CHAPTER XII. 



A PERILOUS ADVENTURE AT KAXAWHA FALLS. 



I AM moved to indite a reminiscence of Kanawha Falls, covering a moment of 

 fearful peril, out of which a kind and overruling providence for some wise purpose 

 doubtless provided a way of escape. Even now, thirty-five years afterward, I never 

 hear the roar of a cataract without associating it with the rumble of an express 

 train dashing through a rock cut, and a vision of two helpless human creatures 

 clinging with lacerated fingers to the excoriating side walls from which the suction 

 almost tore them. 



You know there is a curvilinear cut through the marginal ledge which abuts 

 the river quite within gunshot of the Falls. Well, at times, when meteriological 

 conditions favor, the undertone of revolving car wheels blends so intimately with 

 the resonance of the tumbling waters that the keenest sense can hardly distinguish 

 them apart. You are aware of this fact also? It was like this, then (ora pro 

 nobis!), on that beautiful July morning in 1876, when wife and 1 went fishing high 

 up in the life-giving mountain atmosphere of the Gawley canyon, 2,000 feet above 

 the level of the deep, deep sea. S'death! we didn't know it at the time, but we 

 were even then "betwixt the devil and the deep sea," but of this later on. 



The inimitable guide books of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company, on 

 whose picturesque trans-mountain line this wild bit of scenery is located, says in 

 its mild, liquescent way : "Kanawha Falls is a pleasant and picturesque scene of 

 watery waywardness. A ledge of rock thirty feet high extends the width of the 

 river, and the waters tumble over it in tumultuous fury. The clear mirror-like 

 basin below the falls stands in strong contrast with the foaming cataract." "Watery 

 waywardness" is musical alliteration, but it is not sufficiently intensive. "Tumul- 

 tuous" is correct enough, though I observed no "fury." Much depends, I ween, 

 upon the situation of the beholder, whether his canoe be careering wildly over the 

 crest of the cataract, after the fashion of the love-lorn maiden in Indian legend, 

 about to make the fatal plunge, or whether it be boating quietly ori the "mirror-like 

 basin," aforesaid, with bending rod and taut line fast to a five-pound bass hung in 

 the swirl of the midway rock. Moreover, there is an expression of expansiveness 

 in the half-tone illustration which is not true to nature; for one might imagine 

 an iljjmitable horizon with ultima tliule lying indefinitely beyond, whereas, really, 

 the inclosing hills of the Blue Ridge drop abruptly almost to either margin, and 

 the rapt beholder, sitting in his boat, looks upward to the deep blue zenith against 

 which their rugged summits are ambitiously outlined, instead of 'far away into 

 Utopian space envying, forsooth, the flight of the water ousel, which permits the 

 enjoyment of both elements alike. 



Mr. Editor, I am not apt to deal in rhapsody, or go into ecstacies over trans- 

 cendent landscapes. Your stated summer correspondent, turned loose, with only a 

 day off, is always enthusiastac. His descriptions of sylvan or bucolic haunts are 

 therefore subject to modification. Like good beer, they are heartiest when they 

 effervesce. But I am no adolescent out for a holiday. I have looked a large part 

 of this broad continent over, and am free to say that for natural features or 

 changeful aspect, none can hardly be more beautiful and more striking than those 



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