George W. Holley

“ The descending steamer finds but one narrow channel, a little more than its own width, through which it can pass in a stream more than half a mile wide. It lies between the sharp corners of a broad, wedge-shaped cleavage in an immense rock which, by some convulsion of nature—not by any abrading process of the elements—has been literally split downward more than eighty feet. The last crooked and turbulent rapid passed just before reaching Montreal is the terror of the river pilots, and they never attempt its passage except by daylight. ”

“ But it is not long before the grand reality begins to break upon him, and every succeeding day and hour of observation impresses him more and more deeply with the vastness, the power, the sublimity of the scene, and the wonderful and varied beauty of its surroundings. Those who spend one or more seasons at Niagara know how very little can be seen or comprehended by those who "stop over one train." ”

“ The Table itself has always been, and must continue to be, a favorite resort for visitors. The combined view of the Falls and the chasm below, as well as the rapids above, is finer, more extensive, here than from any other point. Moreover, the nearness to the great cataract is more sensibly felt, the communion with it is deeper and more intimate than it can be anywhere else. The view from this point can be most pleasantly and satisfactorily taken in the afternoon, when the spectator has the sun behind him, and can look at his leisure and with unvexed eyes at the brilliant scene before him. ”

“ If the first white man who saw Niagara could have been certain that he was the first to see it, and had simply recorded the fact with whatever note or comment, he would have secured for himself that species of immortality which accrues to such as are connected with those first and last events and things in which all men feel a certain interest. But he failed to improve his opportunity, and Father Hennepin was the first, so far as known, to profit by such neglect, and his somewhat crude and exaggerated description of the Falls has been often quoted and is well known. ”

“ In all the elements of beautiful, picturesque, and enchanting scenery it is unrivaled.
The rapids of the Niagara just above the Falls, from the Leaping Rock down through the Witches' Caldron to the edge of the precipice, are nearly a mile in width, and discharge ten million cubic feet of water each minute. But for a combination of grandeur and [Pg 180] beauty, and for imparting a sense of almost infinite power, nothing can surpass the Whirlpool Rapids below the Falls, where the ten million cubic feet of water are compressed into a tortuous, tumultuous channel, less than four hundred feet wide. ”

“ The frozen spray on every boll, limb, and twig of tree and shrub, on every stiffened blade of grass, on every rigid stem and tendril of the vines, is covered over with a fine white powder, a frosty bloom, from which there springs a line of delicate frost-spines, forming a perfect fringe of ice-moss, than which nothing more fanciful nor more beautiful can be imagined. ”

“ The careless waters are hurried down a long and sharp descent, over the rough, denuded, bowlder-studded bed-rock of the stream. Breaking and bounding, surging and resurging, flashing and foaming, rushing fiercely upon some huge bowlder, recoiling an instant, then madly leaping entirely over it, rushing on to others huger still, then breaking wildly around them, the troubled waters hurry on until, culminating in their sublimest aspect, they plunge sheer downward in the grandest of cataracts. ”

“ Sir, if the Thames had a fall of 250 feet within the limits of the city of London, London would not be a town—it would be a-l-l t-h-e w-o-r-l-d!" and as he deliberately stretched out his great arms, and expanded his broad chest, while slowly pronouncing the last three words, one could almost see London gradually enlarging its ample borders in all directions. When the 1,500,000 horse-power of Niagara is utilized for the economic wants of men, Niagara will not be a town—it will be a large part of all the world. ”

“ There is in some words a mystic power which it is not easy to analyze or define; they fascinate the ear even of those who do not understand their meaning. The very sound of them as they are enunciated by the human voice touches a chord to which the heart instinctively responds. So it is with the name of the great cataract. ”

“ Nothing else can save Niagara from total desecration and disgrace. The fact that there is not a square foot of land in the United States from which an untaxed view of the great cataract can be obtained is a disgrace to the State, the nation, and the civilization of the age. ”

