But not so in the peaceful retreat of Niagara’s eternal cataract. There the mind may rest from anxiety. The spectator may sit, and see, and hear, and never grow weary of the scene. He may change his position. He may walk along the banks of the majestic current, from the entrance of Chippewa’s dark waters, following its course, and witnessing how the flood begins to make haste. He may see the glassy surface beginning to be disturbed by the increased rapidity; and now the vast volume leaping a shelf, and showing the form of an ocean wave; and now leaping another shelf, and another, and yet another, until the mighty torrent, descending a steep declivity, bounds over its broken and craggy bed, itself as yet unbroken, so deep and measureless the flood. Then he marks the earnestness, the very passion of its career, as if it were glad to burst at once from its confinements above, and eager to plunge into the abyss below. He who has seen the troubled ocean after a storm, has only to imagine those heaving billows descending a mountain side, himself looking up from below on their downward course, and it is the very picture presented from the table rock of Niagara, as the spectator, turning his back on the chasm, with the cataract immediately on his left, faces the descending torrent, and lifts his eye on the mountain declivity of waters, which comes leaping, and rolling, and tumbling, as if from the clouds, or the azure heavens which peer above the tops of the waves. And this only a preparation for the fall—a collection and multiplication of forces for the stupendous leap. Next the enrapt beholder turns his eye upon the curvilinear margin of the awful shelf; he bends to look downward from his giddy elevation, and there an ocean of waters, which he had just seen rushing with most alarming impetuosity from above, now plunges into the abyss, as if to drive asunder the base of the hills. The firm rock, on which he stands, shudders—himself shudders, while the roar, and tumult, and tempest of the chasm send up their thunders to his ear, and drive the currents of their watery mist like the whirlwind in their windings and fitful moods, and with all the force of the tornado.
He may descend, if he will, (and he must be alike wanting in courage and taste if he declines) to the level which these waters have formed by their daring leap. There, housed beneath the impending and lofty crag, itself jutting far out over the bosom of the deep, as if curious to witness more and all of the scene, himself may look up on that which just now, bending from above, he had looked down upon. And now he has before him nought but the mighty cataract, like an ocean, spilling itself in one vast sheet from those regions of the heavens, where the highest stars are seen at night, and where the summer’s sun walks in his strength at mid-day. And let him not fear the whirling eddies of the suspended waters, thrown out from the thickest of the tumult, and dashing upon him now their softer mists, and now their sheets of a driving storm. He should brave all this, and more, if he would see what every brave man should see. He must take the hand of a competent guide, and make his circuit over the broken fragments of the rocks, far round and underneath the projecting and awful shelf, over which the mighty tide takes its final plunge. And when perchance an eddying blast shall burst upon him, he must hug the rock till its transient fury is exhausted, and then push on, still resorting to the same expedient on the recurrence of a like exigency, until he has gone as far as man may dare to go, and turns and sits him down to face the inner face of this strange vision. Then, indeed, he will find himself in the midst of an awful tempest, menaced and assaulted on all sides by whirlwind blasts, and enlightened only with the light which the whitened foam reflects on that dark cavern; but still in safe condition, except the rare chance of the fall of some fragment of the rocks above, for ever oppressed and shaken as they are by the superincumbent and rushing flood. Of that, however, he must not think; in such predicament it were unpleasant. The last fall of the kind, a few years since, which brought ten thousand tons, or more, in a single mass, happened in the night,—and so may the next; and the next may be centuries to come. Let him rather make the best of his daring; and not only be able to say that he has been there, but feel that it was a rare and enviable privilege. Who can well imagine the wild commotion and deafening uproar of the scene? The loudest piping of the ocean blast, and the fiercest march of its mountain wave, are a mere lullaby song to the thunder of this encounter.
The visitor will not fail to cross to the American side, as it is called,—as though Canada were not in America. And this vice is well enough understood here, where it originated—or rather the compliment done to the United States and her citizens, by making them the representatives of the entire continent, and alluding to them, as if they were its sole lords and occupants. Are the United States so important, as to be entitled to this high distinction of standing for America, and that Americans should every where be the synonyme of citizens of that republic? What accident has given so small a portion of that world such a prominence?
The notices we have already taken of Niagara Falls have been from the Canada side, which are altogether most interesting, and the views most sublime. For a relief of the almost painful emotions, by which the mind of the beholder has been exercised,—at one time excited in admiration, now rapt in ecstacy, and now overwhelmed by the mingled effect of grandeur and tumult and fury,—let him throw himself into a small boat on the bosom of Niagara, directly under the Falls, where, conscious of safety, though tossed like a feather in the fitful wind by the boilings of that unfathomable linn, or basin, where the waters, which a moment before sprung in such mighty volume from the brow of yonder precipice, now heave and roll and break in eddies of fearful aspect, as if to give expression to their pain and agony, or vent to the joy of their escape;—on such a sea of foam, where the last breath of the conflict is evidently spent, and the agitated element labouring to be composed, he may rest and float secure, and look at the base, and look midway, and lift his eye to the summit of that unceasing, never-dying cataract. He may estimate its superficial dimensions, he may imagine its depth, and wonder still at its roar and tumult. From the same position he may turn his eye to the left of Goat Island, on the American side, and witness a still more lofty cataract, but more modest, not yet presuming to assert such profound pretensions, descending in a silvery sheet, as if from an artificial shelf, connecting the island with the shore; and dashing on the rocks below, displays a vast bed of fleecy whiteness, like a storm of the thickest and purest snow, reflected by the sun.
