170 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Niagara. 
Brook re- 
flections, 
frank to confess that it always impressed me as 
one of nature’s lamentable accidents. Jam also 
frank to confess that no great waterfall or cat- 
aract ever gave me anything buta cold chill. 
Niagara is merely a great horror of nature like 
a lava-stream pouring into the sea, or a volcanic 
explosion like that of Krakatoa. Grand it is 
in its mass, and sometimes beautiful in the col- 
oring of the rising spray shot with sunlight ; 
but its chief impression is one of power unre- 
strained and catastrophe unavoidable. It is 
nothing less than nature committing suicide. 
The Catskill or the New England brook is per- 
haps the most enjoyable of all the small streams, 
because of its purity, its wildness, its tangled 
undergrowth, and its vivacious motion. It has 
many beauties of line and also countless varieties 
of color. Not the greens of tree and grass and 
moss, not the glow of mountain-flowers or the 
flare of autumn foliage, not the blue-and-white 
of sky-patches—not any of these alone ; but all 
of them together, mingled in the delicate 
reflections of the brook water. The local color 
of the stream and the color of the objects 
reflected struggle for mastery. Sometimes one 
conquers and sometimes the other; but more 
often they make a surface-compromise, cach 
