CATARACTS AND CASCADES

It has often been remarked that no one is insensible to the beauty of flowing water. When it glides quietly on in a stream, its character is that of gentleness, and it suggests only the ideas of calm and tranquil beauty. But when it expands to a greater width, and its floods are poured forth in an impetuous tide, then it assumes the aspect of grandeur, and wakens in the beholder the emotions of sublimity.

The beauty of running water has, indeed, long been celebrated, and the river has often suggested an image illustrative of human life. Even Pliny,who wrote some two thousand years ago, likens a river to the progress of man. “Its beginnings,” he says, “are insignificant, and its infancy is frivolous; it plays among the flowers of a meadow, it waters a garden, or turns a mill. Gathering strength in its growth, it becomes wild and impetuous. Impatient of the restraint it meets with in the hollows of the mountains, it is restless and fretful, quick in its turnings, and unsteady in its course. Now it is a roaring cataract, tearing up and overturning whatever opposes its progress, and it shoots headlong down a rock; then it becomes a gloomy, sullen pool, buried in the bottom of a glen. Recovering breath by repose, it again dashes along, till, tired of uproar and mischief, it quits all that it has swept along, and leaves the opening of the valley strewed with the rejected waste. Now, quitting its retirement, it comes abroad into the world, journeying with more prudence and discretion through cultivated fields, yielding to circumstances, and winding round what would trouble it to overwhelm or remove. It passes through the populous cities, and all the busy haunts of man, tenders its services on every side, and becomes the support and ornament of the country. Increased by numerous alliances, and advanced in its course, it becomes grave and stately in its motions, loves peace and quiet, and in majestic silence rolls on its mighty waters, till it is laid to rest in the vast abyss.”

Cataracts or falls are formed by the descent of rivers over rocks, from a higher to a lower level. That of Niagara, is situated on the river Niagara, between Canada and the United States, which takes its rise in the eastern extremity of Lake Erie, and, after flowing for thirty-five miles, empties itself into Lake Ontario. Its breadth is nine hundred feet, and its depth very considerable; but its current is so exceedingly strong and irregular, and its channel so frequently interspersed with rocks, that it is navigable for small boats only. Proceeding lower, the stream widens, and the rocks gradually recede from the view, and the current though strong, is smooth and regular. At Fort Chippewa, however, situated one league above the cataracts, the scene is again changed, and the river so agitated, that a boat would be inevitably dashed in pieces, were it permitted to pass Fort Niagara, situated on its bank. So impetuously do the waves break among the rocks, that the mere sight of them, from the adjacent shore, is sufficient to strike terror in the spectator. As it approaches the falls, the stream rushes along, with redoubled fury, until it reaches the edge of the stupendous precipice, when it tumbles suddenly to the bottom, without meeting with any obstruction inits descent. Precisely at this place, the river strikes off to the right, and the line of cataracts winds obliquely across, instead of extending, in the shortest direction, from the one bank to the other. It ought to be observed, that the water does not precipitate itself down the vast abyss in one entire sheet, but, being separated by islands, forms three distinct, collateral falls.

One of these is called the great or Horseshoe fall, from the similarity of its form to that of a horseshoe. It is situated on the north-west extremity of the river, and is most deserving of the attention of the spectator, as probably seven-eighths of the water passes over it, and as its grandeur is evidently superior to that of the adjacent cataracts, although its hight may be somewhat less. As the extent of this fall can be ascertained by the eye only, it is impossible precisely to describe its limits; but its circumference is generally computed at eighteen hundred feet, somewhat more than one-third of a mile. Beyond the intervening island, the width of which may be equal to one thousand and fifty feet, is the second fall, about fifteen feet wide; and at the distance of ninety feet, occupied by the second island, is the third fall, the dimensions of which may be reckoned equal to those of the large island; so that the entire extent of the precipice, including the intermediate islands, is four thousand and five feet; a computation which certainly does not exceed the truth. The quantity of water precipitated from the falls is prodigious, and it has been estimated, amounts tosix hundred and seventy thousand, two hundred and fifty tuns per minute.

From the eminence entitled the Table rock, the spectator has a fine prospect of the terrific rapids above the falls, and of the surrounding shores, embellished with lofty woods. He there sees to advantage the adjacent Horseshoe fall, and the dread abyss, into which he may look perpendicularly from the edge of the rock, if his courage be equal to his curiosity. The immensity of the various objects which here present themselves to the view, infallibly overwhelms a stranger with astonishment, and several minutes must elapse before he can possibly collect himself sufficiently to form any just conception of the awful and magnificent scene before him, which requires that all its component parts should be separately examined, and which affords so truly surprising an exhibition, that persons who have resided in its vicinity for several years, and who have been constantly habituated to its sublimity, ingenuously acknowledge,at their last visit, that they were never able before to discover its peculiar grandeur.

