At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a double vibration.  This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the thundering anthem.  It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual repetition through all the spheres.

When I first came, I felt nothing but a quiet satisfaction.  I found that drawings, the panorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the position and proportions of all objects here; I knew where to look for everything, and everything looked as I thought it would.

Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of the finest sunsets that ever enriched, this world.  A little cowboy, trudging along, wondered what we could be gazing at.  After spying about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment, he said approvingly, “That sun looks well enough”; a speech worthy of Shakespeare’s Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the cradle, as you please to take it.

Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in a prince’s palace, or “stumping,” as he boasts to have done, “up the Vatican stairs, into the Pope’s presence, in my old boots,” I felt here; it looks really well enough, I felt, and was inclined, as you suggested, to give my approbation as to the one object in the world that would not disappoint.

But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it.  Daily these proportions widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got, at last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances.  Before coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene.  After a while it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence.  The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses.  I felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe.  I realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil.  For continually upon my mind came, unsought and unwelcome, images, such as never haunted it before, of naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks; again and again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over, and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me.

As picture, the falls can only be seen from the British side.  There they are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate the magical effects of these, and the light and shade.  From the boat, as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic.  On the road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with delight.  But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall.  There all power of observing details, all separate consciousness, was quite lost.