394 A FATAL DIVE. 



weeks, turning up again only, or rather being found 

 turning round in the whirlpool, a mile and a half below 

 the spot of his intended exhibition, and then so disfigured 

 that his. identity was only guessed. 



I did not wonder at the fate of this man after I had 

 seen the Falls, and the river above and below them, for 

 from the ocean of water, and the pent-up and rocky 

 channel that receives it, its varied juttings out and deep 

 recesses, the river below can only consist of whirlpools 

 and conflicting waves, with such a tide above and under 

 tow beneath, as would overpower a million hippopotami. 

 It is said that in that part of the river called, par excel 

 lence, " the whirlpool," there is from one to two hundred 

 feet of water. Here in the river, hugging the American 

 side, a small steamer plies, and disfigures the wildness 

 and what ought to be the unaided loveliness of nature. 

 As I thus advanced the roar of the Falls increased, and 

 then they came so fully and so immensely, so grandly 

 and so far beyond all powers of expectation, full into my 

 astonished view, that I stopped, and, at least in heart, 

 soul, and mind, endeavoured to take in or embrace the 

 prospect. Stricken as I was with awe and wonder, 

 and incapable of sufficient admiration and homage, a 

 painful and a pitiful sense of shame crept over me, occa 

 sioned by my being forced to observe that, in the very 

 midst of heavenly and beautiful things, yea, almost 

 in the centre of the wild and majestic Falls, where the 

 waters leapt to an awful sacrifice of all life that came upon 

 or within them, from the smallest fish to man, beast, and 

 bird the Americans without a head or heart, as it 

 seemed to me, even here had " gone ahead," and by the 

 aid of a few fragments of rock that yet looked up from 

 the rushing waves, had from Goat Island crawled out 



