The last rays of the setting sun had disappeared behind the grey hills, and the moon shed her soft clear light over the landscape. The shadow of the tower stretched across the abyss; farther down the stream the water glided silently along, crowned with a light mist. The Canadian shore, already plunged in darkness, contrasted vividly with the moon-lit banks of Goat Island, and the village of Niagara Falls. Below us, the gulf, magnified by the uncertain light, looked like a bottomless abyss, in which roared the formidable torrent. What effect! What artist could ever depict such a scene, either with the pen or paint-brush? For some minutes a moving light appeared on the horizon; it was the signal light of a train crossing the Niagara bridge at a distance of two miles from us. Here we remained silent and motionless on the top of the tower until midnight, leaning over the waters which possessed such a fascination. Once, when the moon-beams caught the liquid dust at a certain angle, I had a glimpse of a milky band of transparent ribbon trembling in the shadows. It was a lunar rainbow, a pale irradiation of the queen of the night, whose soft light was refracted through the mist of the cataract.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The next day, the 13th of April, the Doctor’s programme announced a visit to the Canadian shore. We had only to follow the heights of the bank of the Niagara for two miles to reach the suspension bridge. We started at seven o’clock in the morning. From the winding path on the right bank we could see the tranquil waters of the river, which no longer felt the perturbation of its fall.
At half-past seven we reached the suspension bridge. It is the bridge, on which the Great Western and New York Central Railroads meet, and the only one which gives access to Canada on the confines of the State of New York. This suspension bridge is formed of two platforms; the upper one for trains, and the lower for carriages and pedestrians. Imagination seems to lose itself in contemplating this stupendous work. This viaduct, over which trains can pass, suspended at a height of two hundred and fifty feet above the Niagara, again transformed into a rapid at this spot. This suspension bridge, built by John A. Roebling, of Trenton[Trenton] (New Jersey), is eight hundred feet long, and twenty-four wide; the iron props fastened to the shore prevent it from swinging; the chains which support it, formed of four thousand wires, are ten inches in diameter, and can bear a weight of twelve thousand four hundred tons. The bridge itself weighs but eight hundred tons, and cost five hundred thousand dollars. Just as we reached the centre a train passed over our heads, and we felt the platform bend under its weight.
It is a little below this bridge that Blondin crossed the Niagara, on a rope stretched from one shore to the other, and not, as is generally supposed, across the falls. However, the undertaking was none the less perilous; but if Blondin astonished us by his daring, what must we think of his friend who accompanied him, riding on his back during this aerial promenade?
“Perhaps he was a glutton,” said the Doctor, “and Blondin made wonderful omelets on his tight-rope.”
We were now on Canadian ground, and we walked up the left bank of the Niagara, in order to see the Falls under a new aspect. Half an hour later we reached the English hotel, where the Doctor ordered our breakfast, whilst I glanced through the “Travellers’ Book,” where figured several thousand names: among the most celebrated I noticed the following:—Robert Peel, Lady Franklin, Comte de Paris, Duc de Chartres, Prince de Joinville, Louis Napoleon (1846), Prince and Princess Napoleon, Barnum (with his address), Maurice Sand (1865), Agassis (1854), Almonte, Prince Hohenlohe, Rothschild, Bertin (Paris), Lady Elgin, Burkhardt (1832), &c.
“And now let us go under the Falls,” said the Doctor to me, when we had finished breakfast.
I followed Dean Pitferge. A negro conducted us to the dressing-room, where we were provided with waterproof trousers, macintoshes, and glazed hats. Thus equipped, our guide led us down a slippery path, obstructed by sharp-edged stones, to the lower level of the Niagara. Then we passed behind the great fall through clouds of spray, the cataract falling before us like the curtain of a theatre before the actors. But what a theatre! Soaked, blinded, deafened, we could neither see nor hear in this cavern as hermetically closed by the liquid sheets of the cataract as though Nature had sealed it in by a wall of granite.
