Niagara Falls 



1871 Nothing can live there, and with what is caught in its hold, the 

 maelstrom plays for days, and whirls and tosses round and round 

 in its toils, with a sad, maniacal patience. The guides tell ghastly 

 stories, which even their telling does not wholly rob of ghastliness, 

 about the bodies of drowned men carried into the whirlpool and 

 made to enact upon its dizzy surges a travesty of life, apparently 

 floating there at their pleasure, diving and frolicking amid the 

 waves, or frantically struggling to escape from the death that has 

 long since befallen them. 



On the American side, not far below the railway suspension 

 bridge, is an elevator more than a hundred and eighty feet high, 

 which is meant to let people down to the shore below, and to give 

 a view of the rapids on their own level. 



. . . . at last they stood upon a huge fragment of stone 

 right abreast of the rapids. Yet it was a magnificent sight, and 

 for a moment none of them were sorry to have come. The surges 

 did not look like the gigantic ripples on a river's course as they 

 were, but like a procession of ocean billows ; they arose far aloft 

 in vast bulks of clear green, and broke heavily into foam at the 

 crest. Great blocks and shapeless fragments of rock strewed the 

 margin of the awful torrent; gloomy walls of dark stone rose 

 naked from these, bearded here and there with cedar, and every- 

 where frowning with shaggy brows of evergreen. The place is 

 inexpressibly lonely and dreadful, and one feels like an alien 

 presence there, or as if he had intruded upon some mood or haunt 

 of Nature in which she had a right to be forever alone. The 

 slight, impudent structure of the elevator rises through the solitude, 

 like a thing that merits ruin, yet it is better than something more 

 elaborate, for it looks temporary, and since there must be an 

 elevator, it is well to have it of the most transitory aspect. Some 

 such quality of rude impermanence consoles you for the presence 

 of most improvements by which you enjoy Niagara; the suspen- 



772 



