Down the River to the Sea

by Agnes Maule Machar

In the afternoon they set out again to drive down the river,—the afternoon being a lovely one,—the air fragrant with wandering scents from the woods, and the roads freed from dust by the recent rain. They drove past the little town of Niagara Falls, or Clifton, as it is still sometimes called, at the point where the railway crosses the river on its great suspension bridge, and whose chief center of life is the great railway station for the whole vicinity. Leaving that behind, they followed the road along the river bank till they turned in at the gate leading to the descent to the Whirlpool. A steep, wooded incline descended the abrupt and densely wooded cliffs, down which, at intervals, ran a car, drawn up and down by a chain that passed over a wheel at the top. The fatigue of a descent in any other way was not to be thought of; so, although this way looked rather formidable, they all committed themselves to the car, except Mrs. Sandford, who preferred to remain at the top until their return—remarking that she had no fancy for tobogganing, especially on dry land! And, indeed, the dizzy speed at which they descended was not altogether unlike tobogganing—at least, according to Kate—which, Hugh said, was some satisfaction, since he should not be able to enjoy the thing itself. At the foot of the rapid descent they had only to follow a woodland path for a short distance in order to get a full view of the boiling and raging torrent; the waters, to a depth of more than two hundred feet, being compressed into a narrow channel of about a hundred yards between the high precipitous banks, till the confined and chafing stream seemed to rise into a ridge of great seething, foaming waves, tossing their heads up like small geysers, or waterspouts, some twenty feet high, as they dashed furiously against each other with all the force of the strong hidden currents. Just here, where the river swerved suddenly to the right, the sweep of the river round the American cliff made a sort of back-eddy in the bay formed by the receding heights above them—where, under a surface of apparently still water, its solemn depths, dark and somber, like a mountain tarn set in the midst of dusky pines, lay concealed, save for a few whirling eddies, a fierce vortex, which nothing that approached it could resist. Looking only on the placid surface, it was difficult to realize the hidden power beneath, until Hugh Macnab threw a large piece of stick near the center, where they saw it continue to gyrate with tremendous speed as long as they cared to watch it. Kate said there were gruesome stories of bodies which had been carried over the Falls, reappearing here for a horrible dance of death, which it made them shudder to imagine. Hugh enthusiastically declared that the dark and savage grandeur of this lonely gorge, with its steep overhanging heights, rising in their dusky green against the sky, like prison walls about the little Maëlstrom, was the finest bit of scenery he had yet seen about the Falls, and seemed just the place in which to imagine any tragedy.

“Can’t you invent one for it?” asked Flora.

“Nothing worthy of the scene, I am afraid,” he replied. “It recalls Schiller’s ‘Diver,’ though, which has been haunting me constantly during the last few days. Do you remember it?”

Kate did not, but May had read Lord Lytton’s translation of it, and remembered it, though not distinctly.

“Couldn’t you repeat a verse or two of your own translation?” said Flora.

“I should have to repeat my own, if I did any,” he said, smiling, “for it’s the only one I could manage to remember.”

“Well, give us a bit of it, do,” commanded Kate.

Hugh thought for a moment. “I’ll give you the two stanzas that might do for a description of the present scene,” he said, and went on to recite, with great spirit:

“And it boils and it seethes, and it hisses and roars,
As if fire struggled fierce with the wave,
And a misty spray-cloud from its bosom outpours,
And the chasing floods endlessly rave;
And, like thunder remote, with its low distant rumbles,
The foam-crested stream from the dark cañon tumbles!

But at last comes a lull in the turbulent war,
And black in the midst of white foam
A yawning rift gapes in the center, that far
Leads downwards to bottomless gloom;
And lo! all the surges, swift, rushing and roaring,
Down into the whirlpool are endlessly pouring!”