It is not my intention to describe our journey; and I fear it will
indeed be an act of supererogation to attempt to give an idea of those
majestic Falls, whose grandeur and whose glory have so long been the
theme of the painter's pencil and the poet's lyre. Never shall I forget
the moment when my spirit plunged into the roar and the foam, the
thunders and the rainbows of Niagara. I paused involuntarily a hundred
paces from the brink of the cataract. I was about to realize one of the
magnificent dreams of my youthful imagination. I hesitated and trembled.
I felt something of the trepidation, the blissful tremor that agitated
my whole being when Ernest asked me into the moonlight garden at
Cambridge, and I thought he was going to tell me that he loved me. The
emotions I was about to experience would never come again, and I knew
when once past could never be anticipated as now, with indescribable
awe. I felt something as Moses did when he stood in the hollow of the
rock, as the glory of the Lord was about to pass by. And surely no
grander exhibition of God's glory ever burst on mortal eye, than this
mighty volume of water, rushing, roaring, plunging, boiling, foaming,
tossing its foam like snow into the face of heaven, throwing up rainbow
after rainbow from unfathomable abysses, then sinking gradually into a
sluggish calm, as if exhausted by the stupendous efforts it had made.
Clinging to the arm of Ernest, I drew nearer and nearer, till all
personal fear was absorbed in a sense of overpowering magnificence. I
was a part of that glorious cataract; I participated in the mighty
struggle; I panted with the throes of the pure, dark, tremendous
element, vassal at once and conqueror of man; triumphed in the gorgeous
_arcs-en-ciel_ that rested like angels of the Lord above the mist and
the foam and the thunders of watery strife, and reposed languidly with
the subsiding waves that slept like weary warriors after the din and
strife of battle, the frown of contention lingering on their brows, and
the smile of disdain still curling their lips.
Oh, how poor, how weak seemed the conflict of human passion in the
presence of this sublime, this wondrous spectacle! I could not speak,--I
could scarcely breathe,--I was borne down, overpowered, almost
annihilated. My knees bent, my hands involuntarily clasped themselves
over the arm of Ernest, and in this attitude of intense adoration I
looked up and whispered, "God,--eternity."
"Enthusiast!" exclaimed he; but his countenance was luminous with the
light that glowed on mine. He put his arm around me, but did not attempt
to raise me. Edith and her mother were near, in company with a friend
who had been our fellow-traveller from New England, and who had extended
his journey beyond its prescribed limits for the sake of being our
companion. I looked towards Edith with tremulous interest. As she stood
leaning on her crutches, her garments fluttering in the breeze, I almost
expected to see her borne from us like down upon the wind, and floating
on the bosom of that mighty current.
I said I did not mean to attempt a description of scenes which have
baffled the genius and eloquence of man.
"Now I am content to die!" said an ancient traveller, when the colossal
shadow of the Egyptian pyramids first fell on his weary frame. But what
are those huge, unmoving monuments of man's ambition, compared to this
grandest of creation's mysteries, whose deep and thundering voice is
repeating, day after day and night after night,--"forever and ever," and
whose majestic motion, rushing onward, plunging downward, never pausing,
never resting, is emblematic of the sublime march of Deity, from
everlasting to everlasting,--from eternity to eternity?
Shall I ever forget the moment when I stood on Termination Rock, beyond
which no mortal foot has ever penetrated? I stood in a shroud of gray
mist, wrapping me on every side,--above, below, around. I shuddered, as
if the hollow, reverberating murmurs that filled my ears were the knell
of the departed sun. That cold, gray mist; it penetrated the depths of
my spirit; it drenched, drowned it, filled it with vague, ghost-like
images of dread and horror. I cast one glance behind, and saw a gleam of
heaven's sunny blue, one bright dazzling gleam flashing between the
rugged rock and the rushing waters. It was as if the veil of the temple
of nature were rent, and the glory of God shone through the fissure.
"Let us return," said I to Ernest. "I feel as if I had passed through
the valley of the shadow of death. Is it not sacrilegious to penetrate
so deeply into the mysteries of nature?"
"O Gabriella!" he exclaimed, his eyes flashing through the shrouding
mist like burning stars, "how I wish you felt with me! Were it possible
to build a home on this shelving rock, I would willingly dwell here
forever, surrounded by this veiling mist. With you thus clasped in my
arms, I could be happy, in darkness and clouds, in solitude and
dreariness, anywhere, everywhere,--with the conviction that you loved
me, and that you looked for happiness alone to me."
"As this moment," I answered, drawing more closely to him, "I fear as if
I would rather stay here and die, than return to the world and mingle in
its jarring elements. I would far rather, Ernest, make my winding-sheet
of those cold, unfathomable waters, than live to feel again the anguish
of being doubted by you."
"That is all past, my Gabriella,--all past. My nature is renewed and
purified. I feel within me new-born strength and power of resistance. By
the God of yon roaring cataract--"
"No,--no, Ernest, do not promise,--I dare not hear you, we are so weak,
and temptations are so strong."
"Do you distrust yourself, or me?"
"Both, Ernest. I never, never felt how poor and vain and frail we are,
till I stood, as now, in the presence of the power of the Almighty."
His countenance changed instantaneously. "To what temptations do you
allude?" he asked. "I can imagine none that could shake my fidelity to
you. My constancy is as firm as this rock. Those rushing waves could not
move it. Why do you check a vow which I dare to make in the very face of
Omnipotence?"
"I doubt not your faith or constancy, most beloved Ernest; I doubt not
my own. You know what I do fear,--misconstruction and suspicion. But let
us not speak, let us not think of the past. Let us look forward to the
future, with true and earnest spirits, praying God to help us in
weakness and error. Only think, Ernest, we have that within us more
mighty than that descending flood. These souls of ours will still live
in immortal youth, when that whelming tide ceases to roll, when the
firmament shrivels like a burning scroll. I never realized it so fully,
so grandly, as now. I shall carry from this rock something I did not
bring. I have received a baptism standing here, purer than fire, gentle
as dew, yet deep and pervading as ocean. I cannot describe what I mean,
but I feel it. Before I came, it seemed as if a great wall of adamant
rose between me and heaven; now there is nothing but this veil of mist."
As we turned to leave this region of blinding spray and mysterious
shadows, Ernest repeated, in his most melodious accents, a passage from
Schiller's magnificent poem of the diver.
"And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars,
As when fire is with water commixed and contending;
And the spray of its wrath to the welkin upsoars,
And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending.
And it never _will_ rest, nor from travail be free,
Like a sea, that is laboring the birth of a sea."
Never did I experience a more exultant emotion than when we emerged into
the clear air and glorious sunshine,--when I felt the soft, rich, green
grass beneath, and the blue illimitable heavens smiling above. I had
come out of darkness into marvellous light. I was drenched with light as
I had previously been by the cold, gray mist. I remembered another verse
of the immortal poem I had learned from the lips of Ernest:--
"Happy they, whom the rose-hues of daylight rejoice,
The air and the sky that to mortals are given;
May the horror below never more find a voice,
Nor man stretch too far the wide mercy of heaven.
Never more, never more may he lift from the sight
The veil which is woven with terror and night."