Preservation of the Falls 



width. There was one erected previously at the upper end of 1832 

 the island, and out of the great power of the Rapids, but it was Colce 

 continually subject to injury from the drift-ice, whereas in its 

 present situation the Rapids render the ice harmless, by break- 

 ing it before it arrives so low as the bridge. 



1832-1833 



RoLPH, Thomas. A brief account, together with observations made 1832-33 

 during a visit in the West Indies, and a tour through the United States of Rolph 

 America, in parts of the years, 1 832-3 ; together with a statistical account 

 of upper Canada. Dundas, U. C. : Hackstaff. 1 836. Pp. 1 93-204. 



This account is clear, pointed, self-restrained, and the details described ■ 

 are well-chosen. 



I stood by Niagara. The grandest image of Power that 

 nature has produced was before me. Of Power, I say, for with 

 that are associated all my ideas of the sublimity of Niagara. 

 It is the volume of waters that it pours, and not the height from 

 which they fall — it is the accumulation of the mighty mass, 

 and not the position in which accident has placed it, that strikes 

 and overwhelms you — it is the fact of whole oceans being 

 brought before the eye at one glance, and not the circumstance 

 of their changing their level, that gives its majestic character to 

 this stupendous scene. It is to the image of Almighty Power — 

 it is to the type of Him who holdeth the waters in the hollow 

 of his hand, that the soul bows in humility or lifts itself in sub- 

 limated awe. Here is the spot of all others upon the broad earth 

 — and I have travelled it widely — where the nothingness* of 

 human pride comes home upon the heart ; where its hopes and its 

 struggles — its aspirations after good and its conflicts against 

 evil — its dreams of distinction and its repinings at obscurity — 

 its hard wrestlings with the doom to which it is fated, sink into 

 their native insignificance, when compared with the operations of 

 the immortal Mind that is forever developing itself around 

 us. 



Only a few buildings are yet seen peering from among the 

 trees and shrubbery, and they have just begun to be a drawback 



1061 



