The Falls looked at in this way, from a moving carriage suspended in the air, were somewhat dwarfed in height; of course we could get but a glimpse in passing in the night. We expected to have been stunned by the roar of the Falls, but our first surprise was at the awful silence; we could hear nothing but the tramp of the horses and the roll of the wheels as our carriage moved slowly along—all else was silent as the grave. Notwithstanding the moonlight, it was not clear enough to distinguish motion in the Falls above us or in the water far down beneath us. The great semicircular Horseshoe, as we passed along in front of it, looked as though a great white sheet had been thrown over its motionless face, and the foam and stir of the water below was fixed and immovable as in a painted picture.
No motion was to be discerned anywhere, the moonlight was too hazy. I assure you that was a weird and grand picture we saw last night; the Falls beheld dimly, indistinctly, and really through a glass darkly—and so we arrived at the Clifton House Hotel.
The next day arose, like every other we have yet seen on this American Continent, bright and beautiful. We had only one day to see everything, so we took a drive round.
I am not going to attempt a description or to rhapsodize over the Falls of Niagara—great authors have done so over and over again. Charles Dickens has moralized about them; Anthony Trollope has described them; William Black has painted their portraits in bright words—why should I attempt to describe them? To me these great waters seem to say, "Men may come and stare at us, and men may go, but we flow on irresistibly and for ever. We care nought for your staring, your admiration, your poetic fancies about us. We are matter-of-fact; stare as much as you please, but come not within our grip. Build your airy roads above us, span us over if you will, but know that death and destruction await him who dares to come within the proscribed limit of our rapids above or our whirlpools below. You may sail on our placid waters up yonder, your 'Maid of the Mist' may approach the outer circle of our Falls below, but come not within that circle, or we shall have you in a grip from which no power on earth shall save you." The scene, the picture, is indelibly impressed on my memory, and there it must remain. I will not spoil that picture by daring to paint it in feeble words.
We did what is usual in our limited time. We drove down to the Whirlpool, we crossed the suspension bridge, we wandered through Goat Island, we descended beneath the Horseshoe Falls to the utmost point allowed by the guide. We had our portraits taken in the subaquatic costume, but so hideously did they come out that we promptly suppressed them.
The people who live at the Falls are quite aware of it. Every individual regards them as his own property; even in the coldest weather dollars melt there like snow in summer's heat; so we were glad to get away from Niagara and its army of vampires.
Here at Niagara I fully expected letters from Frank. I have now been fourteen days in America, and he knows it, and yet not a line of welcome to these shores has he sent me. To-morrow we turn our faces to the West; surely at Chicago, which is 536 miles from hence, I shall get some news of him.
