thick, furry beds of foam, its vails and draperies of floating light, and gleaming, wavering diadems of vivid colors, made it to me the perfection of loveliness and the mere magnificence of beauty.  It was certainly not the “familiarity” that “breeds contempt,” but more akin to the “perfect love” which “casteth out fear;” and I began at last to understand Mr. Trelawney’s saying that the only impression it produced on him was that of perfect repose; but perhaps it takes Niagara to mesmerize him.

[The first time I attempted to go under the cataract of Niagara I had a companion with me, and one of the local guides, who undertook to pilot us safely.  On reaching the edge of the sheet of water, however, we encountered a blast of wind so violent that we were almost beaten back by it.  The spray was driven against us like a furious hailstorm, and it was impossible to open our eyes or draw our breath, and we were obliged to relinquish the expedition.  The next morning, going down to the falls alone, I was seduced by the comparative quietness and calm, the absence of wind or atmospheric disturbance, to approach gradually the entrance to the cave behind the water, and finding no such difficulty as on the previous day, crept on, step by step, beneath the sheet, till I reached the impassable jutting forward of the rock where it meets the full body of the cataract.  My first success emboldened, me to two subsequent visits, the small eels being the only unpleasant incident I encountered.  The narrow path I followed was a mere ledge of shale and broken particles of the rock, which is so frayable and crumbling, either in its own nature, or from the constant action of the water, that as I passed along and pressed myself close against it, I broke off in my hands the portions of it that I grasped.]

A few miles below the falls is a place called the whirlpool, which, in its own kind, is almost as fine as the fall itself.  The river makes an abrupt angle in its course, when it is shut in by very high and rocky cliffs—­walls, in fact—­almost inaccessible from below.  Black fir trees are anchored here and there in their cracks and fissures, and hang over the dismal pool below, most of them scathed and contorted by the fires or the blasts of heaven.  The water itself is of a strange color, not transparent, but a pale blue-green, like a discolored turquoise, or a stream of verdigris, streaked with long veins and angry swirls of white, as if the angry creature couldn’t get out of that hole, and was foaming at the mouth; for, before pursuing its course, the river churns round and round in the sullen, savage, dark basin it has worn for itself, and then, as if it had suddenly found an outlet, rushes on its foaming, furious way down to Ontario.  We had ridden there and alighted from our horses, and sat on the brink for some time.  It was the most dismal place I ever beheld, and seemed to me to grow horribler every moment I looked at it:  drowning in that deep, dark, wicked-looking