From a cliff nearly opposite to one extremity of the third fall, the falls are seen in a very interesting point of view: the scenery there, it is true, is less magnificent, but is infinitely more beautiful than from any other station. For several miles beneath the precipice the river is bounded, on either side,by steep and lofty cliffs, composed of earth and rocks, which in most parts are perpendicular. The descent to the bottom of the falls was formerly accomplished by two ladders, formed of long pine trees, with notches on their sides, on which the traveler rested his feet, and passed down amidst a variety of huge misshapen rocks and pendant trees, seeming to threaten him with instantaneous destruction. The breadth of the river in this part is about two furlongs; and toward the right, on the opposite side, the third fall appears in a very advantageous point of view. About one-half of the Horse-shoe fall is concealed by the projecting cliff, but its partial prospect is extremely fine. The bottom of the former of these falls is skirted with a beautiful white foam, which ascends from the rock in thick volumes, but does not rise into the air like a cloud of smoke, as is the case with that of the latter fall, although its spray is so considerable, as to descend like a shower of rain, near the second ladder, on the opposite side of the river. On its brink, and along the strand, to the great fall, are to be constantly seen shattered trees and bodies of animals, which have been carried away by the extreme violence of the current.

The color of the water of the cataracts, as it descends perpendicularly on the rocks, is occasionally a dark green, and sometimes a foaming, brilliant white, displaying a thousand elegant variations, according to the state of the atmosphere, the hight of the sun, or the force of the wind. A portion of the spray, resulting from the falls, frequently towers above the hight, and literally mingles with the clouds: while the remainder, broken in its descent by fragments of rocks, is in continual agitation. The noise, irregularity, and rapid descent of the stream, continue about eight miles further; and the river is not sufficiently calm to admit of navigation, till it reaches Queenstown, on the west side of the river, and nine miles from the falls.

A late tourist has given us a more recent and fresh view of this wonderful cataract, which will aid us more fully to understand its various aspects as taken from different points of observation. “From the bank just below the ‘Clifton House,’ he says, “is perhaps the finest panoramic view of the falls. The general outline bears a resemblance to the shape of a human ear; the great Horseshoe fall [which is represented on the right hand of the cut below] constituting the upper lobe, while Goat island and the American fall [as seen on the left] represent the remaining portion. The river, whose general course has been east and west, makes a sharp turn to the right just at the point where the fall now is. Its breadth is here contracted from three-fourths of a mile to less than one-fourth. The Horseshoe fall only occupies the head of the chasm, while the American cataract falls over its side; so that this fall and a part of the Horseshoe lie directly parallel with the Canadashore, and its whole extent can be taken in at a single glance. It is this oneness of aspect which renders the prospect from this side so much the more impressive for a first view of Niagara. It gives a strong, sharp outline which may afterward be filled up at leisure.

NIAGARA FALLS.

“The most complete view of the Horseshoe fall is that from the bottom of the cliff, at a point near the ferry landing. If, however, the water is unusually high, the quiet pool which is ordinarily seen in the foreground, becomes a fierce and angry rush of waters, foaming above and around the jagged rocks. If the water is very low, the bed of this pool is entirely dry. Last year [1852] there were but few days when the whole spot was not overflowed. The current nearest the Canada shore runs up-stream, as though seeking an outlet in the direction from which it came. The middle distance is marked by a line of white foam, beyond which the current runs downstream. The center of the Horse-shoe fall is directly in front, defined on the right by the verge of Table Rock, and on the left by the upper extremity of Goat island. Just below the tower which seems to rise from the midstof the waters on the American side, an immense mass of rock is dimly visible, which became detached from the precipice in February, 1852.

“A very charming glimpse of that portion of the fall directly in front of the tower, may be caught through a clump of trees which stand a little above the ferry landing. The limitation of view hightens the effect, when contrasted with the unlimited prospect of the fall presented from almost every other point on the Canada side.

“It is no very difficult task for a stout pedestrian to make his way along under the edge of the precipice from the ferry up to the foot of the fall. The path winds among huge fragments of rock which have tumbled from above, and is slippery with the falling spray. You stop to rest upon a huge rock, where a couple of rough-coated men are fishing. They tell you that it is named ‘Bass rock,’ and you recognize the propriety of the appellation, as you observe the finny spoil that has repaid their labor. The water rushes foaming and eddying around the fragments of rock, sometimes rising in great swells to the spot on which you stand. Fragments of timber, their ends rounded and worn like pebbles on a wave-beaten shore, are scattered around: some groaning and tossing in the water, others stranded high and dry upon the rocks, where they have been flung by some swell higher than usual. You are so near the foot of the fall that the descending sheet of water occupies the entire field of vision: the immense rock which interposes between Bass rock and the descending water has as yet received no distinctive name.

“The path now begins to ascend the sloping bank, winding around huge bowlders, and among gay shrubs which the perpetual spray nourishes in luxuriant greenness, wherever there is a resting-place for a patch of soil. At last you reach the dilapidated staircase which descends the perpendicular face of the cliff, and clambering around its base upon a rotten and slimy plank, you find yourself below the overhanging mass of Table Rock. You are close at the edge of the falling water, which descends in a mass apparently as solid as though carved from marble. You now begin to comprehend the hight of the fall. It makes you dizzy to look up to the upper edge of the rushing column. You stand just midway between the top and the bottom. Above you hangs the imminent mass of Table Rock; below, far down by the wet and jagged rocks, is the seething whirlpool, where the water writhes and eddies as though frenzied with its fearful leap. Round and round it goes in solemn gyrations, bearing with it whatever floating object may have been plunged into its vortex.

