March 31, 1881] 



NA TURE 



513 



w'th their topography, through the medium of books and 

 photographs, to render any general description unneces- 

 sary. I will therefore confine myself to the special features 

 produced by this winter's cold. 



The whole district lay under a thin coating of snow, 

 and all the roads were in good condition for sleighing, 

 indeed those near the Falls were so completely ice-covered 

 with frozen spray, as to render no other mode of loco- 

 motion possible. Those who have seen both places have 

 probably been struck, as 1 was, with the strong resem- 

 blance between the gorge of the Niagara river below the 

 Falls, and the gorge of the Avon at Clifton, Bristol. The 

 latter is the finer of the two, being narrower, and having 

 higher sides, but both are limestone gorges, and similar 

 in character. In the Niagara gorge numerous springs 

 discharge themselves into the chasm at various points in 

 the precipitous rocky sides, and at these points numerous 

 collections of huge and massive icicles appeared as 

 though adherent to the rock, measuring perhaps seventy 

 or eighty feet in length, and eight to ten feet in irre- 

 gular diameter. In the exquisite purity of their colour 

 and general appearance, they reminded me strongly 

 of the pillars of ice in the upper part of the Rhone 

 glacier. 



The width of the river itself was not a little lessened, 

 both in the rapids above and the comparatively still water 

 below the Falls, by the ice at the banks, and it was a 

 matter of surprise to notice how much ice accumulated at 

 the edges of water that was running very rapidly. At the 

 top of the American Fall itself there were so many accu- 

 mulations of ice that the Fall was actually divided into five 

 separate and distinct Falls, in the same way as, even in 

 summer, that portion of the Fall which is in front of the 

 "Cave of the Winds" is cut off by rocks on the upper 

 edge, from the main body of the Fall. 



The mention of the " Cave of the Winds" recalls also 

 that huge boulder, the " Rock of Ages," in front of this 

 portion of the Fall. That however is only one of many 

 others in front of the American Fall, and these boulders 

 are, as it were, gigantic nuclei, round which the frozen 

 spray accumulates, and produces the Ice-mountain of 

 which we hear so much, and the remains of which are 

 not unfreqiiently to be seen even by summer visitors. 

 The average height of this is about half the total height 

 of the Fall, but this winter it has attained to the unpre- 

 cedented height of within twenty feet of the top of the 

 Fall ! This highest point is at about one-third of the 

 total width of the Fall, measuring from Goat Island. 

 Between the foot of the incline from Prospect Park and 

 the edge of the Fall is another very high mass. The ice 

 approaches very close to the front of the Fall, and the 

 whole basin into which the water descends is thus closely 

 surrounded, and partially covered, with an enormous and 

 irregular mass of pure semi-transparent ice, of (on the 

 day of my visit) the most beautiful emerald green hue I 

 Later in the day I had the good fortune to fall in with 

 Mr. Bradford, the artist who is so well known for his 

 pictures of Greenland scenery, and in discussing the ice 

 cones formed at waterfalls, he mentioned that, having 

 passed a winter in the Yo Semite valley in California, he 

 had seen an ice-cone close to one of the celebrated Falls 

 there, which was at least 600 feet in height. 



Within the last few years a considerable portion of 

 "Table Rock " has fallen away. In its present condition 

 a stream of water about one foot in thickness falls over it 

 in summer, and, owing to the amount of its overhanging, 

 it is easy to get between this Fall and the rock, and thus to 

 be "behind Niagara." At the time of my visit (February 

 8th), however, the whole of this portion of the Fall was com- 

 pletely frost-bound. Enormous icicles, of the most sur- 

 passing beauty, depended from the rock above, while at 

 my feet were masses of the frozen spray from the Horse- 

 shoe Fall. The intense emerald green of the water of that 

 Fall, seen through and between these magnificent ice- 



pendants, could be reproduced by no artist, but will never 

 be effaced from my memory. The accompanying woodcut, 

 photographed on to the wood block from a photographic 

 picture taken a few days prior to my visit, will, to those 

 who know the place, give some faint idea of the beauty of 

 the scene, and of the gigantic scale of the icicles. It is; 

 scarcely necessary to say, perhaps, that the circular 

 wooden staircase by which the descent under Table Rock 

 is effected, was covered with many feet thickness of ice 

 on the side ne.\t the Fall. As the air-temperature was 

 slightly above 32° F. and the icicles were occasionally 

 falling around us, my guide was unwilling that I should 

 remain long, or make any attempt to measure any of the 

 ice-raasses. 



The fourth, and to the casual visitor perhaps the most 

 remarkable effect of the cold in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of the Falls, is the manner in which every surrounding 

 object is coated with an immense thickness of frozen 

 spray. The trees on Goat Island and in Prospect Park 

 are thus covered to a slight extent, and present a very 

 beautiful appearance. The strangest examples, however, 

 occur on the Canadian side, close to the Horseshoe Fall, 

 where huge irregularly-shaped masses of ice are seen, 

 some of which resemble, in general form, merely a colossal 

 bunch of grapes standing erect on its stalk. A Uttle 

 investigation shows that these are trees, staggering under 

 the weight of tons of ice. Not unnaturally they have 

 many broken branches, and have almost invariably lost 

 their tips. In one instance which I saw, and of which I 

 obtained a photograph, the spray had so accumulated in 

 front of the trunk of a tree about nine inches in diameter, 

 that it had formed a wall of ice five feel in width, and of 

 the same thickness as the diameter of the tree-trunk. A 

 flagstaff planted on Table Rock had four or five projec- 

 tions from Its top, varying from three to five feet long, 

 and looking like " frozen streamers," or as though watery 

 flags had been flying, and had suddenly been frozen. 

 These were so inaccessible and so dangerous to the 

 passer-by, that they were daily shot down with rifle- 

 bullets ! The museum with its pagoda and the adjoin- 

 ing houses close to the Horseshoe Fall were cased with 

 sheet-ice and pendant icicles to such an extent that 

 much of the frozen spray had to be removed daily with 

 an axe. 



I mounted to the pagoda (well remembered, I have no 

 doubt, by summer tourists) and there I listened to the 

 "Music of Niagara," of which Mr. Eugene Schuyler has 

 given in the February number oi Seribner's Magazine an 

 account so interesting, that I venture to conclude this 

 article with a short abstract of it. 



Mr. Schuyler starts with the statement that " the tone 

 of Niagara was like that of the full tone of a great organ. 

 So literally is this true that I cannot make my meanings 

 clear without a brief outline of the construction of that 

 great instrument." He then explains the mutual relation- 

 of the various pipes, the " ground-tone, over-tones or 

 harmonics, and under-tones or sub-harmonics," and 

 relates his experiences in the Cave of the Winds, on 

 Luna Island above the Central Fall, at the Horseshoe 

 Fall among the rapids, and at the Three Sister Islands. 

 " In fact, wherever I was, I could not hear anything else ! 

 There was no roar at all, but the same great diapason — 

 the noblest and completest one on earth!" Further 

 details of visits to various points are given, and it is 

 interesting to notice that although previously unacquainted 

 with the diflerence in height of the two Falls, Mr. Schuyler 

 unhesitatingly pronounced the Horseshoe Fall to be 

 several feet lower than the other, guided solely by his 

 musical ear. He then proceeds thus :— 



"Now, what is this wonderful tone of Niagara? or 

 rather, what are all these complex tones which make up 

 the music of Niagara? With more or less variation of 

 pitch at various points (to be accounted for), here are the 

 notes which I heard everywhere : — 



