Horseshoe Falls from Below.
Remembering always that the actual pitch is four octaves lower, here are the notes which form this matchless diapason:
Mrs. Van Rensselaer tells us there is yet another music at Niagara that must be listened for only on quiet nights. It is like the music of an orchestra so very far away that its notes are attenuated to an incredible delicacy and are intermittently perceived, as though wafted to us on variable zephyrs.
It is the most subtle, the most mysterious music in the world. What is its origin? Such fairy-like sounds are not to be explained. Their appeal is to the imagination only. They are so faint, so far away, that they almost escape the ear, as the lunar bow and the fluted tints of the American Fall almost escape the eye. And yet we need not fear to lose them, for they are as real as the deep bass of the cataracts.
Whether it be the resounding waterfall producing this wondrous harmony of the floods, or the most charming choral of the Rapids, the music of Niagara on the mind properly adjusted and attuned must create a most profound impression of repose. The exception to this rule, most terrible to contemplate, is certainly to be found in the cases of the unfortunates whose minds are so distraught or unbalanced that this same call of the waters acts like poison and lures them to death.
I still think [wrote Mr. Howells in his most delightful sketch, Niagara, First and Last] that, above and below the Falls, the Rapids are the most striking features of the spectacle. At least you may say something about them, compare them to something; when you come to the cataract itself you can say nothing; it is incomparable. My sense of it first, and my sense of it last, was not a sense of the stupendous, but a sense of beauty, of serenity, of repose.