THE NATURALIST. 



JANUARY, 1832. 



FALLS OF THE NIAGARA. 



BY F. W. P GREENWOOD. 



The voice of the Lord is upon the waters ; the voice of the glorious 

 God ; the Lord thundereth over the great waters. 



Psalm xxix. 3. Old Translation. 



There is a power and beauty, I may say a divinity, in 

 rushing waters, felt by all who acknowledge any sympathy 

 with nature. The mountain stream, leaping from rock to rock, 

 and winding, foaming and glancing through its devious and 

 stony channels, arrests the eye of the most careless or 

 business-bound traveller ; sings to the heart and haunts the 

 memory of the man of taste and imagination, and holds, as by 

 some undefinable spell, the affections of those who inhabit 

 its borders. A waterfall, of even a few feet in height, will 

 enliven the dullest scenery, and lend a charm to the loveliest ; 

 while a high and headlong cataract has always been ranked 

 among the sublimes! objects to be found in the compass of 

 the globe. 



It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that lovers of nature 

 perform journeys of homage to that sovereign of cataracts, 

 that monarch of all pouring floods, the Falls of Niagara. It 

 is no matter of surprise, that, although situated in what might 

 have been called, a few years ago, but cannot be now, the 

 wilds of North America, five hundred miles from the Atlantic 

 coast, travellers from all civilized parts of the world have 

 encountered all the difliculties and fatigues of the path, to 

 behold this prince of waterfalls amidst its ancient solitudes, 

 and that, more recently, the broad highways to its dominions 

 have been thronged. By universal consent it has long ago 

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