[From _The Life of Henry Bidleman Bascom, D. D., LL. D._, by Rev.
M. M. Henkle (Nashville, Tennessee, 1856)]
I have seen, surveyed, and communed with the whole!--and awed and
bewildered, as if enchanted before the revealment of a mystery, I
attempt to write. You ask me, in your last, for some detailed,
veritable account of the Falls, and I should be glad to gratify you;
but how shall I essay to paint a scene that so utterly baffles all
conception, and renders worse than fruitless every attempt at
description? In five minutes after my arrival, on the evening of the
fifth, I descended the winding-path from the "Pavillion," on the
Canadian side, and, for the first time in my life, saw this unequaled
cascade from "Table Rock;" the whole indescribable scene, in bold
outline, bursting on my view. I had heard and read much, and imagined
more of what was before me. I was perfectly familiar with the
often-told, the far-traveled story of what I saw; but the overpowering
_reality_ on which I was gazing, motionless as the rock on which I
stood, deprived me of recollection, annihilated all curiosity; and
with emotions of sublimity till now unfelt, and all unearthly, the
involuntary exclamation escaped me, "_God of Grandeur! what a scene!_"
But the majesty of the sight, and the interest of the moment, how
depict them? The huge amplitude of water, tumbling in foam above, and
dashing on, arched and pillared as it glides, until it reaches the
precipice of the _chute_, and then, in one vast column, bounding with
maddening roar and rush, into the depths beneath, presents a spectacle
so unutterably appalling, that language falters; words are no longer
signs, and I despair giving you any idea of what I saw and felt. Yet
this is not all. The eye and mind necessarily take in other objects,
as parts of the grand panorama, forests, cliffs, and islands; banks,
foam, and spray; wood, rock, and precipice; dimmed with the rising fog
and mist, and obscurely gilded by the softening tints of the rainbow.
These all belong to the picture; and the effect of the whole is
immeasurably heightened by the noise of the cataract, now reminding
you of the reverberations of the heavens in a tempest, and then of the
eternal roar of ocean, when angered by the winds!
The concave bed of rock, from which the water falls some two hundred
feet into the almost boundless reservoir beneath, is the section of a
circle, which, at first sight, from "Table Rock," presents something
like the geometrical curve of the rainbow; and the wonders of the
grand "crescent," thus advantageously thrown upon the eye in
combination, and the appropriate sensations and conceptions heightened
by the crash and boom of the waters, render the sight more
surpassingly sublime, than anything I have ever looked upon, or
conceived of. As it regards my thoughts and feelings at the time, I
can help you to no conception of their character. Overwhelming
astonishment was the only bond between thought and thought; and wild,
vague, and boundless were the associations of the hour! Before me, the
strength and fullness of the congregated "lakes of the north," were
enthroned and concentrated within a circumference embraced by a single
glance of the eye! Here I saw, rolling and dashing, at the rate of
_twenty-five hundred millions of tons per day_, nearly one half of all
the fresh water upon the surface of the globe! On the American side, I
beheld a vast deluge, nine hundred feet in breadth, with a fall of one
hundred and eighty or ninety, met, fifty feet above the level of the
gulf, by a huge projection of rock, which seems to break the descent
and continuity of the flood, only to increase its fierce and
overwhelming bound. And turning to the "crescent," I saw the mingled
rush of foam and tide, dashing with fearful strife and desperate
emulation--four hundred yards of the sheet rough and sparry, and the
remaining three hundred a deep sealike mass of living green--rolling
and heaving like a sheet of emerald. Even imagination failed me, and I
could think of nothing but ocean let loose from his bed, and seeking a
deeper gulf below! The fury of the water, at the termination of its
fall, combined with the columned strength of the cataract, and the
deafening thunder of the flood, are at once inconceivable and
indescribable. No imagination, however creative, can correspond with
the grandeur of the reality.
I have already mentioned, and it is important that you keep it in
view, the ledge of rock, the verge of the cataract, rising like a wall
of equal height, and extending in semicircular form across the whole
bed of the river, a distance of more than two thousand feet; and the
impetuous flood, conforming to this arrangement, in making its plunge,
with mountain weight, into the great horseshoe basin beneath, exhibits
a spectacle of the sublime, in geographical scenery, without, perhaps,
a parallel in nature. As I leaned from "Table Rock," and cast my eye
downward upon the billowy turbulence of the angry depth, where the
waters were tossing and whirling, coiling and springing, with the
energy of an earthquake, and a rapidity that almost mocked my vision,
I found the scene sufficient to appal a sterner spirit than mine; and
I was glad to turn away and relieve my mind by a sight of the
surrounding scenery; bays, islands, shores, and forests, everywhere
receding in due perspective. The rainbows of the "crescent" and
American side, which are only visible from the western bank of the
Niagara, and in the afternoon, seem to diminish somewhat from the
awfulness of the scene, and to give it an aspect of rich and mellow
grandeur, not unlike the bow of promise, throwing its assuring
radiance over the retiring waters of the deluge.