But The
Clifton House Was Closed For The Season When I Was Last There, And
On That Account We Went To The Cataract House, In The Town On The
Other Side.
I now think that I should set up my staff on the
American side, if I went again.
My advice on the subject to any
party starting for Niagara would depend upon their habits or on
their nationality. I would send Americans to the Canadian side,
because they dislike walking; but English people I would locate on
the American side, seeing that they are generally accustomed to the
frequent use of their own legs. The two sides are not very easily
approached one from the other. Immediately below the falls there
is a ferry, which may be traversed at the expense of a shilling;
but the labor of getting up and down from the ferry is
considerable, and the passage becomes wearisome. There is also a
bridge; but it is two miles down the river, making a walk or drive
of four miles necessary, and the toll for passing is four
shillings, or a dollar, in a carriage, and one shilling on foot.
As the greater variety of prospect can be had on the American side,
as the island between the two falls is approachable from the
American side and not from the Canadian, and as it is in this
island that visitors will best love to linger, and learn to measure
in their minds the vast triumph of waters before them, I recommend
such of my readers as can trust a little - it need be but a little -
to their own legs to select their hotel at Niagara Falls town.
It has been said that it matters much from what point the falls are
first seen, but to this I demur. It matters, I think, very little,
or not at all. Let the visitor first see it all, and learn the
whereabouts of every point, so as to understand his own position
and that of the waters; and then, having done that in the way of
business, let him proceed to enjoyment. I doubt whether it be not
the best to do this with all sight-seeing. I am quite sure that it
is the way in which acquaintance may be best and most pleasantly
made with a new picture.
The falls, as I have said, are made by a sudden breach in the level
of the river. All cataracts are, I presume, made by such breaches;
but generally the waters do not fall precipitously as they do at
Niagara, and never elsewhere, as far as the world yet knows, has a
breach so sudden been made in a river carrying in its channel such
or any approach to such a body of water. Up above the falls for
more than a mile the waters leap and burst over rapids, as though
conscious of the destiny that awaits them. Here the river is very
broad and comparatively shallow; but from shore to shore it frets
itself into little torrents, and begins to assume the majesty of
its power. Looking at it even here, in the expanse which forms
itself over the greater fall, one feels sure that no strongest
swimmer could have a chance of saving himself if fate had cast him
in even among those petty whirlpools. The waters though so broken
in their descent, are deliciously green. This color, as seen early
in the morning or just as the sun has set, is so bright as to give
to the place one of its chiefest charms.
This will be best seen from the farther end of the island - Goat
Island as it is called - which, as the reader will understand,
divides the river immediately above the falls. Indeed, the island
is a part of that precipitously-broken ledge over which the river
tumbles, and no doubt in process of time will be worn away and
covered with water. The time, however, will be very long. In the
mean while, it is perhaps a mile round, and is covered thickly with
timber. At the upper end of the island the waters are divided,
and, coming down in two courses each over its own rapids, form two
separate falls. The bridge by which the island is entered is a
hundred yards or more above the smaller fall. The waters here have
been turned by the island, and make their leap into the body of the
river below at a right angle with it - about two hundred yards below
the greater fall. Taken alone, this smaller cataract would, I
imagine, be the heaviest fall of water known; but taken in
conjunction with the other, it is terribly shorn of its majesty.
The waters here are not green as they are at the larger cataract;
and, though the ledge has been hollowed and bowed by them so as to
form a curve, that curve does not deepen itself into a vast abyss
as it does at the horseshoe up above. This smaller fall is again
divided; and the visitor, passing down a flight of steps and over a
frail wooden bridge, finds himself on a smaller island in the midst
of it.
But we will go at once on to the glory, and the thunder, and the
majesty, and the wrath of that upper hell of waters. We are still,
let the reader remember, on Goat Island - still in the States - and
on what is called the American side of the main body of the river.
Advancing beyond the path leading down to the lesser fall, we come
to that point of the island at which the waters of the main river
begin to descend. From hence across to the Canadian side the
cataract continues itself in one unabated line. But the line is
very far from being direct or straight. After stretching for some
little way from the shore to a point in the river which is reached
by a wooden bridge at the end of which stands a tower upon the
rock, - after stretching to this, the line of the ledge bends inward
against the flood - in, and in, and in - till one is led to think
that the depth of that horseshoe is immeasurable.
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