“ We found a river one-eighth of a league broad and extremely rapid, forming the outlet of Lake Erie and emptying into Lake Ontario. The depth of the river is, at this place, extraordinary, for, on sounding close by the shore, we found fifteen or sixteen fathoms of water. This outlet (the Niagara River) is forty leagues long, and has, from ten to twelve leagues above Lake Ontario, one of the finest cataracts in the world; for all the Indians of whom I have inquired about it say that the river falls at that place from a rock higher than the tallest pines—that is, about two hundred feet. ”

“ Within the basin the waters are rushing onward, plunging downward, leaping upward, combing over at the top in beautiful waves and ruffles of dazzling whiteness, shaded down through all the opalescent tints to the deep emerald at their base. It is ever varying, never presenting the same aspect in any two consecutive moments, and the beholder is lost in admiration as he comprehends more and more the many-sided and varied beauties of the matchless scene. No one visiting the Whirlpool should fail to go down the bank to the water's edge. ”

“ Exceedingly beautiful are the white vestments of frozen spray with which everything in the immediate vicinity is robed and shielded; and beautiful, too, are the clusters of ice [Pg 66] apples which tip the extremities of the branches of the evergreen trees.
There is something marvelous in the purity and whiteness of congealed spray. One might think it to be frozen sunlight. And when, by reason of an angle or a curve, it is thrown into shadow, one sees where the rainbow has been caught and frozen in. ”

“ The first fall in the cañon of the Merced is the Vernal, "a simple perpendicular sheet 475 feet high, the rock behind it being a perfectly square-cut mass of granite. Ascending to the summit of the Vernal Fall by a series of ladders, and passing a succession of rapids and cascades of great beauty, we come to the last great fall of the Merced—the Nevada, which has a descent of 639 feet, and near its summit has a peculiar twist caused by the mass of water falling on a projecting ledge which throws it off to one side, adding greatly to the picturesque effect. ”

“ The sunlight becomes potent; the ice ceases to form; the warm rays loosen the grip of the ice-bridge [Pg 60] along the borders of the chasm below. The water becomes more abundant; the bridge rises, bringing in its icy grasp whatever it had attached itself to beneath; it breaks up into masses of different dimensions: each mass starts downward with the growing current, breaking down or filing off everything with which it comes in contact. Fearful sounds come up from the hidden depths, from the mills which are slowly pulverizing the massive rock. ”

“ Lawrence, from the Thousand Islands to Montreal, the passage of which in the large lake steamers is an exciting voyage. The constant changes of scenery at every turn and in every rood of progress is almost bewildering. Then the alternation of rapids and broad expanses of river, the bird-like motion as the steamer sinks and sails down through the rapids, and the sense of relief when it seems to rise and glide over the smooth river, vary and increase the excitement. There is developed in one of those expanses a peculiar geological feature called the Split Rock. ”

“ The valley of the Yellowstone east of the Rocky Mountains in the north, like that of the Yosemite west of the sierras of the Pacific slope, is another wonder-land, presenting a bewildering variety of land and water formations which, in turn, awe, charm, fascinate, or amuse, but always astonish, the beholder. ”

“ Their eyes are marvels of beauty. They are eccentric in their habits, the very Arabs of their race—here to-day and gone to-morrow. They are gregarious and often assemble in large numbers. At times in a series of wild, rapid, devious gyrations, and uttering a low, mournful murmur, they seem to be engaged, as it were, in some solemn festival commemorative of their departed kindred. ”

“ We need not wonder, therefore, that the river Niagara keeps its channel clear.
In the ice-gorge of 1866 the ice was set back to the upper end of the Whirlpool, over which it was twenty feet deep. The Whirlpool rapid was subdued nearly to an unbroken current, which all the way below to Lake [Pg 70] Ontario was reduced to a gentle flow of quiet waters. Never was there a sublimer contest of the great forces of nature. The frost laid its hand upon the raging torrent and it was still. ”

“ In 1840 there was a small patch of stones, gravel, sand, and earth, called Gull Island, lying near the center of the Canadian rapid and about one hundred rods above the Horseshoe Fall. It was apparently twenty rods long by two rods wide, and was covered with a growth of willow bushes. It was so named because it was a favorite resort of that singular combination of the most delicate bones and lightest feathers called a gull.
The birds seem large and awkward on the wing, but as they sit upon the water nothing can appear more graceful. They are far-sighted and keen-scented. ”

