made with a new picture.

The falls, as I have said, are made by a sudden breach in the level
of the river. All cataracts are, I presume, made by such breaches;
but generally the waters do not fall precipitously as they do at
Niagara, and never elsewhere, as far as the world yet knows, has a
breach so sudden been made in a river carrying in its channel such
or any approach to such a body of water. Up above the falls for
more than a mile the waters leap and burst over rapids, as though
conscious of the destiny that awaits them. Here the river is very
broad and comparatively shallow; but from shore to shore it frets
itself into little torrents, and begins to assume the majesty of
its power. Looking at it even here, in the expanse which forms
itself over the greater fall, one feels sure that no strongest
swimmer could have a chance of saving himself if fate had cast him
in even among those petty whirlpools. The waters though so broken
in their descent, are deliciously green. This color, as seen early
in the morning or just as the sun has set, is so bright as to give
to the place one of its chiefest charms.

This will be best seen from the farther end of the island--Goat
Island as it is called--which, as the reader will understand,
divides the river immediately above the falls. Indeed, the island
is a part of that precipitously-broken ledge over which the river
tumbles, and no doubt in process of time will be worn away and
covered with water. The time, however, will be very long. In the
mean while, it is perhaps a mile round, and is covered thickly with
timber. At the upper end of the island the waters are divided,
and, coming down in two courses each over its own rapids, form two
separate falls. The bridge by which the island is entered is a
hundred yards or more above the smaller fall. The waters here have
been turned by the island, and make their leap into the body of the
river below at a right angle with it--about two hundred yards below
the greater fall. Taken alone, this smaller cataract would, I
imagine, be the heaviest fall of water known; but taken in
conjunction with the other, it is terribly shorn of its majesty.
The waters here are not green as they are at the larger cataract;
and, though the ledge has been hollowed and bowed by them so as to
form a curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss
as it does at the horseshoe up above. This smaller fall is again
divided; and the visitor, passing down a flight of steps and over a
frail wooden bridge, finds himself on a smaller island in the midst
of it.

But we will go at once on to the glory, and the thunder, and the
majesty, and the wrath of that upper hell of waters. We are still,
let the reader remember, on Goat Island--still in the States--and
on what is called the American side of the main body of the river.
Advancing beyond the path leading down to the lesser fall, we come
to that point of the island at which the waters of the main river
begin to descend. From hence across to the Canadian side the
cataract continues itself in one unabated line. But the line is
very far from being direct or straight. After stretching for some
little way from the shore to a point in the river which is reached
by a wooden bridge at the end of which stands a tower upon the
rock,--after stretching to this, the line of the ledge bends inward
against the flood--in, and in, and in--till one is led to think
that the depth of that horseshoe is immeasurable. It has been cut
with no stinting hand. A monstrous cantle has been worn back out
of the center of the rock, so that the fury of the waters
converges; and the spectator, as he gazes into the hollow with
wishful eyes, fancies that he can hardly trace out the center of
the abyss.

Go down to the end of that wooden bridge, seat yourself on the
rail, and there sit till all the outer world is lost to you. There
is no grander spot about Niagara than this. The waters are
absolutely around you. If you have that power of eye-contrio which
is so necessary to the full enjoyment of scenery, you will see
nothing but the water. You will certainly hear nothing else; and
the sound, I beg you to remember, is not an ear-cracking, agonizing
crash and clang of noises, but is melodious and soft withal, though
loud as thunder. It fills your ears, and, as it were, envelops
them, but at the same time you can speak to your neighbor without
an effort. But at this place, and in these moments, the less of
speaking, I should say, the better. There is no grander spot than
this. Here, seated on the rail of the bridge, you will not see the
whole depth of the fall. In looking at the grandest works of
nature, and of art too, I fancy it is never well to see all. There
should be something left to the imagination, and much should be
half concealed in mystery. The greatest charm of a mountain range
is the wild feeling that there must be strange, unknown, desolate
worlds in those far-off valleys beyond. And so here, at Niagara,
that converging rush of waters may fall down, down at once into a
hell of rivers, for what the eye can see. It is glorious to watch
them in their first curve over the rocks. They come green as a
bank of emeralds, but with a fitful, flying color, as though
conscious that in one moment more they would be dashed into spray
and rise into air, pale as driven snow. The vapor rises high into
the air, and is gathered there, visible always as a permanent white
cloud over the cataract; but the bulk of the spray which fills the
lower hollow of that horseshoe is like a tumult of snow. This you
will not fully see from your seat on the rail. The head of it
rises ever and anon out of that caldron below, but the caldron
itself will be invisible. It is ever so far down--far as your own
imagination can sink it. But your eyes will rest full upon the
curve of the waters. The shape you will be looking at is that of a
horseshoe, but of a horseshoe miraculously deep from toe to heel;
and this depth becomes greater as you sit there. That which at
first was only great and beautiful becomes gigantic and sublime,


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