There is one thing, however, which no tourist is prepared to meet with composure, and which he will need to guard against here, namely, extortion, or an unexpected or unreasonable demand for money in payment for services not contracted for nor supposed to be in the market. Much has been said and written about the extortions of Niagara hackmen, until their practices have become a byword. In justice to some of these individuals it should be said that there are among them honorable men, who will do by you just as they agree, and will make no effort to defraud. It is always safe, however, to make an agreement with your driver as to the service he is to render you, and just what you are to pay him in return. When the terms of your contract are met, accept no further service without understanding its cost.
HORSESHOE FALLS AND RAPIDS.
The need of this precaution will be apparent from the following facts. The lawful rate for carrying a passenger from one point to another in the villages about the Falls is fifty cents, or one dollar from village to village; yet a driver will frequently offer to carry a passenger for ten cents. Once in the carriage, however, he is urged to see this and that point of interest, and with the memory of the ten-cent offer as a basis for prospective expenses, he often yields to the importunities of the hackman, until he finds to his dismay that he has run up a bill, by the legal tariff, of from three to five dollars. While the man is charging him only what the law allows him to collect, the victim is chagrined at the method by which it is extorted from him, and it rankles as an unpleasant memory in his otherwise pleasurable recollections of his visit.
We have been thus explicit in treating upon a subject to which no Niagara guide book we have ever seen gives more than a passing allusion, in order that the tourist may know what to expect, and how to meet it in the very outset. If you choose to accept of a hackman’s “ten-cent” offer, be sure that you take no more than is “nominated in the bond,” lest with the “pound of flesh” there come a drop of blood more costly than all the rest.
THE FIRST VIEW OF THE FALLS.
The approach to Niagara, by the line of the Michigan Central, is by a route nearly parallel with the river, from above on the Canada shore, and is beyond question, the best view to be had from any railroad train conveying its passengers near the place. As the train draws near the mighty cataract, the foaming rapids above the Falls burst upon the view, as if to prepare the mind for the exhibition of resistless power to be revealed in the grand plunge of waters into the abyss below.
In a few moments the train comes to a halt in full view of the Falls, with the Horseshoe or Canada Fall in the foreground, and Goat Island and the American Fall directly across the river, with the deep gorge between through which the river flows, spanned by the new suspension bridge. The picture thus presented is one of surpassing beauty. While a nearer view will impress the mind more completely with the sublime majesty of the cataract, the comprehensive grouping here presented will linger in the mind of a true lover of the beautiful, prominent among the “pictures that hang on memory’s wall.”
The through passengers, who make no tarry at the Falls, remain in the cars until the train arrives at Suspension Bridge, two miles below, this arrangement continuing for the present season, until the completion of the new bridge now in process of erection by the Michigan Central Company. When this structure is completed, the trains will cross the river in full view of the Falls. This, in addition to the view now obtained from the train, will prove a strong attraction to through travelers, inducing them to come by this route.