Down Come Those Beauteous Billows, As If Eager For Their Terrible Leap.
Along The Ledge Over Which They Fall They
Are still for one moment in a
sheet of clear, brilliant green; another, and down they fall like
cataracts of
Driven snow, chasing each other, till, roaring and hissing,
they reach the abyss, sending up a column of spray 100 feet in height. No
existing words can describe it, no painter can give the remotest idea of
it; it is the voice of the Great Creator, its name signifying, in the
beautiful language of the Iroquois, "The Thunder of Waters." Looking from
this tower, above you see the Grand Rapids, one dizzy sheet of leaping
foamy billows, and below you look, if you can, into the very caldron
itself, and see how the bright-green waves are lost in foam and mist; and
behind you look to shore, and shudder to think how the frail bridge by
which you came in another moment may be washed away. I felt as I came down
the trembling staircase that one wish of my life had been gratified in
seeing Niagara.
Some graves were recently discovered in Iris Island, with skeletons in a
sitting posture inside them, probably the remains of those aboriginal
races who here in their ignorance worshipped the Great Spirit, within the
sound of his almighty voice. We paused on the bridge, and looked once more
at the islets in the rapids, and stopped on Bath Island, lovely in itself,
but desecrated by the presence of a remarkably hirsute American, who keeps
a toll-house, with the words "Ice-creams" and "Indian Curiosities" painted
in large letters upon it.
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