The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

This bridge, a view of which is given in the cut below, is about two and a half miles below the falls, and spans the river near the head of the rapids, above the whirlpool. From pier to pier it is eight hundred feet long, and in breadth eight feet. It is suspended on eight wire cables, four on each side, which pass over towers fifty-four feet high, built of heavy timber. The present structure is only the scaffolding for constructing a larger bridge, intended for the passage of railroad cars. The towers for the large bridge will be of solid masonry, each eighty feet high. Each of the cables is eleven hundred feet long, and composed of seventy-two strong, No. 10 iron wires, closely wrapped round with small wire three times boiled in linseed oil, which anneals it, and prevents injury from rust or exposure to the weather. The cables, after passing over the piers on the banks, are fast anchored in solid masonry fifty feet back of them. The suspenders, which form the sides, are composed of eight wires each, and are four and a half feet apart. The bridge itself is two hundred feet above the water, and is a wonder alike of enterprise and art.

Our tourist proceeds as follows. “In the quiet reach of the water below this bridge, plies the little steamer, the Maid of the Mist. After passing the ugly, bustling little village growing up around the American extremity of the bridge, a path leads through quiet fields and woods along the very verge of the precipice. Here and there some tree growing upon the brink forms a safe balustrade over which you lean, and look down upon the green water dashing furiously through its confined channel far below.

“The whirlpool, three miles below the falls, is an adjunct worthy of Niagara. The stream makes a sharp bend just where the channel is narrowest and the descent of the rapids the steepest. At the angle the current has scooped out an immense basin, around whose whole circumference the water circles before it can find an outlet. All floating bodies that pass down the river are drawn into the whirlpool, where they are borne round and round for days, and weeks sometimes, it is said, before they make their escape. A practicable path winds down the bank to the water’s edge. The character of the banks gradually changes as we descend toward the outlet of the river. The hard limestone overlying the softer rock, and forming the perpendicular portion of the cliff, becomes thinner; the sloping talus at the foot grows higher, and the rocks are clothed with a luxurious forest growth. A half mile below the whirlpool is a deep cleft in the precipitous bank, which is connected with a wild Indian legend ascribing terrible convulsions of nature, and even the approach of the fatal white men, to an unauthorized violation of the privacy of a great demon who once abode here. This was the scene of a terrible tragedy in the old French wars. A convoy of British soldiers fell into an ambush of Indians at this point, and were all, with the exception of two, slain outright or driven over the edge of the chasm. The little rivulet which flows over the brink, ran red with the blood of the slaughtered, and thus gained the name, which it still bears, of the Bloody Run.

“Close by the Devil’s Hole, the railroad now in course of construction from Lewiston to the falls, gains the level of the top of the bank. From this point downward, it is excavated in the face of the cliff, forming a steep grade to its bottom. An almost continuous line of shanties, occupied by the laborers engaged in the excavation, extends along the very verge of the precipice. It was curious, as I passed along in the early April days, to see children whom we should scarcely trust out of the nurse’s arms, sprawling upon the very verge of the cliff. The laborers are apparently all Irish, and it is noteworthy to see how much more intelligent is the aspect of the younger than of the older children. I thought I could distinguish by their mere physical appearance, those who were born under the freer and happier auspices which surround them here. At the foot of the cliff the suspension bridge stretches like a slender thread across the stream, its supporting towers resting on a ledge above the level of the roadway. No line of guards watches the quiet frontiers of two great nations. The sole police is a small boy at the gate, and the only passport demanded is a shilling for toll. You climb the smooth slope to the summit, where the shattered monument to the noble Brock is the only memorial of the day when the thrice-won victory was at last wrenched from the hands of the Americans. A flock of sheep are cropping the tender herbage; a couple of lambs have found a shady resting-place in the crumbling archway of the monument. To the right the white village of Lewiston presents an aspect of bustling activity; while to the left, on the opposite Canadian shore, Queenstown rests gray and somber. At your feet, just below the dilapidated memorial of war, the bridge, symbol of union, binds the two shores: may it never be a pathway for the march of hostile armies!

