CHAPTER XVII
It was 2 dial the next morning, when Cobb and Hugh reached Niagara. The night was beautiful, but the weather cold, and it was with pleasure that the two men reached the hotel, and ensconced themselves by the side of a real coal fire, as Cobb called it.
The stillness of the night was a source of surprise to Cobb, as he heard not that thundering, deafening roar of the mighty cataract which had always heretofore greeted him upon his arrival at the falls.
The next morning Cobb and Hugh were up early, and, after a hearty breakfast, proceeded in the direction of the old inclined railways where Cobb had so often, in former years, made love and talked nonsense to the pretty girls of Niagara.
A different sight met his eyes as he neared the balcony where formerly the best view of the grand falls was to be obtained. Niagara was still a mighty cataract, but not half the volume of water which had passed over its precipitous edge in former days now flowed over the walls of rock. Where formerly the great mass of surging, foamy floods rushed out over the top to a distance of fifty feet, and fell in one unbroken blue sheet into the boiling torrent below, now was a lighter sheet of white and broken water.
Two artificial streams, one on either side of the river, below the falls, the beds for which had been carved out of the precipitous banks which marked the erosive power of the stream, carried an immense flow seven miles down the river.
Along the banks, and from one hundred to seventy-five feet below the canals, were rows of houses of similar construction and color. From every house, in either line, poured forth a torrent of water which rushed and leaped down the rocks to the stream below. Electric wires and huge cables were to be seen in every direction.
Turning back from the novel scene in front of him, Cobb moved nearer the edge of the balcony, and looked over towards the base of the falls. Great masses of ice rose from the depths below, half obscuring his view; but the field was clear enough for him to ascertain that a new order of phenomena had taken place since his last advent there. It seemed as if a hundred gigantic mouths in the face of the cliff were belching forth mighty torrents of seething, foamy water.