first seen, but to this I demur. It matters, I think, very little, or
not at all. Let the visitor first see it all, and learn the whereabouts
of every point, so as to understand his own position and that of the
waters; and then having done that in the way of business let him
proceed to enjoyment. I doubt whether it be not the best to do this
with all sight-seeing. I am quite sure that it is the way in which
acquaintance may be best and most pleasantly made with a new picture.
The Falls are, as I have said, made by a sudden breach in the level of
the river. All cataracts are, I presume, made by such breaches; but
generally the waters do not fall precipitously as they do at Niagara,
and never elsewhere, as far as the world yet knows, has a breach so
sudden been made in such a body of water. Up above the Falls, for more
than a mile, the waters leap and burst over rapids, as though conscious
of the destiny that awaits them. Here the river is very broad, and
comparatively shallow, but from shore to shore it frets itself into
little torrents, and begins to assume the majesty of its power. Looking
at it even here, one feels sure that no strongest swimmer could have
a chance of saving himself, if fate had cast him in even among those
petty whirlpools. The waters, though so broken in their descent, are
deliciously green. This colour as seen early in the morning, or just as
the sun has set, is so bright as to give to the place of its chiefest
charms.
This will be best seen from the further end of the island--Goat Island,
as it is called, which, as the reader will understand, divides the
river immediately above the Falls. Indeed the island is a part of that
precipitously broken ledge over which the river tumbles; and no doubt
in process of time will be worn away and covered with water. The time,
however, will be very long. In the meanwhile it is perhaps a mile
round, and is covered thickly with timber. At the upper end of the
island the waters are divided, and coming down in two courses, each
over its own rapids, form two separate falls. The bridge by which the
island is entered is a hundred yards or more above the smaller fall.
The waters here have been turned by the island, and make their leap
into the body of the river below at a right angle with it,--about two
hundred yards below the greater fall. Taken alone this smaller cataract
would, I imagine, be the heaviest fall of water known, but taken in
conjunction with the other it is terribly shorn of its majesty. The
waters here are not green as they are at the larger cataract, and
though the ledge has been hollowed and bowed by them so as to form a
curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss as it does
at the horseshoe up above. This smaller fall is again divided, and the
visitor passing down a flight of steps and over a frail wooden bridge
finds himself on a smaller island in the midst of it.
[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.]
But we will go at once on to the glory, and the thunder, and the
majesty, and the wrath of that upper hell of waters. We are still, let
the reader remember, on Goat Island, still in the States, and on what
is called the American side of the main body of the river. Advancing
beyond the path leading down to the lesser fall, we come to that point
of the island at which the waters of the main river begin to descend.
From hence across to the Canadian side the cataract continues itself
in one unabated line. But the line is very far from being direct or
straight. After stretching for some little way from the shore, to a
point in the river which is reached by a wooden bridge at the end of
which stands a tower upon the rock,--after stretching to this, the line
of the ledge bends inwards against the flood,--in, and in, and in, till
one is led to think that the depth of that horseshoe is immeasurable.
It has been cut with no stinting hand. A monstrous cantle has been worn
back out of the centre of the rock, so that the fury of the waters
converges, and the spectator as he gazes into the hollow with wishful
eyes fancies that he can hardly trace out the centre of the abyss.
Go down to the end of that wooden bridge, seat yourself on the rail,
and there sit till all the outer world is lost to you. There is no
grander spot about Niagara than this. The waters are absolutely around
you. If you have that power of eye-control, which is so necessary to
the full enjoyment of scenery, you will certainly see nothing but the
water. You will certainly hear nothing else; and the sound, I beg you
to remember, is not an ear-cracking, agonizing crash and clang of
noises; but is melodious and soft withal, though loud as thunder. It
fills your ears, and as it were envelops them, but at the same time
you can speak to your neighbour without an effort. But at this place,
and in these moments, the less of speaking I should say the better.
