NIAGARA GROWING UPON ME.
Everyone, even the clerk of the weather, had arranged that my visit to America should be pleasant. Niagara, to be seen at its best, must be viewed on a pouring wet day. I know few of my readers will accept this assertion as a serious fact, but it's true. It is just as true as the fact that the way to obtain the full flavour of strawberries is to put pepper on them, and that the sole method of fully relishing ham is to use a dash of champagne as a sauce. There are people who even in this enlightened age vegetate upon the face of the earth and know not these things, and a very great many more who do not know that they ought to select a soakingly wet day to appreciate the Falls of Niagara at their highest value.
It is not for the extra bucketful or so of water that you may behold, for that is imperceptible, but for the water you don't see. A fine day is a mistake, and the finer the day the greater the mistake, for the reason that distances appear nearer, and the scene as a picture appears contracted in consequence. But when the rain falls in torrents at your feet, and then gradually disappears in mist, it gives to the Falls a certain mystery and suggestion of vastness that cannot possibly be experienced by the spectator except upon a thoroughly wet, misty day.
Therefore I congratulated myself that I saw Niagara on my first visit at its wettest and best. Had I waited till the next day I could have gone to exactly the same points at Niagara and seen the same pictures, in water and colour of course, totally different in effect. You ought to allow at least three days instead of three hours to inspect Niagara. The first day ought to be wet, then one fine morning you should see it early and drive round it in the beautiful afternoon, and stroll there alone or otherwise by moonlight.
I ADMIRE THE GREAT HORSESHOE FALL.
There I stood under my umbrella, with the rain coming down in sheets and the spray and mist rising up, feeling that I must do one or both of two things—write poetry or commit suicide. I had just got to—
"Oh, dashing, splashing King of Water,
Is that mist thy lovely daughter?
Tell me, through thy roar and thunder,
Canst thou——"
when the crack of a whip brought me to my senses. It was produced by my faithful driver, who had come in search of me. I was saved.
He explained to me the wonders of the Great Horseshoe Fall (who more able to do this than a driver?), and wound up by saying: