Niagara Falls 



1871 from the beginning of the American Fall to the farthest limit of 



the Horse-Shoe, with all the awful pomp of the rapids, the solemn 

 darkness of the wooded islands, the mystery of the vaporous gulf, 

 the indomitable wildness of the shores, as far as the eye can reach 

 up or down the fatal stream. 



The last hues of sunset lingered in the mists that sprung from 

 the base of the Falls with a mournful, tremulous grace, and a 

 movement weird as the play of the northern lights. They were 

 touched with the most delicate purples and crimsons, that 

 darkened to deep red, and then faded from them at a second 

 look, and they flew upward, swiftly upward, like troops of pale, 

 transparent ghosts; while a perfectly clear radiance, better than 

 any other for local color, dwelt upon the scene. Far under the 

 bridge the river smoothly swam, the undercurrents forever 

 unfolding themselves upon the surface with a vast rose-like evolu- 

 tion, edged all around with faint lines of white, where the air 

 that filled the water freed itself in foam. What had been clear 

 green on the face of the cataract was here more like rich verd- 

 antique, and had a look of firmness almost like that of the stone 

 itself. So it showed beneath the bridge, and down the river till 

 the curving shores hid it. These, springing abruptly from the 

 water's brink, and shagged with pine and cedar, displayed the 

 tender verdure of grass and bushes intermingled with the dark 

 evergreens that climb from ledge to ledge, till they point their 

 speary tops above the crest of bluffs. In front, where tumbled 

 rocks and expanses of naked clay varied the gloomier and gayer 

 green, sprung those spectral mists; and through them loomed out, 

 in its manifold majesty, Niagara, with the seemingly immovable 

 white Gothic screen of the American Fall, and the green massive 

 curve of the Horse-Shoe, solid and simple and calm as an 

 Egyptian wall; while behind this, with their white and black 

 expanses broken by dark foliaged little isles, the steep Canadian 

 rapids billowed down between their heavily wooded shores. 



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