NARRATIVE. 17 



human habitation. The httle cascade, near at hand, drowns the 

 roar of the great one, and though bj day it cannot boast of any 

 great privacy, yet at night very few even of the most romantic 

 moonlight strollers get so far as this. 



The power of the water was greater than I expected, and difficult 

 to bear up against, even in a sitting posture. It was not a simple 

 pressure, but a muscular force, like a kneading or shampooing by 

 huge hands. We crawled in at the side of the Fall, and found a 

 hollow underneath the shelving edge, large enough for several to sit 

 at once, quite free from the water, which shoots over like a miniature 

 of the great cascade below. With some difficulty, from the pounding 

 of the falling water, we penetrated through the sheet in front, and 

 came out into the pool, the bottom of which is smooth rock. Close to 

 the surface there was a strong current of air down the stream, not 

 perceptible at the height of two feet. 



Afterwards, in walking round the island, we saw on the cloud of 

 mist over the English Fall, a lunar rainbow, glimmering with a 

 pale, phosphorescent, unearthly light, and showing prismatic colors, 

 but not quite joined at the top. Some of the party afterwards saw 

 it complete. 



Jiune l^th. — Took an accommodation car on the Lockport Railroad 

 as far as the Suspension Bridge, (about a mile below the Falls,) of 

 which the piers were finished and a rope stretched across, bearing 

 suspended a basket, in which some adventure-loving person was being 

 hauled across. From the bridge we walked along the bank through 

 the woods to the Whirlpool. The river, when thus seen from above, 

 is of such a dark and solid green, that it is difficult to persuade one's 

 self that it is not occasioned by some colored matter suspended in 

 the water. At intervals we got glimpses of the Fall, between the 

 high perpendicular banks enclosing it as in a frame. The slow, 

 heavy plunge of the water was distinguishable to the eye even at 

 this distance, but the roar was hardly audible. 



Rattlesnakes are found among the rocks about these cliffs, and one 

 had been taken alive the day before, in the path leading down to the 

 Whirlpool. There is said to be a mound of their bones in the neigh- 

 borhood, erected in token of full revenge by some Indians whose 

 chief had been killed by a rattlesnake's bite. 