“There are two or three things in the way of excursion which must sooner or later be performed. Some bright afternoon, when the west is all aglow, as you sit upon Table Rock, watching the clouds of spray momently torn from the face of the descending column, the guide with the hollow voice, whose mission is to conduct visitors behind the great sheet, presents himself. You commit yourself to his guidance, and donning the suit of yellow oil-skin, follow him down the spiral staircase, along the base of the precipice up to the verge of the cataract. You shudder, and hesitate to enter the blinding spray along that winding path, which seems in the dimness like a slender line drawn upon the face of the rock. The guide whispers a word of encouragement, deftly insinuating how boldly ‘the lady’ trod its slippery length. You take courage and advance. You can scarcely breathe, much less see; but you feel that the torrent is plunging from the immeasurable hight above into the unfathomable depth below. Somehow, how you hardly know, you have passed through the thick curtain of blinding spray, and are peering eagerly into the gray depth beyond. You are on Termination rock, and further than this mortal foot may never penetrate within the vail. Whichever way you turn, it is all cold gray mist, shrouding the overhanging rock and the overarching water above, and the profound depths below; all mist, cold gray mist above, below, around, except when you turn your eyes back along the path by which you entered, where you behold a strip of golden sky between the grim rock and the edge of the descending flood. Drenched and dripping, spent and exhausted, as a shipwrecked sailor flung by the surf upon some inhospitable shore, you follow your guide back along the misty path, and emerge gladly enough into the clear outer air, into the free sunshine, and beneath the bright sky. As you doff the heavy oil-skin integuments, a printed paper is put into your hand, certifying that you ‘have been under the great sheet of water, the distance of two hundred and forty feet from the commencement of the falls to the termination of Table Rock,’ verified by the signature of the proprietor of ‘Table Rock House.’ Your guide looks on you complacently, as though he would assure you that the great end of life was now attained, and you might take up your ‘Nunc dimittis.’

“Or you take your place upon the deck of the Maid of the Mist, hard by the suspension bridge, and are steamed up to the foot of the cataract. The little steamer answers but poorly to her romantic name. She swings wearily from her moorings, and goes panting and tugging up the current. Yet she manages to hold her course, unless the wind blows too strong down-stream, and slowly wins her way close up to the huge rocks on which the waters of the American fall are broken and shattered into the thickest of spray. In that spray a sharp and angry gust of wind tears a sudden rent, and through it you catch a glimpse of the green crest of the Horseshoe fall, sinking grandly into the ocean of vapor below. Or better still, if in some calm moonlight night, you glide, with the boatman, along the foot of the American fall, keeping just outside of the dark line of shadow, you will find there is nothing on earth so weird and ghost-like as the spectacle before you. The column of spray rises from the blackness below, like the specter of some gigantic tree, and spreads solemnly up into the clear air above.

“The mere summer tourist, however, sees but half the glory of Niagara. In the winter the great rocks at the foot of the fall are piled up with an accumulation of frozen spray to the depth of half a hundred feet. By creeping cautiously up the slippery ascent, you may stand face to face with the cataract, half-way up its giddy hight. Every shrub on its margin is loaded with glittering ice. The thick-branched evergreens are bowed beneath its weight, and bend to the ground like enormous plumes. The face of the cold gray rock is cased in the frozen element, and ribbed with pillars and pilasters which flash back the reflection of all the gems in the rays of the sun; and when in a clear, unclouded day, that sun shines down in its splendor, the scene is one of matchless magnificence and glory.”

Thus we have attempted a full description of Niagara; and yet words seem but feeble to set forth the magnificence and grandeur of the scene as it rises to the view of the actual beholder. There, in its vast volume and resistless power, it ever flows on with ceaseless, patient, unwearied tide. At midnight and noonday, through summer and winter, and seed-time and harvest, it is still the same. The drought of summer does not sensibly diminish, or the freshets of spring augment its mighty current. The scorching sun does not dry it up, and the chains of winter do not bind it. Emblem of God and of eternity, it rolls on, speaking in calm sublimity of Him who made it. Nor is sublimity the only characteristic of this greatest of waterfalls. There are traits of beauty, which seem even to highten the effect of its grandeur. The rainbow, ever playing in sunshine over its awful front, and seeming indifferent to the boiling whirlpool beneath; the tide of many-colored gems, into which the spray often seems converted, as it plunges over the rocks; the heaps of foam, white as wool, dancing on the billows that rush away from the foot of the fall; and more than all, an aspect of tranquillity and of repose, which settles upon the whole scene, when viewed at a little distance, are all incidents which blend in the majestic picture imprinted on the memory by this stupendous yet lovely work of nature’s God.

The falls of Niagara have been the frequent theme of poetry, but the following lines by Brainard are deemed the finest that have been produced upon the subject.