be overwhelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy
eminence, and gaze with unlimited wonder and awe upon
the immense mass rolling on and on, but, somehow or
other, I thought only of comparing the effect on my
mind with what I had read and heard. I looked
for a short time, and then with almost a feeling of
disappointment, turned to go to the other points of
view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any
surpassing emotion at this sight. But from the
foot of Biddle’s stairs, and the middle of the
river, and from below the table rock, it was still
“barren, barren all.” And, provoked
with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong
place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set
off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage
did not go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid
moon, I went down to the bridge, and leaned over the
parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their
might. It was grand, and it was also gorgeous;
the yellow rays of the moon made the broken waves
appear like auburn tresses twining around the black
rocks. But they did not inspire me as before.
I felt a foreboding of a mightier emotion to rise
up and swallow all others, and I passed on to the
terrapin bridge. Everything was changed, the misty
apparition had taken off its many-colored crown which
it had worn by day, and a bow of silvery white spanned
its summit. The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness
to the distant parts of the waters, and while the rapids
were glancing in her beams, the river below the falls
was black as night, save where the reflection of the
sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blued steel.
No gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses,
or sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient
river god. All tended to harmonize with the natural
grandeur of the scene. I gazed long. I saw
how here mutability and unchangeableness were united.
I surveyed the conspiring waters rushing against the
rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till,
like toppling ambition, o’erleaping themselves,
they fall on t’other side, expanding into foam
ere they reach the deep channel where they creep submissively
away.
Then arose in my breast a genuine admiration, and a humble adoration of the Being who was the architect of this and of all. Happy were the first discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own. With what gusto does Father Hennepin describe “this great downfall of water,” “this vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. ’Tis true Italy and Swedeland boast of some such things, but we may well say that they be sorry patterns when compared with this of which we do now speak.”
CHAPTER II.
THE LAKES.