“A year ago this very month of August, a young woman walked in the cool gray morning down to the brink of the cliff and flung herself into the whirlpool below. So resolute was the leap, that she shot clear of the jaggedrocks at the base, and plunged sheer into the water beyond. When the visitors came sauntering down to the fall, her body was seen whirling round and round in the mad eddies, now submerged for an instant, and then leaping up, as though imploring aid. A day or two afterward, I was one of a group to whom a rough-looking man was describing the scene. He told how he and two others had descended amid the blinding spray close to the foot of the fall. A rope was then fastened to his body, which was held fast from above by the others, while he groped his misty way down to the very edge of the waters, where he waited till they whirled the corpse close inshore. He then darted a spear with a spring-barb into the body, but the force of the current tore out the hold, and it drifted away. Again it came within reach, and again the hold of the spear was too weak to overcome the force of the current. A third time the body approached, and the spear was darted. This time it caught among the strong muscles of the thigh, and held, so that the body was drawn to shore. The narrator was a rough man, roughly clad, and told his story roughly; but there was in his voice a low thrill of horror as he told how he was obliged to cut the spear-head out of the flesh with his knife, before the weapon could be extracted: ‘It was too bad,’ said he; ‘but it couldn’t be helped.’ And it was with unconscious pathos that he told how they stripped off their own rough garments, and tenderly covered the poor maimed and mutilated body before they bore it up the bank. It was a commentary, wrought out into practice, upon Hood’s immortal ‘Bridge of Sighs.’

“With the exception of the fall itself, the Canada side presents little of interest. The brink of the gorge is bare and naked, the trees which once clothed it having been cut away. The regular drive seems to be up to the Burning Spring, and thence back by way of Drummondville and Lundy’s Lane. At the Burning Spring you register your name, pay your fee, and are introduced into a small apartment, in the floor of which is a spring in constant ebullition from the escape of an inflammable gas. The flaxen-pated children of the show-woman place a receiver over the spring, and set fire to the gas, as it comes out of the jet; they then remove the receiver, and light the gas as it rises to the surface of the water; and that is all. You take your departure, looking vastly edified; while the driver thrusts his tongue into his cheek, as though he were mentally quoting a certain proverb touching ‘a fool and his money.’

Niagara Falls on the American side

“In the early morning you commit yourself to the little boat in which you are to be ferried over to the American shore. Your half-felt misgivings are dissipated as you see the dexterous manner with which the brawny boatman handles his oars, and takes advantage of the ‘up-eddy’ and ‘down-eddy;’and in a few minutes you are landed close at the foot of the American fall. Half-way up the ferry-stairs is an opening which gives access to a path along the foot of the perpendicular precipice to the verge of the falling water. From this point in the early morning, may be gained one of the most picturesque views of Niagara. Your position gives a fine view of the fall on the American side, as seen in the cut; the hight of which forms a standard by which you measure that of the Horseshoe fall, which stretches away in the distant perspective. Completing the ascent of the ferry-stairway, you reach Prospect point, at its head, from whence the same general view is gained, from a more elevated point. It is hard to say whether the view from above or below is the finer. The latter brings more into notice the hight of the falling column of water, thus gaining an additionalelement of grandeur, while the latter embraces a view of the wooded islands above the fall, adding greatly to the picturesque effect. The precise point from which the artist has taken this sketch is not now attainable. It was a projecting shelf of rock, a few feet below the precipice, which has been cut away to make room for the terribly unpicturesque, but most convenient stairway.

“This was apparently the point from which honest Father Hennepin, who has left us the earliest written account of Niagara, gazed upon that ‘prodigious Cadence of Waters, which falls down after a surprising and astonishing Manner, insomuch that the Universe can not afford its parallel.’ ‘The Waters,’ goes on the quaint narrative, ‘which fall from this horrible Precipice, do foam and boyle after the most hideous Manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise more terrible than that of Thunder.’ The good Jesuit would seem to have been deeply moved by this ‘dismal Roaring;’ for in the curious picture which he gives of the falls, he represents the spectators holding their hands to their ears to shut out the din; and he hints that the Indians were forced to abandon the neighborhood of the falls, lest they should become deafened by the uproar. But the good father must have heard the ‘horrid Noise of the Falls,’ as he elsewhere calls it, with the imagination rather than with the ear. You hardly notice it as you loiter along the brink, except when some sudden atmospheric change varies its deep and solemn monotone. The sound is like the continuous and pervading murmur of the wind through a forest of somber pines. You are not forced to raise your voice in conversing with a friend by whose side you loiter along the brink of the fall, toward the bridge which gives you access to the wooded islands that beckon you on.

“Nothing can exceed the picturesque beauty of the small wooded islands which stud the rapids upon the American side. Two of rare beauty, known as Ship and Brig islands, stem the current a little above the bridge which connects Goat island with the shore. It needs but little effort of the imagination to fancy them vessels under full press of sail, endeavoring to sheer out of the current that hurries them inevitably down. The former of these islands is accessible by a bridge which connects it with Bath island, and is one of the loveliest spots imaginable. The old cedars, whose gnarled and contorted trunks overhang the waters, dipping their branches into the current, seem to cling with desperate clutch to the rocks, as though fearful of losing their hold and being swept away.

