DESTRUCTION. 407 



to take their last plunge, did he give up the struggle. 

 Then, when he saw his dreadful death in that' smooth 

 space, he shot half his length up from the water, and, 

 raising his hands in despair high above his head, he took 

 the maddened whirl, which dashed him into a shapeless 

 mass, and left the sordid brute with the raft to all intents 

 a murderer. 



All that could be gathered of this murdered man's his 

 tory was that he, with two companions, had been drink 

 ing at some place on the previous evening, and that at 

 about dusk they all three left in a boat to cross the river 

 at the usual distance above the Falls. From that time to 

 the appearance of the victim on the rock nothing is known, 

 but three days after the catastrophe I have thus re 

 lated from the lips of a living witness, three masses of 

 bruised and broken flesh were found below the Falls 

 near the suspension bridge. Whiskey and tobacco, 

 those inveterate destroyers of American men, no doubt 

 stupefied these people sufficiently for them to let their 

 boat drift till it came within that sweep of waters that 

 nothing can withstand, and then, either by the upsetting 

 of the boat on some of the minor falls or by their attempt 

 ing to swim, two of them met their deaths. The most 

 wonderful thing on record is, how that one man managed 

 to lay hold of that rock, flat and slippery as it was ; he 

 must have been flung against it, and perhaps wrenched 

 off every nail on his fingers in making a desperate grasp. 



The little islands on the American side are lovely, and 

 fringed to the water's edge with cedar trees. Until I 

 stood at the higher end of Groat Island, amazed as I 

 had been, I had had no conception of the volume of water 

 hurled over the Falls, or of the breadth and rapidity 

 of the river where it separates to rush past the island. 



