Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

A gradual approach does not at all diminish the power of the cataract, and the mind is rather unduly excited by the aspect of the Styx-like flood—black, foam-crested, and of great volume, with every indication of profound depth—which hurries on so swiftly and so furiously below the road on which you are travelling, between banks cut down through grim, dark rock, so sheer that the tops of the upper trees which take root in the strata can be nearly touched by the traveller’s stick. The idea that the whole of the great river beneath you has just leaped over a barrier of rock prepares one’s conception for the greatness of the cataract itself.

In summer time there were wild ducks flying about, and terns darted up and down the stream. Now it was deserted and desolate, looking of more inky hue in contrast with the snow. Close to the boiling cataract the fishermen’s tiny barks might then be seen rocking up and down, or the angler sought the bass which loves those turbulent depths; but no such signs of human life and industry are visible in winter.

Before Niagara was, odd creatures enough lived about here, which can now be detected fossilised in the magnesian limestone. How many myriads of years it has been eating away its dear heart and gnawing the rock let Sir Charles Lyell or Sir Roderick Murchison calculate; but I am persuaded that since I saw it some months ago there has been a change in the aspect of the Horseshoe Fall, and that it has become more deeply curved. The residents, however, though admitting the occurrence of changes, say they are very slow, and that no very rapid alteration has taken place since the fall of a great part of Table Rock some years ago: but masses of stone may be washed away every day without their knowing it.

One very natural consequence of a visit in the winter was undeniable—that the Falls were visibly less: they did not extend so far, and they rolled with diminished volume. The water did not look so pure, and incredible icicles and hanging glaciers obscured the outlines of the rocks and even intruded on the watercourse; whilst the trees above, laden with snow, stood up like inverted icicles again, and rendered it difficult to define the boundary between earth, air, and water.

A noiseless drive brought us to the village. Clifton House was deserted—the windows closed, the doors fastened. No gay groups disported on the promenade; but the bird-stuffer’s, the Jew’s museum, the photographer’s shed, the Prince’s triumphal arch, were still extant; and the bazaars, where they sell views, seashells, Indian beadwork and feathers, moccasins, stuffed birds, and the like, were open and anxious for customers. Our party was a godsend; but the worthy Israelite, who has collected such an odd museum here—one, under all the circumstances, most creditable to his industry and perseverance as well as liberality—said that travellers came pretty often in fine winter weather to look at the cataract. We walked in our moccasins to the Table Rock, and thence to the verge of the Falls, and gazed in silence on the struggling fury of the terrible Rapids, which seem as if they wrestled with each other like strong men contending against death, and fighting to the last till the fatal leap must be made.

The hateful little wooden staircases, which like black slugs crawl up the precipice from the foot of the Falls, caught the eyes of my companions; and when they were informed that they could go down in safety and get some way behind the Fall itself, the place was invested with a new charm, and ice, rheumatism, and the like, were set at defiance. I knew what it was in summer, and the winter journey did not seem very tempting; but there was no alternative, and the party returned to the museum to prepare for the descent.

Whilst we were waiting for our waterproof dresses to go under the Falls, we had an opportunity of surveying the changes produced by winter, and I was the more persuaded that the effect is not so favourable as that of summer. The islands are covered with snow—that which divides the sweep of the cataract looking unusually large; the volume of water, diminished in the front, is also deprived of much of its impressive force by a decrease in the sound produced by its fall. The edges of the bank, covered with glistening slabs of ice, were not tempting to the foot, and could not be approached with the confidence with which they are trod by one of steady nerves when the actual brink is visible.

There were some peculiarities, however, worthy of note; and in a brighter day, possibly the effect of the light on the vast ranges of icicles, and on the fantastic shapes into which the snow is cut on the rocks at the margin of the waters, might be very beautiful. These rocks now looked like a flock of polar bears, twined in fantastic attitudes, or extended singly and in groups by the brink as if watching for their prey. Above them rose the bank, now smooth and polished, with a fringe of icicles—some large as church steeples; above them, again, the lines of the pine trees, draped in white, and looking like church steeples too. At one side, near Table Rock, the icicles were enormous, and now and then one fell with a hissing noise, and was dashed on the rock into a thousand gliding ice arrows, or plunged into the gulf.

By this time our toilette-room was ready, and each man, taking off his overcoat, was encased in a tarpaulin suit with a sou’-wester. In this guise we descended the spiral staircase, which is carried in a perpendicular wooden column down the face of the bank near Table Rock, or what remains of it, to the rugged margin, formed of boulders now more slippery than glass.

Our guide, a strapping specimen of negro or mulatto, in thick solid ungainly boots, planted his splay feet on them with certainty, and led us by the treacherous path down towards the verge of the torrent, which now seemed as though it were rushing from the very heavens. On our left boiled the dreadful caldron from which the gushing bubbles, as if overjoyed to escape, leaped up, and with glad effervescence rushed from the abyss which plummet never sounded. On our right towered the sheer precipice of rock, now overhanging us, and garnished with rows of giant teeth-like icicles.