NIAGARA.
A RECENT tour to Niagara, in affording welcome recreation, gave me opportunity to look upon this stupendous curiosity. I had had years ago a faint foresight in observing, at a favorable season, Passaic Falls. The river at these falls is forty yards wide, and one entire sheet of water descends seventy feet. The cascade presented a unique scene of beauty, and has been regarded as the greatest curiosity in "the State of the Broad Seal." But the Falls of Niagara far outreach all comparison. They are really stupendous, and challenge the world to outvie them in grandeur. On first witnessing them, your sensations are peculiar. Your nature becomes suffused with a sublimity of feeling. A fulmination of "the great and glorious" strikes one to silent amazement. With a "pleasing terror," akin to grandeur, you approach the precipice, and gaze unweariedly upon the wonderful cataract.
I proceeded without refreshing my memory with any account of the wonder. Conversation touching the falls, with all fulsome descriptions, I had avoided. I beheld them from many points of observation, at evening, in the morning, and during the sunny day. I was sensible that the great natural curiosity of the New World had presented itself to my view. The sense of grandeur augmented with repeated observations. No description can adequately convey an idea of their true sublimity.
Niagara has had many admirers. Some, in their descriptions, have been borne very far by fancy; others have given occasional circumstances as the general. The precipice which produces the cataract was said to be not less than six hundred feet. This was an account of an early tourist. It does not, in reality, exceed one hundred and sixty feet. "The noise is such," says Father Hennepin, "that people distant from it several miles cannot hear each other speak." At some seasons, and at particular times, the roar of the cataract is very loud, and is heard for many miles; but it would be exceeding strange if found so deafening as indicated by the above account. "As the traveller advances," says Howison, "he is frightfully stunned by the appalling noise, clouds of spray sometimes envelop him, and suddenly check his faltering steps; rattlesnakes start from the cavities of the rocks; and the scream of eagles soaring among the whirlwinds of the cataract, at intervals, announce that the raging waters have hurled some bewildered animal over the precipice." These intervals, at present, are very long.
When the red man gazed exclusively upon the cataract, it is supposed it was of greater height than now. Not only, indeed, of greater height, but that it was differently located. The intelligent geologist maintains that the falls were once at Lewiston, and that they must eventually recede to Lake Erie. Thus, any poetical apostrophe to Niagara which sings, "As creation's dawn beholdst," &c., loses its verity. As years wind on, the falls must gradually become less grand as their height decreases; and, "Lake Erie being drained, they will sink to the wild beauty and hoarse roar of the rapids." Accurate observation proves that the falls wear backward a trifle over a foot each year, having receded forty-two feet in the last forty years. Many thousands of years have gone by since the falls were on the borders of the Ontario, and over another hundred thousand years must pass ere they retire to the sister lake.
At the efflux from Lake Erie, Niagara River is three-quarters of a mile wide, and from forty to sixty feet deep. Its current flows at the rate of seven miles an hour. As it proceeds, the river widens and imbosoms Grand and Navy Islands, which terminate in points a mile and a half above the falls.
Below these islands are rapids which extend a mile to the precipice, in which space the river descends fifty-seven feet. Down these rapids the stream rushes, foaming and dashing, giving to the beholder a wild scene of novel interest. Goat Island divides the river into two courses. A small island but a few yards from Goat Island divides the channel on the American side. Between the two is a beautiful cascade; and, from the small island to the American side, the sheet is broad, with a greater descent, though less quantity of water, than at the other fall on the Canada side. Much the greater body of water passes through the course between Goat Island and the Canada shore. This fall, from its shape, has been named the Horse-shoe Fall.
The waters, as they wend their way over the edge and downward, assume a white appearance, save a streak eastward in the Horse-shoe Fall, which streak is of a green color, like the water of the river where it is deep and undisturbed. In one spot, near "the Cave of the Winds," on the American side, I saw a narrow cascade with so thin a sheet that it assumed a pearl color, and descended in congregated globules, or beads, sparkling in their beauty, and altogether variable from the heavier masses rolling over the more central parts. Farther centreward, the bounding waters assume a snowy appearance; and, in gazing upon them, they seem large volumes, or rather avalanches of foam, rolling down into the trembling depths of the lower river. A gentleman skilled in science, who has measured the water above, below, and on the brink of the falls, reports that three millions of tons of water fall over the precipice every second. The moving water below the falls creates one vast mass of "liquid foam," which, like pressed down, floats upon the surface of the river. Here, amid the roar of the rumbling and rushing waters, the spray rolls up in clouds, like ascending smoke. Rainbows dawn amid the dull-appearing mist, and we have, as a whole, Niagara presented to us as she is, and as no language can describe her. The grand view remains fixed upon the mind, and a halo of happy fancies takes hold of the conceptions.
The scenery around the falls is not without its interest. Nature retains her roughest aspect, and looks pleasingly rugged and wild. There is, indeed, much that is romantic around Niagara. Along the river, below the falls, there are trees of many kinds and an abundance of uncultured shrubbery. The impending cliffs seem to vibrate with the rolling murmurs and echoes of the cataract. Table Rock, a portion of which fell some years since, and the remainder recently, was on a level with the edge of the cataract on the Canada side. It projected beyond the cliffs that supported it, resembling the leaf of a table, which circumstance caused its name. Under this projecting rock I passed, after descending a flight of stairs, and approached the sheet of rolling water. The spray here danced on the eddying currents of the air, and ascended in clouds. The waters plash and foam, the cataract sounds with a winnowing roar, echo resounds amid the rocky hills, and the beholder is thrilled with emotions of awe.