“From the bridge leading to Goat island, the rapids present that same appearance of plunging from the sky which renders their view from the Canadian shore so impressive. Goat island—so let it still be called, in spiteof the foppery which has lately attempted to change its name to Iris island—presents an aspect almost as wild as it did before it had been rendered accessible to human foot. Were it not for the path which girdles its entire circumference, and the rustic seats disposed here and there, one might fancy that he was the first who had ever sauntered through its grand and stately woods. The beauty and variety of the trees on this island are wonderful. There is the maple, greeting the early spring sunshine with its fire-tipped buds; spreading out in summer its broad dome of dark green leaves in masses so thick, that beneath them you have no fear of the passing shower; and in autumn wearing its gorgeous crimson robe like an oriental monarch. The beech shows its dappled trunk and bright green foliage at every point, giving perpetual life and vivacity to the scene. The silvery trunks of the white birch gleam among the underwood. An occasional aspen, with its ever-quivering leaves, which almost shed a sense of breezy coolness in the stillest, sultriest day, contrasts finely with the dark evergreens by which it is relieved. Almost all of our northern fauna have their representatives here. Even upon the little Ship island, which can be crossed in any direction in a dozen strides, and which appears to a hasty view but a mass of twisted and gnarled cedars, there are at least seven distinct species of trees. Those trees, however, which immediately overhang the falls, have an aspect peculiar to themselves. They are bent, broken, twisted and contorted, in every direction. They seem to be starting back in horror from the abyss before them, and to wind their long finger-like roots around the rocks, in order to maintain their hold.

“One of these, an aged birch, growing upon the ridge known as the ‘Hog’s Back,’ affords a resting-place from which to gain one of the finest views of the American falls. Right in front is the small central fall, and the footbridge which leads to Luna island, with its trees dwarfed and stunted by the weight of frozen spray which loads them in the winter. Beyond is the serrated line of the American fall; while the distance is filled up with the receding lines of the banks of the river below.

“A few paces—past groups of blithe tourists, past companies of somber Indian girls in blue blankets and high-crowned hats, with their gay wares spread out at their feet—brings you to the Biddle staircase, down which you wind to the foot of the precipice. The path to the left leads along the foot of the overhanging cliff, up to the verge of the Horseshoe fall, only a portion of whose circumference is visible from any point on the American shore. You are here close upon the fragments of rock that fell from just in front of the tower, in February, 1852, the latest of those changes which are slowly and almost imperceptibly altering the form and position of the falls. Thisfall of rock was seen by an artist who has given us a faithful picture of its effects. He was just recovering from an illness, and while sitting in his room at the Clifton House, on the opposite Canadian shore, he was startled by a crash, almost like that of an earthquake. Tottering to the window, he beheld the immense curtain of rock in front of the tower precipitated from its ancient hold, and lying in huge masses upon the ice below; while a few streams of water trickled down the brown cliff, where but a moment before nothing had been seen but a surface of dazzling ice. The water at this extremity of the fall descends in light feathery forms, contrasting finely with the solid masses in which it seems to plunge down the center of the sweeping curve. The tower is perched upon the very brink of the precipice, so close that the next fall of rock must carry it along with it. The path to the right from the foot of the staircase, leads to the entrance to the Cave of the Winds, which lies behind the central fall. It is hard to imagine how this cavern missed being called the ‘Cave of Æolus,’ by those classicists who have exhausted ancient mythology for appellations for our American scenery. But it has escaped this infliction; and the ‘Cave of the Winds,’ it is, and will be. From the little house close by the entrance, where the requisite changes of dress are made, you look down into an abyss of cold gray mist, driven ever and anon like showers of hail into your face, as you grope your way down the rocky slope. Haste not, pause not. Here is the platform, half-seen, half-felt amid the blinding spray. Shade of Father Hennepin, this is truly a ‘dismal roaring’ of wind and water. We are across, and stand secure on the smooth, shaly bottom of the cave. Look up: what a magnificent arch is formed by the solid rock on the one side, and the descending mass of water on the other. Which is the solider and firmer you hardly know. Yet look again—for it is sunset—and see what we shall see nowhere else on earth, three rainbows one within another; not half-formed and incomplete, as is the scheme of our daily life, but filling up the complete circle, perfect and absolute.

“Upon an isolated rock at the very brink of the cataract stands a round tower. It is approached by a long, narrow bridge, resting now upon ledges of solid rock, and now upon loose bowlders. From the balcony upon its summit, you can lean far over the edge of the precipice, and there catch the freshness of the cloud of spray that rises evermore from the unseen foot of the great fall. Or you can climb down the low rock upon which the tower stands, and gather shells and pebbles from within arm’s length of the verge of the descent, so gentle, to all appearance, is the current. But be not over-bold. These waters, apparently so gentle, sweep down with a force beyond your power to stem. Not many months ago, a man fell from the bridge intotheir smooth flow, and was in the twinkling of an eye swept to the brink of the descent. Here he lodged against one of those rocks that lie apparently tottering upon the brow, looking over the fearful descent, with as little power to retrace his course, as he would have had to reascend the perpendicular fall. A rope was floated down to him, which he had just strength to fasten around his body, and he was drawn up from his perilous position.

“It is usual to speak of the Horseshoe fall as Canadian; and our rather slow neighbors across the river have been wont to plume themselves upon the possession of the more magnificent part of Niagara; while Young America has been heard to mutter between his teeth something about ‘annexation,’ on the ground that the lesser nation has no fair claim to the possession of the major part of the crowning wonder of the continent. But the portion of Niagara belonging to Canada is hardly worth contending for. The boundary line between the two countries is the deepest water, which runs far over toward the Canadian shore. The line passes through the lonely little isle in the center of the river, which has never been trodden by human foot. Right through the very center of the Horseshoe fall, where the water is greenest, cutting the thickest pillar of spray, through the inmost convolution of the whirlpool, through the calmest part of the quiet reach of water above the suspension bridge, through the maddest work of the rapids below, goes the boundary line, leaving to Canada nothing of Niagara except Table Rock, which yearly threatens to fall, and the half of the great fall: while to America it gives, together with full one-half of the Horseshoe fall, the varying beauties of the lesser cataracts, and the whole wealth of the lovely islands which gem the rapids.