At the head of the rapids, about one mile from the Falls in direct line, but from two to three miles by the line of the Canada shore, the river is divided by the island above named, turning, perhaps, one-tenth of the current to the American side. This smaller portion would be a great river by itself—and the channel through which it descends, and the final plunge of its waters, are in many respects more romantic, though less grand and awful, than the course and fall of the principal torrent. The shelf of the cataract on the American side is to the eye and in fact higher than the point of the Horse Shoe, as it is called, where is the greatest depth and force of the river, as it leaps from the precipice. This single feature of superior elevation gives advantage to the American side, and in this particular it stands invested in a more majestic form. But the deep, and comparatively unperturbed current descending from the Horse Shoe, suggests the vastness of its volume, imparts to it the highest consideration, and chains the mind with the intensest interest.
By the noble enterprise of a wealthy individual, Judge Porter, a bridge has been thrown across from the American shore to Goat Island, directly over the most impetuous current of the rapids, and but a few rods above the fall—an almost incredible achievement of human art, and of human power over natural obstacles. To facilitate the undertaking, there happened to be the natural abutment of an islet midway the channel, saving the necessity of more than two or three additional ones, which were sunk and secured at great expense and difficulty. By this means, this heretofore inaccessible island, covered with wood, a most beautiful and romantic retreat, has been opened to free and easy access; and one of the most advantageous views of the Falls is to be gained from its brow, hanging between the two cataracts. The passage across this bridge is somewhat frightful, from the rapidity of the current, and the startling thought of hanging suspended over a torrent, so fiercely dashing onward, to leap the next moment from such a giddy height. The mind at once begins to calculate the chances of some accident to the bridge. The bare possibility of the sudden slide of a pier, over which you stand, from the face of the rock, on which it rests, and the inevitable consequence, shocks the feelings with the shuddering sensation of horror; and the hastened step of the passenger will sufficiently indicate the involuntary impulse by which he has been overtaken. No one, however, should deny himself the gratification of visiting the island. It is like as if a bridge had been made to the moon, once as unexpected, and deemed alike impossible.
The views and aspects of this great wonder of nature are susceptible of almost infinite change by the change of position: and there it is, the same great work of God for ever and for ever, in constant life and motion. There is no curtain to hide the exhibition—there is no machinery in it, the wires of which are subject to human control. Its fountains are never dried, its torrents are never, like other floods, increased or diminished. There it is, the same for ever and for ever. Notwithstanding a world of waters have fallen this hour, a world of waters shall fall the next hour. To-morrow shall be as this day, and a century to come as a century past. The lover of nature’s magnificence and nature’s beauties may wander there without fear of satiety—with ever growing and yet a keener appetite. He may choose his bed on the brow of the chasm, and near the fearful plunge, so that the walls of his habitation, and the couch on which he reposes, shall sympathise with the ceaseless vibrations of the earth and rocks, and himself literally be rocked to sleep by the hand and music of the mighty waters. In his half-waking moments he shall know, because he will feel, that he is there. In the visions of his deepest slumbers, still shaken by the concussions of all nature around, he shall be admonished, that he is there. Of that which he saw by day he shall dream by night—and he shall see it even then in forms of as much greater magnificence, and of as much more attractive beauties, or dressed in a wildness as much more amazing, as dreams are more remarkable, than the sober thoughts of a wakeful hour. He may rise in the morning, and visit the scene with ever fresh delight; and at noon, and when the sun declines, and by the light of the moon, or under the stars alone, or when the tempest scowls at midnight hour, and mingles its thunders with the thunders of the abyss in rival effort, and lays the broad sheets of its fire on the foam of the waters: and he will never say—it is enough.
CHAPTER II.
THE WHIRLPOOL.
From Niagara Falls, long familiar with their various features, as above described, the author of these pages took it in his head to make a distant excursion, in the summer of 1830, into the wild regions of the North West, tenanted principally by savages, as they are commonly called, but more reverently by the aboriginal inhabitants of North America. The method selected of getting there was by the Lakes, and the point of embarkation, Buffalo.
It is proper, perhaps, for the information of the British reader, to describe, briefly, the map and geographical relations of this region. There are probably few who have looked upon the map of North America, that have not had the curiosity to ascertain the situation of Niagara Falls. And they have found them upon that current, which connects Lake Ontario with Lake Erie, called Niagara river, and in length about thirty miles—it being one of the channels in connexion, by which the waters of that vast and notorious chain of inland seas, in North America, are disembogued into the gulf of St. Lawrence, and thence into the Atlantic. The Falls are distant ten miles from the southern margin of Lake Ontario, and twenty miles from the foot of Lake Erie, and four miles south of Queenston and Lewiston heights, the latter constituting the elevation, or brow above Lake Ontario, down which the waters of Lake Erie must plunge in their way to the ocean. And the deep chasm between the falls and the heights, occupied by the river after its fall, four miles in length, before the agitated current finds a breathing place in the open plains below, and prepares itself to glide placidly into the lake, is supposed by geologists to have been formed by the wear and tear of this tremendous cataract, for a succession of ages not to be counted. For the geologist, especially if he be a Frenchman, does not deem himself obliged to regard the world’s history, as suggested by the scriptural account of the Deluge, and of the antediluvian periods. Doubtless, if the wear of this chasm is to be estimated by its progress since known to the present civilized world, and according to this theory, it will be quite necessary to resort to some such authority as the Chinese historical records, or to the theory of a philosopher’s brain, to solve this geological problem.[2]