There is no grander spot than this. Here, seated on the rail of the
bridge, you will not see the whole depth of the fall. In looking at the
grandest works of nature, and of art too, I fancy, it is never well to
see all. There should be something left to the imagination, and much
should be half-concealed in mystery. The greatest charm of a mountain
range is the wild feeling that there must be strange desolate worlds in
those far-off valleys beyond. And so here, at Niagara, that converging
rush of waters may fall down, down at once into a hell of rivers for
what the eye can see. It is glorious to watch them in their first curve
over the rocks. They come green as a bank of emeralds; but with a
fitful flying colour, as though conscious that in one moment more they
would be dashed into spray and rise into air, pale as driven snow. The
vapour rises high into the air, and is gathered there, visible always
as a permanent white cloud over the cataract; but the bulk of the spray
which fills the lower hollow of that horseshoe is like a tumult of
snow. This you will not fully see from your seat on the rail. The head
of it rises ever and anon out of the caldron below, but the caldron
itself will be invisible. It is ever so far down,--far as your own
imagination can sink it. But your eyes will rest full upon the curve of
the waters. The shape you will be looking at is that of a horseshoe,
but of a horseshoe miraculously deep from toe to heel;--and this depth
becomes greater as you sit there. That which at first was only great
and beautiful, becomes gigantic and sublime till the mind is at loss to
find an epithet for its own use. To realize Niagara you must sit there
till you see nothing else than that which you have come to see. You
will hear nothing else, and think of nothing else. At length you will
be at one with the tumbling river before you. You will find yourself
among the waters as though you belonged to them. The cool liquid green
will run through your veins, and the voice of the cataract will be
the expression of your own heart. You will fall as the bright waters
fall, rushing down into your new world with no hesitation and with no
dismay; and you will rise again as the spray rises, bright, beautiful,
and pure. Then you will flow away in your course to the uncompassed,
distant, and eternal ocean.
And now we will cross the water, and with this object will return by
the bridge out of Goat Island on the mainland of the American side.
But as we do so let me say that one of the great charms of Niagara
consists in this,--that over and above that one great object of wonder
and beauty, there is so much little loveliness;--loveliness especially
of water, I mean. There are little rivulets running here and there over
little falls, with pendent boughs above them, and stones shining under
their shallow depths. As the visitor stands and looks through the trees
the rapids glitter before him, and then hide themselves behind islands.
They glitter and sparkle in far distances under the bright foliage
till the remembrance is lost, and one knows not which way they run.
Close to the cataract, exactly at the spot from whence in former days
the Table Rock used to project from the land over the boiling caldron
below, there is now a shaft down which you will descend to the level of
the river, and pass between the rock and the torrent. This Table Rock
broke away from the cliff and fell, as up the whole course of the river
the seceding rocks have split and fallen from time to time through
countless years, and will continue to do till the bed of the upper lake
is reached. You will descend this shaft, taking to yourself or not
taking to yourself a suit of oil-clothes as you may think best.
In the spot to which I allude the visitor stands on a broad safe path,
made of shingles, between the rock over which the water rushes. He will
go in so far that the spray rising back from the bed of the torrent
does not incommode him. With this exception, the further he can go in
the better; but circumstances will clearly show him the spot to which
he should advance. Unless the water be driven in by a strong wind,
five yards make the difference between a comparatively dry coat and
an absolutely wet one. And then let him stand with his back to the
entrance, thus hiding the last glimmer of the expiring day. So standing
he will look up among the falling waters, or down into the deep misty
pit, from which they reascend in almost as palpable a bulk. The rock
will be at his right hand, high and hard, and dark and straight, like
the wall of some huge cavern, such as children enter in their dreams.
For the first five minutes he will be looking but at the waters of
a cataract,--at the waters, indeed, of such a cataract as we know no
other, and at their interior curves which elsewhere we cannot see.
But by and by all this will change. He will no longer be on a shingly
path beneath a waterfall; but that feeling of a cavern wall will grow
upon him, of a cavern deep, below roaring seas, in which the waves are
there, though they do not enter in upon him; or rather not the waves,
but the very bowels of the ocean. He will feel as though the floods
surrounded him, coming and going with their wild sounds, and he will
hardly recognize that though among them he is not in them. And they,
as they fall with a continual roar, not hurting the ear, but musical
withal, will seem to move as the vast ocean waters may perhaps move
in their internal currents. He will lose the sense of one continued
descent, and think that they are passing round him in their appointed
courses. The broken spray that rises from the depth below, rises so
strongly, so palpably, so rapidly, that the motion in every direction
will seem equal. And, as he looks on, strange colours will show
themselves through the mist; the shades of grey will become green or
blue, with ever and anon a flash of white; and then, when some gust of
wind blows in with greater violence, the sea-girt cavern will become
all dark and black. Oh, my friend, let there be no one there to speak
to thee then; no, not even a brother. As you stand there speak only to
the waters.
_North America_ (London, 1862).
NIAGARA FALLS
(_NORTH AMERICA_)
CHARLES DICKENS
We called at the town of Erie, at eight o’clock that night, and lay
there an hour. Between five and six next morning, we arrived at
Buffalo, where we breakfasted; and being too near the Great Falls to
wait patiently anywhere else, we set off by the train, the same morning
at nine o’clock, to Niagara.
It was a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling; and the
trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train
halted, I listened for the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes
in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river
rolling on towards them; every moment expecting to behold the spray.
Within a few moments of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white
clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the depths of the earth.
That was all. At length we alighted; and then for the first time, I
heard the mighty rush of water, and felt the ground tremble underneath
my feet.
The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and half-melted
ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was soon at the bottom, and
climbing, with two English officers who were crossing and had joined
me, over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise, half-blinded by the
spray, and wet to the skin. We were at the foot of the American Fall. I
could see an immense torrent of water tearing headlong down from some
great height, but had no idea of shape, or situation, or anything but
vague immensity.
When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing the
swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what
it was--but I was in a manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the
vastness of the scene. It was not until I came on Table Rock, and
looked--Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright green water!--that it
came upon me in its full might and majesty.
Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first
effect, and the enduring one--instant and lasting--of the tremendous
spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections
of the Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness: nothing of
gloom or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image
of Beauty; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its pulses
cease to beat, for ever.
Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from my view, and
lessened in the distance, during the ten memorable days we passed on
that Enchanted Ground! What voices spoke from out the thundering water;
what faces, faded from the earth, looked out upon me from its gleaming
depths; what Heavenly promise glistened in those angels’ tears, the
drops of many hues, that showered around, and twined themselves about
the gorgeous arches which the changing rainbows made!
I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side, whither I had
gone at first. I never crossed the river again; for I knew there were
people on the other shore, and in such a place it is natural to shun
strange company. To wander to and fro all day, and see the cataracts
from all points of view; to stand upon the edge of the great Horse-Shoe
Fall, marking the hurried water gathering strength as it approached the
verge, yet seeming too, to pause before it shot into the gulf below;
to gaze from the river’s level up at the torrent as it came streaming
down; to climb the neighbouring heights and watch it through the trees,
and see the wreathing water in the rapids hurrying on to take its
fearful plunge; to linger in the shadow of the solemn rocks three miles
below; watching the river as, stirred by no visible cause, it heaved
and eddied and awoke the echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneath
its surface, by its giant leap; to have Niagara before me, lighted by
the sun and by the moon, red in the day’s decline, and grey as evening
slowly fell upon it; to look upon it every day, and wake up in the
night and hear its ceaseless voice: this was enough.
[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS IN WINTER.]
I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll and leap,
and roar and tumble, all day long; still are the rainbows spanning
them, a hundred feet below. Still, when the sun is on them, do they
shine and glow like molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they
fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a great chalk
cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white smoke. But always does
the mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from
its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist
which is never laid: which has haunted this place with the same dread
solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep, and that first flood
before the Deluge--Light--came rushing on Creation at the word of God.
_American Notes for General Circulation_ (London, 1842).
