Here the guide sheltered me again, and desired me 'to look up; I did so, and could see, as before, the green gleam of the mighty curve sweeping over the "dipper ledge, and the fitful plunge of the water, as the spray between us and it alternately gathered and disappeared. An eminent friend of mine often speaks of the mistake of those physicians who regard man's ailments as purely chemical, to be met by chemical remedies only. He contends for the psychological element of cure. By agreeable emotions, he says, nervous currents are liberated which stimulate blood, brain, and viscera. The influence rained from ladies' eyes enables my friend to thrive on dishes which would kill him if eaten alone. A sanative effect of the same order I experienced amid the spray and thunder of Niagara. Quickened by the emotions there aroused, the blood sped exultingly through the arteries, abolishing introspection, clearing the heart of all bitterness, and enabling one to think with tolerance, if not with tenderness, on the most relentless and unreasonable foe. Apart from its scientific value, and purely as a moral agent, the play was worth the candle. My companion knew no more of me than that I enjoyed the wildness of the scene; but as I bent in the shelter of his large frame he said, 'I should like to see you attempting to describe all this.' He rightly thought it indescribable. The name of this gallant fellow was Thomas Conroy.
We returned, clambering at intervals up and down, so as to catch glimpses of the most impressive portions of the cataract. We passed under ledges formed by tabular masses of limestone, and through some curious openings formed by the falling together of the summits of the rocks. At length we found ourselves beside our enemy of the morning. Conroy halted for a minute or two, scanning the torrent thoughtfully. I said that, as a guide, he ought to have a rope in such a place; but he retorted that, as no traveller had ever thought of coming there, he did not see the necessity of keeping a rope. He waded in. The struggle to keep himself erect was evident enough; he swayed, but recovered himself again and again. At length he slipped, gave way, did as I had done, threw himself towards the bank, and was swept into the shallows. Standing in the stream near its edge, he stretched his arm towards me. I retained the pitchfork handle, for it had been useful among the boulders. By wading some way in, the staff could be made to reach him, and I proposed his seizing it. 'If you are sure,' he replied, 'that, in case of giving way, you can maintain your grasp, then I will certainly hold you.' Remarking that he might count on this, I waded in, and stretched the staff to my companion. It was firmly grasped by both of us. Thus helped, though its onset was strong, I moved safely across the torrent. All danger ended here. We afterwards roamed sociably among the torrents and boulders below the Cave of the Winds. The rocks were covered with organic slime, which could not have been walked over with bare feet, but the felt shoes effectually prevented slipping. We reached the cave and entered it, first by a wooden way carried over the boulders, and then along a narrow ledge, to the point eaten deepest into the shale. When the wind is from the south, the falling water, I am told, can be seen tranquilly from this spot; but when we were there, a blinding hurricane of spray was whirled against us. On the evening of the same day, I went behind the water on the Canada side, which, after the experiences of the morning, struck me as an imposture.
Still even this latter is exciting to some nerves. Its effect upon himself is thus vividly described by Bakewell, jun.: 'On turning a sharp angle of the rock, a sudden gust of wind met us, coming from the hollow between the fall and the rock, which drove the spray directly in our faces, with such force that in an instant we were wet through. When in the midst of this shower-bath the shock took away my breath: I turned back and scrambled over the loose stones to escape the conflict. The guide soon followed, and told me that I had passed the worst part. With that assurance I made a second attempt; but so wild and disordered was my imagination that when I had reached half way I could bear it no longer.' [Footnote: 'Mag. of Nat. Hist.,' 1830, pp. 121, 122.]
To complete my knowledge I desired to see the fall from the river below it, and long negotiations were necessary to secure the means of doing so. The only boat fit for the undertaking had been laid up for the winter; but this difficulty, through the kind intervention of Mr. Townsend, was overcome. The main one was to secure oarsmen sufficiently strong and skilful to urge the boat where I wished it to be taken. The son of the owner of the boat, a finely-built young fellow, but only twenty, and therefore not sufficiently hardened, was willing to go; and up the river, it was stated, there lived another man who could do anything with the boat which strength and daring could accomplish. He came. His figure and expression of face certainly indicated extraordinary firmness and power. On Tuesday, November 5, we started, each of us being clad in oilcloth. The elder oarsman at once assumed a tone of authority over his companion, and struck immediately in amid the breakers below the American Fall. He hugged the cross freshets instead of striking out into the smoother water. I asked him why he did so, and he replied that they were directed outwards, not downwards. The struggle, however, to prevent the bow of the boat from being turned by them, was often very severe.