“ Even more exaggerated than Father Hennepin's is the next account of the Falls which has come down to us, and which was written by Baron La Hontan, in the autumn of 1687. Fear of an attack from the Iroquois, the relentless enemies of the French, made his visit short and unsatisfactory. He says: "As for the water-fall of Niagara, 'tis seven or eight hundred feet high, and half a league wide. Toward the middle of it we descry an island, that leans toward the precipice, as if it were ready to fall." ”

“ If Professor Tyndall had been at Niagara during the summer season, he would have had the opportunity, daily, of seeing the Fall "from below," and of going up or down the river on any day in a boat. All the boats (four) at the ferry are "fit for the undertaking," and all of them are, very properly, "laid up in the winter," since they would be crushed by the ice if left in the water. The oarsmen do not consider themselves very shrewd because they have discovered that it is easier to row across a current than to row against it. ”

“ If we should allow fifty feet for a soft-surface limestone, full of cleavages and seams which might be easily broken down, still the new fall would be five feet higher than the old one. But, so far as can now be discovered, there is no geological necessity, so to speak, for making any such allowance. In the new cataract the American Fall would still be the higher, and its line across the channel nearly straight. The Canadian Fall would undoubtedly present a curve, but more gradual and uniform than the present horseshoe. ”

“ The Riunkan-fos is another Norwegian cataract in the outlet of Lake Mjösvard, which pours through a wild, rock-studded slope until it reaches a precipice, on the brink of which it is divided by a huge mass of rock into two channels. Thence it falls eight hundred and eighty feet into a dark basin at its foot, from which water-rockets and sharp jets of foam shoot up and out in all directions. The intense whiteness of the fleecy column is indescribable. ”

“ And here this hard, compact rock held the cataract for many centuries. The crooked channel which incessant friction and hammering finally cut through that rock is the narrowest in the river, being only two hundred and ninety-two feet wide, and the fierce rush of the water through the narrow, rock-ribbed gorge is almost appalling to the beholder. The average width between the banks of this section is about nine hundred feet. ”

“ At a quarter of a league from the outlet, where we were, it grows narrower, and its channel is confined between two very high, steep, rocky banks, inducing the belief that the navigation would be very difficult quite up to the cataract. As to the river above the Falls, the current very often sucks into this gulf, from a great distance above, deer and stags, elk and roebucks, which, in attempting to swim the river, suffer themselves to be drawn so far down-stream that they are compelled to descend the Falls, and are overwhelmed in its frightful abyss. ”

“ To the beholder it is matter of astonishment what can have become of the great mass of earth, rock, gravel, and bowlders, large and small, which once filled the immense chasm that lies below him. He learns that the water for a mile below the Falls is two hundred feet deep, and flows over a mass of fallen rock and stone of great depth lying below it; he sees a chasm of nearly double these dimensions, more than half of which was once filled with solid rock ”

“ It is evident from the descriptions of Father Hennepin and of Baron La Hontan, that the upper stratum of rock over which the water falls must have projected beyond the face of the rock below much farther than it now does. The large masses of fallen rock lying at the foot of the American and Horse-shoe Falls are evidence of this fact. Travelers still go behind the sheet on the Canadian side, and into and through the Cave of the Winds, on the American side. But they do not expect to keep dry in so doing, nor to sun themselves on the rocks below, like the "rattlesnakes" of former days. ”

“ With the Niagaras the river and the cataract were the most notable and impressive features of their territory. Their principal village bore the same name; and when we recall the proverbial vanity of the race, we can hardly doubt that this must also have been their tribal name. That it should have been perpetuated in reference to the village, the river, and the falls, and that the use of it, in reference to the tribe, should have lapsed, can be readily understood when we recollect that they had two substitutes for the tribal name. ”

“ As the sharp, still night wears on, the light mists begin to rise, and when the morning breaks, the river is buried in a deep, dense bank of fog. A gentle wave of air bears it landward; its progress is stayed by everything with which it comes in contact, and as soon as its motion is arrested it freezes sufficiently to adhere to whatever it touches. ”