“The general form of the falls is slowly changing from age to age. When Father Hennepin saw them, a century and three-quarters ago, they presented little of that curved and indented outline which now forms their most striking peculiarity. The fall on the western side extended in nearly a straight line from the head of Goat island to Table Rock, which terminated in a bluff that turned a portion of the water from its direct course, forming another cataract which fell to the east. A century later, this projecting rock had disappeared, but the spot which it had occupied was distinctly traceable. From the character of the strata through which the water has slowly worn its way back from the shores of Lake Ontario, we learn what must have been the appearances of the fall at any period of its history. Thus it can never have overcome the descent of three hundred and fifty feet at Lewiston at a single leap, but must have formed at least three cataracts separated by intervening rapids. When the falls occupied the position of the whirlpool, three miles below their present site, the descent was evidently greater than at any period before orsince. But there never can have been a period when their beauty equaled that which they present at the present age. The immense breadth of the sheet of falling water, its graceful sweep of curves, and the picturesque islands that stud the brink, belong solely to our present Niagara. The falls recede at present, we are told, at the rate of something less than a foot in a year. Geology is able to predict that when a recession of a mile has taken place, some five or six thousand years hence, the hight of the fall will be reduced by a score of feet. Another five thousand years will subtract two score more of feet. Ten thousand years more, when the fall shall have worn its way four miles further back, all that constitutes Niagara will have disappeared, and the whole descent will be accomplished by a series of rapids like those near the whirlpool.

“It is strange how little of direct human interest is connected with Niagara. One would have supposed that it would have been a sacred spot with the Indians; but, with the exception of a few graves on the upper extremity of Goat island, no special memorial of the aborigines exists here. The falls have been known to the white race for too short a time to gather around them legendary associations. One or two points are associated with the memory of a young Englishman who, something like a score of years ago, set up as the ‘Hermit of the Falls.’ A picturesque little break in the rapids between Goat island and one of the rocky islets known as the Three Sisters, has been named from him the ‘Hermit’s cascade.’ It is a lovely spot, by the side of which one may lie under the overarching trees, and while away the noontide hour, lulled into dreamy slumber by the deep voice of the cataract. This hermit seems hardly worthy of being made the hero of the falls. Little is told of him except that he was fond of music and of pacing by night along the margin of the river; that he was alike indisposed for human society and for clean linen. It is said, indeed, that he was accustomed to record his musings in Latin, but as no fragments of these were discovered after his death, we may set the story down as apocryphal. A deeper tragic interest is attached to a tale, now some three years old, which will be told you as you stand by the margin of the lesser fall. A party of visitors stood here, in gay discourse. Among them were a young man and his affianced bride, and with them a laughing child. The young man, catching up the child, said sportively to her, ‘Now I shall throw you over;’ when she, gliding from his hold in affright, half real and half feigned, slipped, and falling, plunged headlong into the stream; he sprang after, but the current was stronger than his strength, and swept them both down the smooth slope, and over the fall. Their bodies, mangled and bruised, were recovered from the rocks below.

“The pedestrian can hardly find a pleasanter summer day’s ramble, than that along the river to Lewiston, descending on the American side, and returning by the opposite bank. For a mile below the falls, where the channel is narrowest, the current is so smooth, that one might fancy he was gazing down into some quiet tarn embosomed in the mountains, were it not that you catch the white margin of the lower rapids just where the suspension bridge stretches its slender line from the summits of the opposing cliffs.”

This bridge, a view of which is given in the cut below, is about two and a half miles below the falls, and spans the river near the head of the rapids, above the whirlpool. From pier to pier it is eight hundred feet long, and in breadth eight feet. It is suspended on eight wire cables, four on each side, which pass over towers fifty-four feet high, built of heavy timber. The present structure is only the scaffolding for constructing a larger bridge, intended for the passage of railroad cars. The towers for the large bridge will be of solid masonry, each eighty feet high.Each of the cables is eleven hundred feet long, and composed of seventy-two strong, No. 10 iron wires, closely wrapped round with small wire three times boiled in linseed oil, which anneals it, and prevents injury from rust or exposure to the weather. The cables, after passing over the piers on the banks, are fast anchored in solid masonry fifty feet back of them. Thesuspenders, which form the sides, are composed of eight wires each, and are four and a half feet apart. The bridge itself is two hundred feet above the water, and is a wonder alike of enterprise and art.

Suspension Bridge over Niagara River

Our tourist proceeds as follows. “In the quiet reach of the water below this bridge, plies the little steamer, the Maid of the Mist. After passing the ugly, bustling little village growing up around the American extremity of the bridge, a path leads through quiet fields and woods along the very verge of the precipice. Here and there some tree growing upon the brink forms a safe balustrade over which you lean, and look down upon the green water dashing furiously through its confined channel far below.

