[His wild career of sea-adventure with De Ruyter, who was supposed to have left him at his death all his share of the results of their semi-buccaneering exploits, his friendship and fellowship with Byron and Shelley, the funeral obsequies he bestowed upon the latter on the shore of the Gulf of Spezzia, his companionship in the mountains of Greece with the patriot chief Odysseus, and his marriage to that chief’s sister, are all circumstances given with more or less detail in his book, which was Englished for him by Mary Shelley, the poet’s widow, who was much attached to him; Trelawney himself being quite incapable of any literary effort which required a knowledge of common spelling.... He was strikingly handsome when first I knew him, with a countenance habitually serene, and occasionally sweet in its expression, but sometimes savage with the fierceness of a wild beast. His speech and movements were slow and indolently gentle, his voice very low and musical, and his utterance deliberate and rather hesitating; he was very tall, and powerfully made, and altogether looked like the hero of a wild life of adventure, such as his had been. I hear he is still alive, a very wonderful-looking old man, who sat to Millais for his picture, exhibited in 1874, of the “Old Sea-Captain.”]
We all liked him so well that my father invited him to join our party, and travel with us to Niagara, whither he was bound as well as ourselves. He had seen it before, and though almost all the wonders of the world are familiar to him, he said it was the only one that he cared much to see again.
We reached Queenstown on the Niagara River, below the falls, at about twelve o’clock, and had three more miles to drive to reach them. The day was serenely bright and warm, without a cloud in the sky, or a shade in the earth, or a breath in the air. We were in an open carriage, and I felt almost nervously oppressed with the expectation of what we were presently to see. We stopped the carriage occasionally to listen for the giant’s roaring, but the sound did not reach us until, within three miles over the thick woods which skirted the river, we saw a vapory silver cloud rising into the blue sky. It was the spray, the breath of the toiling waters ascending to heaven. When we reached what is called the Niagara House, a large tavern by the roadside, I sprang out of the carriage and ran through the house, down flights of steps cut in the rock, and along a path skirted with low thickets, through the boughs of which I saw the rapids running a race with me, as it seemed, and hardly faster than I did. Then there was a broad, flashing sea of furious foam, a deafening rush and roar, through which I heard Mr. Trelawney, who was following me, shout, “Go on, go on; don’t stop!” I reached an open floor of broad, flat rock, over which the water was pouring. Trelawney seized me by the arm, and all but carried me to the very brink; my feet were