, smooth, compact, and glassy, on which I
could not have stood a moment without my _crampons_. It was very
fearful, and yet I could not tear myself away, but remained on the Table
Rock, even on the very edge of it, till a kind of dreamy fascination
came over me; the continuous thunder, and might and movement of the
lapsing waters, held all my vital spirits bound up as by a spell. Then
as at last I turned away, the descending sun broke out, and an Iris
appeared below the American Fall, one extremity resting on a snow mound;
and motionless there it hung in the midst of restless terrors, its
beautiful but rather pale hues contrasting with the death-like
colourless objects around; it reminded me of the faint ethereal smile of
a dying martyr.
It was near midnight when we mounted our sleigh to return to the town of
Niagara, and, as I remember, I did not utter a word during the whole
fourteen miles. The air was still, though keen, the snow lay around, the
whole earth seemed to slumber in a ghastly, calm repose; but the heavens
were wide awake. There the Aurora Borealis was holding her revels, and
dancing and flashing, and varying through all shapes and all hues--pale
amber, rose tint, blood red--and the stars shone out with a fitful,
restless brilliance; and every now and then a meteor would shoot
athwart the skies, or fall to earth, and all around me was wild, and
strange, and exciting--more like a fever dream than a reality.
* * * * *