Niagara Falls 



1906 No doubt the falls, seen from the Canadian side, have a 



peculiar long majesty of effect; but the finest thing in it all, to my 

 mind, was not Niagara at all, but to look up-stream from Goat 

 Island and see the sea-wide crest of the flashing sunlit rapids 

 against the gray -blue sky. That was like a limitless ocean pour- 

 ing down a sloping world towards one, and I lingered, held by 

 that, returning to it through an indolent afternoon. It gripped 

 the imagination as nothing else there seemed to do. It was so 

 broad an infinitude of splash and hurry. And, moreover, all the 

 enterprising hotels and expectant trippers were out of sight. 



That was the best of the display. The real interest of Niagara 

 for me was not in the waterfall, but in the human accumulations 

 about it. They stood for the future, threats and promises, and the 

 waterfall was just a vast reiteration of falling water. The note 

 of growth in human accomplishment rose clear and triumphant 

 above the elemental thunder. 



For the most part these accumulations of human effort about 

 Niagara are extremely defiling and ugly. Nothing — not even 

 the hotel signs and advertisement boards — could be more 

 offensive to the eye and mind than the Schoellkopf Company's 

 untidy confusion of sheds and buildings on the American side, 

 wastefully squirting out long tail-race cascades behind the bridge, 

 and nothing more disgusting than the sewer-pipes and gas-work 

 ooze that the town of Niagara Falls contributes to the scenery. 

 But, after all, these represent only the first slovenly onslaught of 

 mankind's expansion, the pioneers' camp of the human-growth 

 process that already changes its quality and manner. There are 

 finer things than these outrages to be found. 



These dynamos and turbines of the Niagara Falls Power 

 Company, for example, impressed me far more profoundly than 

 the Cave of the Winds; are, indeed, to my mind, greater and 

 more beautiful than that accidental eddying of air beside a 

 downpour. They are will made visible, thought translated into 

 easy and commanding things. They are clean, noiseless, and 

 starkly powerful. All the clatter and tumult of the early age of 



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