Niagara tails. 175 



accurate : " The mighty river comes rushing over the brow 

 of a hill, and as you look up to it, it seems as if coming to 

 overwhelm you ; then, meeting with the rocks as it pours 

 down the declivity, it boils and frets like the breakers of the 

 ocean. Huge mounds of water, smooth, transparent, and 

 gleaming like an emerald, rise up and bound over some 

 impediment, then break into silver foam, which leaps into 

 the air in the most graceful and fantastic forms." 



The first impression formed at sight of the cataract from 

 the Canada side is amazement mingled with disappointment ; 

 this is invariably the case, and may be traced, in all proba- 

 bility, to the fact of the spectators looking down upon the 

 scene, and so being unable to grasp at a single glance the 

 majesty of the view; but by degrees, as the eye becomes 

 more accustomed to the sight, the mind, only wont to look 

 upon ordinary phenomena, feels a new train of thought 

 forced in an instant upon it. There is no time or coolness 

 for distinct impressions ; much less for calculations. But it 

 is from the foot of Table Rock, or rather what was Table 

 Rock (for it fell suddenly some years ago), that the mind by 

 degrees recovers from its amazement, and it is in this spot 

 that it shrinks at the littleness and helplessness of man, and 

 the insignificance of his pigmy efforts ; the mighty precipice 

 towering up above him, and overhanging, for it overtops its 

 base by many feet — the mass of rock appearing as if every 

 instant it would fall and crash him in its ruins — the thunder 

 of the waters — the spray which drifts around in eddies, 

 painted with rainbows, as the various currents of wind 

 engendered in the chasm waft it hither and thither through 

 the sunshine, like the mist on the mountains, or the finest 

 particle of the snow-drift — and, above all, the seeming soli- 

 tude of this spot, hidden from the busy world, — all and each 

 of these make an impression on the mind that no pen can 

 describe, and probably there is no other place on the whole 

 globe where such an impression of awe is left upon the 



