I was next driven to the Inclined Railway, to descend which would enable me to see the Falls from below. Arrived there, I found an old lady cross-examining the attendant anent the safety of the railway, which, truth to tell, is somewhat appalling to look at, the incline being at an angle of thirty-one degrees. The motive-power is water, and what the old lady wanted to know was whether the water would hold out long enough to bring her back again.
"Niagara dry up in five minutes? Wal, old gal, that's clever! Guess this railway's bin workin' every day you have—forty-five years now."
The questioner, who had witnessed, at the least computation, sixty summers come and go, promptly vanished at this soft impeachment, and I descended alone.
INCLINED RAILWAY, NIAGARA.
Wonderful, magnificent as Niagara indubitably is, that sense which enables me to drink in and appreciate to the full Nature's works of sublime grandeur and vastness was ruined for the day. My eyes had beheld the "Three Sisters" in the rocks; after that they discovered faces in everything. They fell upon this mountain of ice and beheld spray that had frozen into a grinning mask. Cautiously I picked my way along the treacherous surface in the direction of its ear to see the spray rising up from the other side, when suddenly my feet slipped on the ice and I had had a fall as well as seen one.
In all probability this contretemps would have been avoided had I not been followed by one of those pests, a guide, the sight of whom caused me to make undue hurry over the frozen surface. Harpies of this ilk are the bane of sight-seeing all the world over.
My next performance was to drive through the town of wood for the purpose of striking the water at another point; this accomplishment being attended with the risk of being run over by passing trains, which run vindictively as well as promiscuously over the unprotected thoroughfares.
Having run this gauntlet successfully, I passed through a house which is a store containing photographs and mementoes of the place and a couple of persevering, persuasive maidens, whose efforts to make life a burden to you until you buy some of the rubbish are usually rewarded with unqualified success. After fighting my way through this edifice I was taken in hand by a juvenile guide, who discoursed in the orthodox fashion of his kind about the Whirlpool Rapid, pointed out where plucky, foolish Captain Webb met his death, crushed by the force of water, and, lower down, the spot where his body was found. Then my young chaperon unburdened himself of a string of horrors concerning men in barrels, insane women who from time to time have thrown themselves in, the little steamer whose occupants shot the rapids for a wager and nearly paid for their temerity with their lives, and many more similarly pleasant reminiscences were conjured up through Niagara's haze on this drizzly afternoon.
