(Written By Abraham Lincoln.)
The following article on Niagara Falls, in Mr. Lincoln’s handwriting,
was found among his papers after his death:
“Niagara Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions and
millions are drawn from all parts of the world to gaze upon Niagara
Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just
as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would anticipate without
seeing it. If the water moving onward in a great river reaches a point
where there is a perpendicular jog of a hundred feet in descent in
the bottom of the river, it is plain the water will have a violent
and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain, the water, thus
plunging, will foam and roar, and send up a mist continuously, in
which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rainbows. The mere
physical of Niagara Falls is only this. Yet this is really a very small
part of that world’s wonder. Its power to excite reflection and emotion
is its great charm. The geologist will demonstrate that the plunge, or
fall, was once at Lake Ontario, and has worn its way back to its present
position; he will ascertain how fast it is wearing now, and so get
a basis for determining how long it has been wearing back from Lake
Ontario, and finally demonstrate by it that this world is at least
fourteen thousand years old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn
will say, ‘Niagara Falls is only the lip of the basin out of which pours
all the surplus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand
square miles of the earth’s surface.’ He will estimate with approximate
accuracy that five hundred thousand tons of water fall with their full
weight a distance of a hundred feet each minute--thus exerting a force
equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in the
same time.
“But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus
first sought this continent--when Christ suffered on the cross--when
Moses led Israel through the Red Sea--nay, even when Adam first came
from the hand of his Maker; then, as now, Niagara was roaring here. The
eyes of that species of extinct giants whose bones fill the mounds of
America have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Contemporary with the
first race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong and
fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The Mammoth and Mastodon, so
long dead that fragments of their monstrous bones alone testify that
they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara--in that long, long time never
still for a single moment (never dried), never froze, never slept, never
rested.”