AMERICAN COCKNEYISM. 395 



for such progression can have 110 better name and stuck 

 a sort of pepper-box-like tower right on the brow 

 of the cataract, whence they might smoke their cigars 

 and spit into the water. It only required a weather 

 cock on the pepper-box tower to have stamped the whole 

 thing with a refinement of Cockneyism immeasurable ! 



The little steam-boat before mentioned, " The Maid 

 of the Mist," steams up as far as she dares go to the cliff 

 on the river approaching the Falls; and there again 

 American ingenuity and fallacious taste have run up the 

 face of the rock a little wooden staircase and mimic rail 

 way, worked by water I should think by the tears of 

 the offended Niagara to land unworthy visitors ! What 

 a teapot contrast that little steamer affords to the boiling 

 of this world of waters ! " Blotches and blanes," indeed, 

 have, on the American side of the wonder of the universe, 

 defaced the grandest natural feature man ever saw. I 

 wondered, and passed on, regarding the opposite side of 

 this picture as an American fall in more senses than one. 

 On the English side the worshippers of Nature are content 

 to gaze from the platform rock, or to stand beneath the 

 mighty Fall itself; they have defaced nothing. But if this 

 record of a flying visit reaches the eye of any member of 

 the Canadian Government, oh ! let the author pray that 

 protection yet may be afforded to the trees overhanging 

 the precipice above the river, coming from the suspension 

 bridge, and before the Falls are attained, for at present 

 they are, and are still being, defaced or cut down, to 

 please an idle wantonness or give a view to a cottage- 

 window. 



From the Platform Rock I went immediately to the brink 

 of the monstrous cascade, and stood and sat and listened 

 to the voice of the waters, and walked and lingered and 