“The whirlpool, three miles below the falls, is an adjunct worthy of Niagara. The stream makes a sharp bend just where the channel is narrowest and the descent of the rapids the steepest. At the angle the current has scooped out an immense basin, around whose whole circumference the water circles before it can find an outlet. All floating bodies that pass down the river are drawn into the whirlpool, where they are borne round and round for days, and weeks sometimes, it is said, before they make their escape. A practicable path winds down the bank to the water’s edge. The character of the banks gradually changes as we descend toward the outlet of the river. The hard limestone overlying the softer rock, and forming the perpendicular portion of the cliff, becomes thinner; the sloping talus at the foot grows higher, and the rocks are clothed with a luxurious forest growth. A half mile below the whirlpool is a deep cleft in the precipitous bank, which is connected with a wild Indian legend ascribing terrible convulsions of nature, and even the approach of the fatal white men, to an unauthorized violation of the privacy of a great demon who once abode here. This was the scene of a terrible tragedy in the old French wars. A convoy of British soldiers fell into an ambush of Indians at this point, and were all, with the exception of two, slain outright or driven over the edge of the chasm. The little rivulet which flows over the brink, ran red with the blood of the slaughtered, and thus gained the name, which it still bears, of the Bloody Run.

“Close by the Devil’s Hole, the railroad now in course of construction from Lewiston to the falls, gains the level of the top of the bank. From this point downward, it is excavated in the face of the cliff, forming a steep grade to its bottom. An almost continuous line of shanties, occupied by the laborersengaged in the excavation, extends along the very verge of the precipice. It was curious, as I passed along in the early April days, to see children whom we should scarcely trust out of the nurse’s arms, sprawling upon the very verge of the cliff. The laborers are apparently all Irish, and it is noteworthy to see how much more intelligent is the aspect of the younger than of the older children. I thought I could distinguish by their mere physical appearance, those who were born under the freer and happier auspices which surround them here. At the foot of the cliff the suspension bridge stretches like a slender thread across the stream, its supporting towers resting on a ledge above the level of the roadway. No line of guards watches the quiet frontiers of two great nations. The sole police is a small boy at the gate, and the only passport demanded is a shilling for toll. You climb the smooth slope to the summit, where the shattered monument to the noble Brock is the only memorial of the day when the thrice-won victory was at last wrenched from the hands of the Americans. A flock of sheep are cropping the tender herbage; a couple of lambs have found a shady resting-place in the crumbling archway of the monument. To the right the white village of Lewiston presents an aspect of bustling activity; while to the left, on the opposite Canadian shore, Queenstown rests gray and somber. At your feet, just below the dilapidated memorial of war, the bridge, symbol of union, binds the two shores: may it never be a pathway for the march of hostile armies!

“There are two or three things in the way of excursion which must sooner or later be performed. Some bright afternoon, when the west is all aglow, as you sit upon Table Rock, watching the clouds of spray momently torn from the face of the descending column, the guide with the hollow voice, whose mission is to conduct visitors behind the great sheet, presents himself. You commit yourself to his guidance, and donning the suit of yellow oil-skin, follow him down the spiral staircase, along the base of the precipice up to the verge of the cataract. You shudder, and hesitate to enter the blinding spray along that winding path, which seems in the dimness like a slender line drawn upon the face of the rock. The guide whispers a word of encouragement, deftly insinuating how boldly ‘the lady’ trod its slippery length. You take courage and advance. You can scarcely breathe, much less see; but you feel that the torrent is plunging from the immeasurable hight above into the unfathomable depth below. Somehow, how you hardly know, you have passed through the thick curtain of blinding spray, and are peering eagerly into the gray depth beyond. You are on Termination rock, and further than this mortal foot may never penetrate within the vail. Whichever way you turn, it is all cold gray mist, shrouding the overhanging rockand the overarching water above, and the profound depths below; all mist, cold gray mist above, below, around, except when you turn your eyes back along the path by which you entered, where you behold a strip of golden sky between the grim rock and the edge of the descending flood. Drenched and dripping, spent and exhausted, as a shipwrecked sailor flung by the surf upon some inhospitable shore, you follow your guide back along the misty path, and emerge gladly enough into the clear outer air, into the free sunshine, and beneath the bright sky. As you doff the heavy oil-skin integuments, a printed paper is put into your hand, certifying that you ‘have been under the great sheet of water, the distance of two hundred and forty feet from the commencement of the falls to the termination of Table Rock,’ verified by the signature of the proprietor of ‘Table Rock House.’ Your guide looks on you complacently, as though he would assure you that the great end of life was now attained, and you might take up your ‘Nunc dimittis.’

“Or you take your place upon the deck of the Maid of the Mist, hard by the suspension bridge, and are steamed up to the foot of the cataract. The little steamer answers but poorly to her romantic name. She swings wearily from her moorings, and goes panting and tugging up the current. Yet she manages to hold her course, unless the wind blows too strong down-stream, and slowly wins her way close up to the huge rocks on which the waters of the American fall are broken and shattered into the thickest of spray. In that spray a sharp and angry gust of wind tears a sudden rent, and through it you catch a glimpse of the green crest of the Horseshoe fall, sinking grandly into the ocean of vapor below. Or better still, if in some calm moonlight night, you glide, with the boatman, along the foot of the American fall, keeping just outside of the dark line of shadow, you will find there is nothing on earth so weird and ghost-like as the spectacle before you. The column of spray rises from the blackness below, like the specter of some gigantic tree, and spreads solemnly up into the clear air above.

