294 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



Save this, — he sees all that which can 

 Delight and charm the sonl of man, 

 But feels it not, — because his toe 

 And foot together plague him so." 



I remember once to have sprained my ankle very 

 violently, many years ago, and that the doctor ordered me 

 to hold it under the pump two or three times a day. 

 Now, in the United States of America, all is upon a 

 grand scale, except taxation ; and I am convinced that 

 the traveller's ideas become much more enlarged as he 

 journeys through the country. This being the case, I can 

 easily account for the desire I felt to hold my sprained 

 foot under the fall of Niagara. I descended the winding 

 staircase which has been made for the accommodation of 

 travellers, and then hobbled on to the scene of action, 

 As I held my leg under the fall, I tried to meditate on the 

 immense difference there was betwixt a house-pump and 

 this tremendous cascade of nature, and what effect it 

 might have upon the sprain ; but the magnitude of the 

 subject was too overwhelming, and I was obliged to 

 drop it. 



Perhaps, indeed, there was an unwarrantable tincture of 

 vanity in an unknown wanderer wishing to have it in his 

 power to tell the world, that he had held his sprained foot 

 under a fall of water which discharges six hundred and 

 seventy thousand two hundred and fifty-five tons per 

 minute. A gentle purling stream would have suited 

 better. Now, it would have become Washington to have 

 quenched his battle-thirst in the fall of Niagara ; and 

 there was something royal in the idea of Cleopatra drink- 

 ing pearl-vinegar, made from the grandest pearl in Egypt ; 

 and it became Caius Marius to send word, that he was 

 sitting upon the ruins of Carthage. Here, we have the 

 person suited to the thing, and the thing to the person. 



