108 BOTANY OF THE 
lots of such towns as I stopped at on the way. At Niagara it appeared 1 
to be equally rare or wanting. Arrived late this evening at Buffalo, — 
whose spacious streets, with their lofty houses and handsome stores, : 
inferior to few in our own metropolis, and scarcely less bustling, are 
planted with the Locust tree (Robinia pseudo-acacia), which thrives 
remarkably well and attains a large size, as do the Lombardy and 
other Poplars and the Sugar Maple, trees which here supplant the 
less hardy denizens of the Atlantic cities to the southward. 
Sept. 12th.—From Buffalo to Niagara Falls there is a railway, which 
brought me to the latter in an hour and a half, across a country more 
picturesque than any I had seen since leaving the Hudson. As every 
traveller is supposed to be in ecstacies at the first sight of the Falls, 
the reader is or ought to be spared the superfluous annoyance ofa — 
recital of his or her feelings on the interesting occasion; for which 
cause I shall be content to observe that, without betraying any symp- 
toms of temporary derangement by the perpetration of ode, sonnet, 
soliloquy, or other extravagance, I may take credit for as much emotion — 
as could well be felt within the verge of sober-mindedness. For the 
two days I remained at the Falls, I could rarely withdraw myself from 
the sublime spectacle ; to return to it seemed an impulse rather than : 
an act of volition, which to have resisted would have been vain. I | 
saw the cataract under every variety of atmospherie vicissitude of - 
cloud and sunshine, at morn, noon, and even, and under all alike | 
ineffably glorious. I know not if others have been struck as well as : 
myself with the peculiar appearance of the water, from the moment of 3 
commencing its descent till lost to the eye in the snowy vapour which — 
fills the abyss beneath. It no longer looks like water, fluid and - 
yielding, but hard, heavy, and palpable as adamant. I could fancy 1 | 
saw millions of tons of the purest white marble and rock crystal, : 
mixed with pulverized diamond and emerald (the half of the great - 
Horse-shoe Fall shows a resplendent green), pouring over the precipice — 
and disappearing in a cloud of glittering atoms raised by their mutual 
attrition. If the eye be fixed on any point of the falling mass of 
waters, and follow it in its downward course till lost in the spray, nO 
alteration of form or colour is perceived through the whole of its app’ - 
rently slow and perpendicular descent; the face of the mighty cataract - 
seems rough with angular sparkling points and projections, like as of | 
solid bodies forced over and grinding against each other, here splitting | 
into fragments, there preserving their integrity. 