“The mere summer tourist, however, sees but half the glory of Niagara. In the winter the great rocks at the foot of the fall are piled up with an accumulation of frozen spray to the depth of half a hundred feet. By creeping cautiously up the slippery ascent, you may stand face to face with the cataract, half-way up its giddy hight. Every shrub on its margin is loaded with glittering ice. The thick-branched evergreens are bowed beneath its weight, and bend to the ground like enormous plumes. The face of the cold gray rock is cased in the frozen element, and ribbed with pillars and pilasters which flash back the reflection of all the gems in the rays of thesun; and when in a clear, unclouded day, that sun shines down in its splendor, the scene is one of matchless magnificence and glory.”

Thus we have attempted a full description of Niagara; and yet words seem but feeble to set forth the magnificence and grandeur of the scene as it rises to the view of the actual beholder. There, in its vast volume and resistless power, it ever flows on with ceaseless, patient, unwearied tide. At midnight and noonday, through summer and winter, and seed-time and harvest, it is still the same. The drought of summer does not sensibly diminish, or the freshets of spring augment its mighty current. The scorching sun does not dry it up, and the chains of winter do not bind it. Emblem of God and of eternity, it rolls on, speaking in calm sublimity of Him who made it. Nor is sublimity the only characteristic of this greatest of waterfalls. There are traits of beauty, which seem even to highten the effect of its grandeur. The rainbow, ever playing in sunshine over its awful front, and seeming indifferent to the boiling whirlpool beneath; the tide of many-colored gems, into which the spray often seems converted, as it plunges over the rocks; the heaps of foam, white as wool, dancing on the billows that rush away from the foot of the fall; and more than all, an aspect of tranquillity and of repose, which settles upon the whole scene, when viewed at a little distance, are all incidents which blend in the majestic picture imprinted on the memory by this stupendous yet lovely work of nature’s God.

The falls of Niagara have been the frequent theme of poetry, but the following lines by Brainard are deemed the finest that have been produced upon the subject.

“The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain,While I look upward to thee. It would seemAs if God poured thee from his ‘hollow hand,’And hung his bow upon thine awful front;And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to himWho dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour’s sake,‘The sound of many waters;’ and had badeThy flood to chronicle the ages back,And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks!“Deep calleth unto deep, and what are we,That hear the question of that voice sublime?Oh! what are all the notes that ever rungFrom war’s vain trumpet, by thy thundering side!Yea, what is all the riot man can makeIn his short life, to thine unceasing roar!And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him,Who drown’d a world, and heaped the waters farAbove its loftiest mountains?—a light wave,That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might!”

“The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain,

While I look upward to thee. It would seem

As if God poured thee from his ‘hollow hand,’

And hung his bow upon thine awful front;

And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him

Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour’s sake,

‘The sound of many waters;’ and had bade

Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks!

“Deep calleth unto deep, and what are we,That hear the question of that voice sublime?Oh! what are all the notes that ever rungFrom war’s vain trumpet, by thy thundering side!Yea, what is all the riot man can makeIn his short life, to thine unceasing roar!And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him,Who drown’d a world, and heaped the waters farAbove its loftiest mountains?—a light wave,That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might!”

“Deep calleth unto deep, and what are we,

That hear the question of that voice sublime?

Oh! what are all the notes that ever rung

From war’s vain trumpet, by thy thundering side!

Yea, what is all the riot man can make

In his short life, to thine unceasing roar!

And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him,

Who drown’d a world, and heaped the waters far

Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave,

That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might!”

FALLS OF THE MONTMORENCI.

The Montmorenci empties itself at the distance of about eight miles northeast of Quebec, into the great river St. Lawrence, to the coast of which it gradually descends from the elevated mountain on which it has its source. At a station called La Motte, situated on the northern extremity of a sloping ground, its waters diffuse themselves into shallow currents, interrupted by rocks which break them into foam, and accompanied by murmuring sounds which enliven the solitude and solemn stillness prevailing throughout the surrounding forests and desolate hills. Further down, its channel is bounded by precipitous rocks, its breadth becoming extremely contracted, and the rapidity of its current proportionably augmented. At a place called “thenatural steps,” there are several beautiful cascades of ten or twelve feet. These steps, which are extremely regular, have been gradually formed by the accession of waters the river receives in its progress, at the breaking up of winter, by the melting of the snows. From the middle of April to the end of May, its waters roll with increasing hight and rapidity. Being powerfully impelled in their course, they insinuate themselves between the strata of the horizontal rock, vast fragments of which are detached by the rushing violence of the sweeping torrent.

FALLS OF MONTMORENCI.

On the eastern side, the bank, which is almost perpendicular, and fifty feet high, is surmounted by lofty trees. The south-west bank rises beyond the steps, and terminates in a precipice. On the opposite side, the bank is regular, and of a singular shape, resembling the ruin of an elevated wall. The trees by which the banks are inclosed, united with the effect produced by the foaming currents, and the scattered masses of stone, form a scene wild and picturesque. The stream now taking a southern direction, is augmented in its velocity, and forms a grand cascade interrupted by huge rocks. A quarter of a mile further down a similar effect is produced. After exhibiting an agreeable variety through its course, the river is precipitated, in an almost perpendicular direction, over a rock two hundred and fifty feet in hight. A view of this latter cascade is given in the cut. Wherever it touches the rock, it falls in white clouds of rolling foam; and, beneath, where it is propelled with uninterrupted gravitation, it forms numerous flakes, like wool or cotton, which are gradually protracted in the descent, until they are received into the boiling profound abyss beneath.