FUJI-SAN
(_JAPAN_)
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD
I have just made in the company of Captain John Ingles, R. N., Naval
Adviser to the Imperial Government of this country, and a young
Japanese gentleman--Mr. Asso--a very fortunate and delightful ascent
of Fuji-San, the famous mountain--you would not wonder, residing
here, that everybody in Japan talks about Fuji, and thinks about her;
paints her on fans, and limns her with gold on lacquer; carves her on
temple-gates and house-fronts, and draws her for curtains of shops
and signboards of inns, rest-houses and public institutions. Living
in Tokio or Yokohama, or anywhere along this Tokaidô--the Southern
road of Japan--you would soon perceive how the great volcano dominates
every landscape, asserts perpetually her sovereignty over all other
hills and mountains, and becomes in reality as well as imagination, an
indispensable element in the national scenery. Far away at sea, when
approaching Japan, if the weather be clear, long before the faintest
blue line of coast is discernible from the deck, there is seen hanging
in the air a dim white symmetrical cone, too constant for a cloud,
which is Fuji-San. After you have landed and taken up your residence
in Yokohama, Tokio, or any point of the southeastern littoral, you
will be always seeing Fuji-Yama from some garden-nook, some tea-house
gallery, some grove of cryptomerias, or thicket of bamboo, or even from
the railway-carriage window. In the spring and autumn, as frequently
as not, she will, indeed, be shrouded in the dense masses of white
or grey cumulus which her crest collects, and seems to create in the
mists of the Pacific. But during summer, when the snows are all melted
from the vast cone, and again in winter, when she is covered with snow
half-way down her colossal sides, but the air is clear, the superb
mountain stands forth, dawn after dawn, and evening after evening--like
no other eminence in the world for beauty, majesty, and perfectness
of outline. There are loftier peaks, of course, for Fuji-San is not
much higher than Mont Blanc, but there is none--not even Etna--which
rises so proudly alone, isolated, distinct, from the very brink of the
sea--with nothing to hide or diminish the dignity of the splendid and
immense curves sweeping up from where the broad foot rests, planted on
the Suruga Gulf, to where the imperial head soars, lifted high above
the clouds into the blue of the firmament. By many and many a picture
or photograph you must know well those almost perfectly matched flanks,
that massive base, the towering lines of that mighty cone, slightly
truncated and dentated at the summit. But no picture gives, and no
artist could ever reproduce, the variety and charm of the aspect which
Fuji-San puts on from day to day and hour to hour under the differing
influences of air and weather. Sometimes it is as a white cloud that
you see her, among the white clouds, changeless among the changeful
shapes from which she emerges. Sometimes there will break forth, high
above all clouds, a patch of deep grey against the blue, the broad head
of Fuji. Sometimes you will only know where she sits by the immense
collection of cirrus and cirro-cumulus there alone gathered in the sky;
and sometimes--principally at dawn and nightfall--she will suddenly
manifest herself, from her foot, jewelled with rich harvests, to her
brow, bare and lonely as a desert--all violet against the gold of the
setting sun, or else all gold and green against the rose and silver of
the daybreak....
As late as the Fourteenth Century Fuji was constantly smoking, and
fire is spoken of with the eruptions, the last of which took place in
December, 1707, and continued for nearly forty days. The Ho-Yei-san, or
hump in the south face, was probably then formed. In this, her final
outbreak, Fuji covered Tokio itself, sixty miles away, with six inches
of ash, and sent rivers of lava far and wide. Since then she has slept,
and only one little spot underneath the Kwan-nom-Gatake, on the lip of
the crater, where steam exhales, and the red pumice-cracks are hot,
shows that the heart of this huge volcano yet glows, and that she is
capable of destroying again her own beauty and the forests and rich
regions of fertility which clothe her knees and feet.
[Illustration: FUJI SAN.]
