Niagara Falls 



1832 their wild and savage beauty about a spot where the works of 

 Coke man will ever appear paltry, and can never be in accordance. 



For my own part, most sincerely do I congratulate myself upon 

 having viewed the scene before such profanation had taken place. 

 The small manufacturing town of Manchester (what a romantic 

 name and what associations!), upon the American Bank, at 

 present detracts nothing from the charm of the place, the neat 

 white-washed houses being interspersed with trees and gardens; 

 but when once the red and yellow painted stores, with their 

 green Venetian blinds, tin roofs, and huge smoking chimneys 

 arise, farewell to a great portion of the attraction Niagara now 

 possesses. 



A ferry-boat, half a mile below the Canadian Fall, crosses to 

 Manchester, landing the passengers within fifty yards of the 

 American one, where the water is precipitated over a flat per- 

 pendicular rock 300 yards in breadth. The prosperity of this 

 village has been much retarded by two causes, one from its lia- 

 bility to destruction, being a frontier settlement ; and the other — 

 by no means an uncommon cause in the United States, — the 

 extravagant price demanded by an individual, the great pro- 

 prietor, for a grant of the water privileges allowed by the Rapids. 

 Two or three hundred yards from the bank above the Ferry, 

 and at the entrance to the village, a wooden bridge has been 

 thrown over the Rapids to a small island on which there is a 

 paper mill, and connected with Goat Island, which is of con- 

 siderable extent, and divides the two falls. Truly the men who 

 were employed in the erection of this bridge must have been in 

 full possession of Horace's aes triplex, for a more perilous situa- 

 tion could scarcely be imagined. A slip of a workman's foot 

 would precipitate him into the Rapids, whence he would pass 

 with the rapidity of lightning over the Falls. It was constructed 

 at the expense of General Porter, an American officer of dis- 

 tinction, during the late war, and appears strong and firmly situ- 

 ated. The piers are of loose stones, confined together by a 

 wooden frame or box, and the floor of planks twelve feet in 



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