The effect from the summit of the cliff is awfully grand, and truly sublime. The prodigious depth of the descent of the waters of this surprising fall; the brightness and volubility of their course; the swiftness of their movement through the air; and the loud and hollow noise emitted from the basin, swelling with incessant agitation from the weight of the dashing waters, forcibly combine to attract the attention, and to impress the mind of the spectator with sentiments of grandeur and elevation. The clouds of rising vapor, which assume the prismatic colors, contribute to enliven the scene. They fly off from the fall in the form of a revolving sphere, emitting with velocity pointed flakes of spray, which spread in receding, until they are interrupted by the neighboring banks, or dissolved in the atmosphere.

The breadth of the fall is one hundred feet; and the basin, which is bounded by steep cliffs, forms an angle of forty-five degrees. When viewed from the beach, the cataract is seen, with resplendent beauty, to flow down the gloomy precipice, the summit of which is crowded with woods. The diffusion of the stream, to the breadth of fifteen hundred feet, and the varioussmall cascades produced by the inequalities of its rocky bed, on its way to the river St. Lawrence, display a very singular and pleasing combination.

This fall, in Franklin county, Georgia, is as yet scarcely known to the best informed of our geographers, and is notwithstanding one of the most beautiful that can be conceived. It is much higher than the great fall of Niagara; and the water is charmingly propelled over a perpendicular rock. When the stream is full, it passes down the steep in one expansive sheet, magnificent to behold.

The most prominent features of this great river, which is fed by so many streams, having their sources in a great variety of soils and climates, are its wonderful falls, rapids and cascades, the following connected view of which is abstracted from the very accurate draught and survey made by Captain Clarke.

This river is nine hundred feet wide at the point where it receives the waters of Medicine river, which is four hundred and one feet in width. The united current continues five thousand, four hundred and twelve feet, somewhat more than a mile, to a small rapid on the north side, from which it gradually widens to four thousand, two hundred feet, and at the distance of nine thousand and forty-two feet, (nearly a mile and three-fourths,) reaches the head of the rapids, narrowing as it approaches them. Here the hills on the north, which had withdrawn from the bank, closely border the river, which, for the space of a mile, makes its way over the rocks with a descent of thirty feet: in this course the current is contracted to sixteen hundred and forty feet, and, after throwing itself over a small pitch of five feet, forms a beautiful cascade of twenty-six feet, five inches; this does not, however, fall quite perpendicularly, being stopped by a part of the rock, which projects at about one-third of the distance. After descending this fall, and passing the Cotton-wood island, on which the eagle has fixed its nest, the river goes on for eight thousand, seven hundred and seventy-eight feet, (more than a mile and a half,) over rapids and little falls, the estimated descent of which is thirteen feet six inches, till it is joined by a large fountain boiling up underneath the rocks near the edge of the river, and falling into it with a cascade of eight feet. It is of the most perfect clearness, and rather of a bluish cast; and even after falling into the Missouri it preserves its color forhalf a mile. From this fountain the river descends with increased rapidity for the distance of thirty-five hundred and thirty-one feet, during which the estimated descent is five feet: from this, for a distance of twenty-two hundred and twenty-seven feet, the river descends fourteen feet seven inches, including a perpendicular fall of six feet seven inches. The river has now become pressed into a space of fourteen hundred and nineteen feet, and here forms a grand cataract, by falling over a plain rock, the whole distance across the river, to the depth of forty-seven feet, eight inches: after recovering itself, the Missouri then proceeds with an estimated descent of three feet, till at the distance of sixteen hundred and eighty-three feet it again is precipitated down the crooked falls, nineteen feet perpendicularly; below this at the mouth of a deep ravine, is a fall of five feet, after which, for the distance of sixteen thousand and five feet, (upward of three miles,) the descent is much more gradual, not being more than ten feet, and then succeeds a handsome level plain for the space of twenty-nine hundred and thirty-seven feet, (more than half a mile,) with a computed descent of three feet, making a bend toward the north. Thence it descends, during seventy-nine hundred and twenty feet, about eighteen feet and a half, when it makes a perpendicular fall of two feet, which is fourteen hundred and eighty-five feet beyond the great cataract, in approaching which it descends thirteen feet, within a distance of about six hundred feet, and gathering strength from its confined channel, which is only eight hundred and forty feet wide, rushes over the fall to the depth of eighty-seven feet and three-quarters of an inch. After raging among the rocks, and losing itself in foam, it is compressed immediately into a bed of two hundred and seventy-nine feet in width; it continues for fifty-six hundred and ten feet to the entrance of a run or deep ravine, where there is a fall of three feet, which, joined to the decline of the river during that course, makes the descent six feet. As it goes on, the descent within the next thirty-nine hundred and sixty feet is only four feet; from this, passing a run or deep ravine, the descent for sixteen hundred feet is thirteen feet: within thirty-nine hundred and sixty feet, is a second descent of eighteen feet; thence twenty-six hundred and forty feet further, is a descent of six feet; after which, to the mouth of Portage creek, a distance of forty-six hundred and twenty feet, the descent is ten feet. From this survey and estimate it results that the river experiences a descent of three hundred and fifty-two feet in the course of fifteen or sixteen miles, from the commencement of the rapids, to the mouth of Portage creek, exclusive of almost impassable rapids which extend for a mile below its entrance.

Back to Index Next