Did you chance at nightfall to drive or walk about Goat Island, and hear the chattering and cawing of myriads of crows, which blackened the tree tops? This is their rendezvous, and the woods are alive with them, and their weird sounds at dusk, added to that ever present, sullen roar, produce an unearthly and fantastic effect. Did not your breath almost forsake your body when you crossed to the three fair sisters lying so peacefully far out in the midst of that seething, tumbling, foaming hell of waters?
At night you saw the electric lights turned on the American Fall, playing now with sulphuric effect, now giving a ghastly, blue appearance, and now turning this white, pure Undine to a very Scarlet Woman. The day on which you first saw these pictures will long be marked with a red letter in your calendar.
But, sublime as is the physical beauty of Niagara, we have to deal with quite another phase of her character; one of which the tourist, limited by time, seldom thinks. It is only after becoming familiar with every inch of her picturesque surroundings, after spending days and weeks drinking in her superb beauty, content to sit, oblivious of time or space, or sun or sky, that one at last remembers that for many miles around the ground is covered with the footprints of history. Ground that has echoed the thundering tread of armies, that has been drunken with the blood of brave men, that now smiles peacefully, from which violets spring, and on which children play.
“Once this soft turf, this rivulet’s sands
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encountered in the battle cloud.
“Now all is calm and fresh and still,
Alone the chirp of flitting bird
And talk of children on the hill,