The spray was in general blinding, but at times it disappeared and yielded noble views of the fall. The edge of the cataract is crimped by indentations which exalt its beauty. Here and there, a little below the highest ledge, a secondary one juts out; the water strikes it and bursts from it in huge protuberant masses of foam and spray. We passed Goat Island, came to the Horseshoe, and worked for a time along its base, the boulders over which Conroy and myself had scrambled a few days previously lying between us and the cataract. A rock was before us, concealed and revealed at intervals, as the waves passed over it. Our leader tried to get above this rock, first on the outside of it. The water, however, was here in violent motion. The men struggled fiercely, the older one ringing out an incessant peal of command and exhortation to the younger. As we were just clearing the rock, the bow came obliquely to the surge; the boat was turned suddenly round and shot with astonishing rapidity down the river. The men returned to the charge, now trying to get up between the half-concealed rock and the boulders to the left. But the torrent set in strongly through this channel. The tugging was quick and violent, but we made little way. At length, seizing a rope, the principal oarsman made a desperate attempt to get upon one of the boulders, hoping to be able to drag the boat through the channel; but it bumped so violently against the rock, that the man flung himself back and relinquished the attempt.
We returned along the base of the American Fall, running in and out among the currents which rushed from it laterally into the river. Seen from below the American Fall is certainly exquisitely beautiful, but it is a mere frill of adornment to its nobler neighbour the Horseshoe. At times we took to the river, from the centre of which the Horseshoe Fall appeared especially magnificent. A streak of cloud across the neck of Mont Blanc can double its apparent height, so here the green summit of the cataract shining above the smoke of spray appeared lifted to an extraordinary elevation. Had Hennepin and La Hontan seen the fall from this position, their estimates of the height would have been perfectly excusable.
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From a point a little way below the American Fall, a ferry crosses the river, in summer, to the Canadian side. Below the ferry is a suspension bridge for carriages and foot-passengers, and a mile or two lower down is the railway suspension bridge. Between ferry and bridge the river Niagara flows unruffled; but at the suspension bridge the bed steepens and the river quickens its motion. Lower down the gorge narrows, and the rapidity and turbulence increase. At the place called the 'Whirlpool Rapids' I estimated the width of the river at 300 feet, an estimate confirmed by the dwellers on the spot. When it is remembered that the drainage of nearly half a continent is compressed into this space, the impetuosity of the river's rush may be imagined. Had it not been for Mr. Bierstädt, the distinguished photographer of Niagara, I should have quitted the place without seeing these rapids; for this, and for his agreeable company to the spot, I have to thank him. From the edge of the cliff above the rapids, we descended, a little, I confess, to a climber's disgust, in an 'elevator,' because the effects are best seen from the water level.
Two kinds of motion are here obviously active, a motion of translation and a motion of undulation — the race of the river through its gorge, and the great waves generated by its collision with, and rebound from, the obstacles in its way. In the middle of the river the rush and tossing are most violent; at all events, the impetuous force of the individual waves is here most strikingly displayed. Vast pyramidal heaps leap incessantly from the river, some of them with such energy as to jerk their summits into the air, where they hang momentarily suspended in crowds of liquid spherules. The sun shone for a few minutes. At times the wind, coming up the river, searched and sifted the spray, carrying away the lighter drops, and leaving the heavier ones behind. Wafted in the proper direction, rainbows appeared and disappeared fitfully in the lighter mist. In other directions the common gleam of the sunshine from the waves and their shattered crests was exquisitely beautiful. The complexity of the action was still further illustrated by the fact, that in some cases, as if by the exercise of a local explosive force, the drops were shot radially from a particular centre, forming around it a kind of halo.
The first impression, and, indeed, the current explanation of these rapids is, that the central bed of the river is cumbered with large boulders, and that the jostling, tossing, and wild leaping of the water there, are due to its impact against these obstacles. I doubt this explanation. At all events, there is another sufficient reason to be taken into account. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave, there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with he river-motion. The ridges, which in still water would proceed in circular curves round the centre of disturbance, cross the river obliquely, and the result is that at the centre waves commingle, which have really been generated at the sides. In the first instance, we had a composition of wave-motion with river-motion; here we have the coalescence of waves with waves. Where crest and furrow cross each other, the motion is annulled; where furrow and furrow cross, the river is ploughed to a greater depth; and where crest and crest aid each other, we have that astonishing leap of the water which breaks the cohesion of the crests, and tosses them shattered into the air. From the water level the cause of the action is not so easily seen; but from the summit of the cliff the lateral generation of the waves, and their propagation to the perfectly obvious. If this explanation be correct, the phenomena observed at the Whirlpool Rapids form one of the grandest illustrations of the principle of interference. The Nile 'cataract,' Mr. Huxley informs me, offers more moderate examples of the same action.