A gentleman to whom I told these remarks laughed heartily.--"That reminds me of a miller's wife who came from Black Rock, near Buffalo, last summer, to see the Falls. After standing here, and looking at them for some minutes, she drawled through her nose--'Well, I declare, is that all? And have I come eighteen miles to look at you? I might ha' spared myself the expense and trouble; my husband's mill-dam is as good a sight,--only it's not just as high.'"
This lady would certainly have echoed the sublime sentiment expressed by our friend the poet,--
"Oh, what a glorious place for washing sheep
Niagara would be!"
In the evening my husband hired a cab, and we drove to see the Upper Suspension Bridge. The road our driver took was very narrow, and close to the edge of the frightful precipice that forms at this place the bank of the river, which runs more than two hundred feet below.
The cabman, we soon discovered, was not a member of the temperance society. He was very much intoxicated; and, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, he drove furiously. I felt very timid and nervous. Sickness makes us sad cowards, and what the mind enjoys in health, becomes an object of fear when it is enfeebled and unstrung by bodily weakness.
My dear husband guessed my feelings, and placed himself in such a manner as to hide from my sight the danger to which we were exposed by our careless driver. In spite of the many picturesque beauties in our road, I felt greatly relieved when we drove up to the bridge, and our short journey was accomplished.
The Suspension Bridge on which we now stood--surveying from its dizzy height, two hundred and thirty feet above the water, the stream below--seems to demand from us a greater amount of interest than the one at Queenstone, from the fact of its having been the first experiment of the kind ever made in this country,--a grand and successful effort of mechanical genius over obstacles that appeared insurmountable.
The river is two hundred feet wider here than at Queenstone, and the bridge is of much larger dimensions. The height of the stone tower that supports it on the American side is sixty-eight feet, and of the wooden tower on the Canadian shore fifty feet. The number of cables for the bridge is sixteen; of strands in each cable, six hundred; of strands in the ferry-cable, thirty-seven, the diameter of which is seven-eighths of an inch. The ultimate tension is six thousand five hundred tons, and the capacity of the bridge five hundred. A passage across is thrillingly exciting.
The depth of the river below the bridge is two hundred and fifty feet, and the water partakes more largely of that singular deep green at this spot than I had remarked elsewhere. The American stage crossed the bridge as we were leaving it, and the horses seemed to feel the same mysterious dread which I have before described. A great number of strong wooden posts that support the towers take greatly from the elegance of this bridge; but I am told that these will shortly be removed, and their place supplied by a stone tower and buttresses. We returned by another and less dangerous route to the Clifton House, just in time to witness a glorious autumnal sunset.