It is a circuit of 120 miles to go all round the base of Fuji-San. If
you could cut a tunnel through her from Yoshiwara to Kawaguchi, it
would be forty miles long. Generally speaking, the lower portion of the
mountain is cultivated to a height of 1,500 feet, and it is a whole
province which thus climbs round her. From the border of the farms
there begins a rough and wild, but flowery moorland, which stretches
round the hill to an elevation of 4,000 feet, where there the thick
forest-belt commences. This girdles the volcano up to 7,000 feet on
the Subashiri side and 8,000 on the Murayama fall, but is lower to the
eastward. Above the forest extends a narrow zone of thicket and bush,
chiefly dwarfed larch, juniper and a vaccinium; after which comes the
bare, burnt, and terribly majestic peak itself, where the only living
thing is a little yellow lichen which grows in the fissures of the lava
blocks, for no eagle or hawk ventures so high, and the boldest or most
bewildered butterfly will not be seen above the bushes half-way down.
The best--indeed, the only--time for the ascent of the mountain is
between July 15th and September 5th. During this brief season the snow
will be melted from the cone, the huts upon the path will be opened
for pilgrims, and there will be only the danger of getting caught by
a typhoon, or reaching the summit to find it swathed day after day in
clouds, and no view obtainable. Our party of three started for the
ascent on August 25th, taking that one of the many roads by which Fuji
is approached that goes by Subashiri. Such an expedition may be divided
into a series of stages. You have first to approach the foot of the
mountain by train or otherwise, then to ride through the long slope of
cultivated region. Then, abandoning horses or vehicles, to traverse on
foot the sharper slopes of the forest belt. At the confines of this
you will reach the first station, called _Sho_ or _Go_; for Japanese
fancy has likened the mountain to a heap of dry rice and the stations
are named by rice-measure. From the first station to the ninth,
whatever road you take, all will be hard, hot, continuous climbing.
You must go by narrow, bad paths, such as a goat might make, in loose
volcanic dust, gritty pumice, or over the sharp edges of lava dykes,
which cut boots and sandals to shreds....
At daybreak the horses are brought, and the six coolies, two by
two, bind upon their backs the _futons_ and the food. We start, a
long procession, through a broad avenue in the forest, riding for
five miles, under a lovely dawn, the sun shining gloriously on the
forehead of Fuji, who seems further off and more immensely lofty the
nearer we approach. The woodland is full of wild strawberries and
flowers; including tiger-lilies, clematis, Canterbury bells, and the
blue _hotari-no hana_, or fire-fly blossom. At 6:30 A. M., we reach
Uma-Gayeshi, or “turn-the-horses-back”; and hence to the mountain top
there is nothing for it but to walk every step of the long, steep, and
difficult path. Two of the men with the lightest loads led the way
along the narrow path, in a wood so thick that we shall not see Fuji
again till we have passed through it. It takes us every now and then
through the gates and precincts of little Shinto temples, where the
priests offer us tea or mountain water. In one of them, at Ko-mitake,
we are invited to ring the brass gong in order that the Deity may make
our limbs strong for the task before us. And this is solemnly done
by all hands, the _ninsoku_ slapping their brown thighs piously after
sounding the bell....
The shortest time in which the ascent has been made is six hours
and a half. We, taking it more easily, made no attempt to beat the
record, and stopped frequently to botanize, geologize, etc. The
rarefaction of the air gave our Japanese companion, Takaji San, a
slight headache, which soon passed as the circulation became accustomed
to the atmosphere; but Captain Ingles and I, being I suppose, both
in excellent health and strength, experienced no inconvenience worth
mentioning.
At half-past four next morning, while I was dreaming under my thick
coverings, a hand touched me and a voice said softly, “Danna Sama,
hi no de!” “Master, here is the sun!” The _shoji_ at my feet were
thrown open. I looked out, almost as you might from the moon, over a
prodigious abyss of space, beyond which the eastern rim of all the
world seemed to be on fire with flaming light. A belt of splendid rose
and gold illumined all the horizon, darting long spears of glory into
the dark sky overhead, gilding the tops of a thousand hills, scattered
over the purple plains below, and casting on the unbroken background
of clouds beyond an enormous shadow of Fuji. The spectacle was of
unparalleled splendour, recalling Lord Tennyson’s line--
“And, in the East,
God made himself an awful Rose of Dawn.”