Music — Poetry — Fiction 



The next morning they went out as they had planned, for an 1871 

 exploration of Goat Island, after an early breakfast. . . . owc * 



On the bridge, they paused and looked up and down the 

 rapids rushing down the slope in all their wild variety, with the 

 white crests of breaking surf, the dark massiveness of heavy- 

 climbing waves, the fleet, smooth sweep of currents over broad 

 shelves of sunken rock, the dizzy swirl and suck of whirlpools. 



Spell-bound, the journeyers pored upon the deathful course 

 beneath their feet, gave a shudder to the horror of being cast 

 upon it, and then hurried over the bridge to the island, in the 

 shadow of whose wildness they sought refuge from the sight and 

 sound. 



There had been rain in the night; the air was full of forest 

 fragrance, and the low, sweet voice of twittering birds. 



Goat Island is marvelously wild for a place visited by so many 

 thousands every year. The shrubbery and undergrowth remain 

 unravaged, and form a deceitful privacy, in which, even at that 

 early hour of the day, they met many other pairs. 



Our friends returned by the shore of the Canadian rapids, 

 having traversed the island by a path through the heart of the 

 woods, and now drew slowly near the Falls again. All parts of 

 the prodigious pageant have an eternal novelty, and they beheld 

 the ever-varying effect of that constant sublimity with the sense 

 of discoverers, or rather of people whose great fortune it is to 

 see the marvel in its beginning, and new from the creating hand. 

 The morning hour lent its sunny charm to this illusion, while in 

 the cavernous precipices of the shores, dark with evergreens, a 

 mystery as cf primeval night seemed to linger. There was a wild 

 fluttering of their nerves, a rapture with an under-consciousness 

 of pain, the exaltation of peril and escape, when they came to 

 the three little isles that extend from Goat Island, one beyond 

 49 769 



