——“this is the scene
Of which my fancy cherished
So faithfully a waking dream!”
“No!” she mentally decided, “no ‘waking dream’ could picture Niagara.”
“Well, dreaming as usual?” May looked up with a start, as she felt Mrs. Sandford’s plump hand on her shoulder. “Kate wants you to make haste and get ready for an expedition. Here are the Scotch cousins. This is Flora, and this is her brother Hugh. You don’t need any formal introduction. Kate will be down in a moment, and you are all going for a long stroll, she says, for which I don’t feel quite equal yet after my journey, though it is a charming afternoon; so I shall stay here and rest. Kate has promised me not to let you run into any sort of danger, and I am sure you’ll find her a capital cicerone.”
Kate, who appeared just then, renewed her promise to be most prudent, and especially to look after her cousin Hugh—her aunt’s chief object of anxiety. “And, indeed, you need taking care of,” she said, in answer to his attempted disclaimer. “You know you’re under orders not to overwalk yourself, or get heated or chilled, so mind, Kate, you don’t let him. I don’t want to have to stop on the way to nurse an invalid!”
“I don’t think you need be at all afraid, Aunt Bella,” the young man replied, with what May thought a pleasant touch of Scottish accent, though his pale face had flushed a little at the allusion to his semi-invalidism, which had been the immediate cause of his journey to Canada. His sister Flora, however, with her abundant fair hair, which, like her brother’s, just missed being red, looked the picture of health and youthful energy.
May, with her straw hat beside her, needed no further preparation for the expedition, on which she was, indeed, impatient to set out at once, Kate, to her relief, leading the way with Mr. Hugh Macnab, who was not her cousin, and it did not seem to her that she could find anything to say to any one so learned and clever as this quiet-looking young man must be. It seemed much easier to talk to the frank and merry Flora, who tripped on by her side, looking very fresh and trim and tourist-like, in her plain gray traveling hat and gray tweed dress, made as short as a sensible fashion would allow, and showing off to perfection a lithe, well-rounded figure and a pair of shapely and very capable feet. The party entered what is now called Victoria Park, and walked leisurely along the brink of the precipitous cliff that here formed the river bank, stopping at frequent intervals the better to take in some particular aspect of the wonderful scene before them.
“That’s the advantage of not taking a carriage, here,” explained Kate, who had relentlessly refused all the entreaties of the hackmen. “It’s ever so much nicer to go on your own feet, and stop just where you please, and as long as you please! We don’t want to hurry here. It’s a charming walk, now that all the old photographic saloons and so-called museums have been cleared away! By and by, when we feel a little tired, we can take a carriage for the rest of the way.”
May soon felt the dreamlike sensation come over her again, as they wandered slowly along the steep cliffs of shade, and came from time to time on some specially charming view of the white foaming sheet of the American Falls, so dazzlingly pure in its virgin beauty, as it vaults over the hollow cliff into the soft veil of mist that perpetually rises about its feet—always dispersing and ever rising anew. Then, as their eager gaze followed the line of the opposite bank, black, jagged and shining with its perpetual shower-bath of spray, what a glorious revelation of almost infinite grandeur was that curving, quivering sheet of thundering surge, with its heart of purest green, and its mighty masses of dazzling foam, and its ascending clouds of milky spray,—sometimes entirely obscuring the fall itself, as they float across the boiling caldron,—sometimes partially dispersed and spanned by the soft-hued arc, which here, as at the close of the thunder-storm, seems like the tender kiss of love, hushing the wild tumult into peace. From many other points she could get better views of individual details, but no nobler view of the mighty whole, than from this silent, never-to-be-forgotten ramble. No one said much; even the lively Kate lapsed from her office of cicerone, or, rather, best fulfilled it, by her silence; for, when the infinite in Nature speaks, the human voice may well be still. And how grand a voice was that which the cataract was speaking,—even to the outward ear! The “voice of many waters”—mighty as thunder, yet soft as a summer breeze—seemed to leave the whole being immersed and absorbed in the ceaseless rush and roar of the “Thunder of Waters”—the majesty of whose motion appeared to be, itself, repose.
This feeling deepened as they advanced nearer to the edge of the Horse-shoe Falls. They paused on Table Rock, so much less prominent than it used to be years ago. At every turn they paused, lost in the grandeur of the present impression. It was Kate who first roused them to a sense of the passage of time, and gave the order to proceed, for the afternoon was swiftly gliding by.
“Well!” said Hugh, “I never felt as if I had got so near the state of self-annihilation, the ‘Nirvana’ we read about. I don’t wonder at suicides here, under the fascinating influence of these rushing waters!”