Preservation of the Falls 



ascent from Lewiston, for the appearance of the object of our 1833 

 visit. The broad fathomless blue river, streaked with foam, Latrobe 

 which, deeply sunk in a colossal channel, hurried to our rencontre, 

 and appeared at every glimpse as we advanced swifter and in 

 greater commotion, was to us a guarantee that the scene of its 

 descent from the upper country could be no common one. When 

 about three miles from the village on the American side, you 

 gain your first view of the Falls, together with the river, both 

 above and below — the island which divides them — and greater 

 part of the basin at their feet. 



I will not say but that the impression of that first glance was 

 heightened afterwards by our nearer and reiterated survey of 

 every portion of the cataract in detail ; yet we all agreed that we 

 could even then grasp the idea of its magnitude, and that all we 

 had seen elsewhere, and all we had expected, was far surpassed 

 by what was then shown to us. And when, the following year, 

 two of us turned aside by common consent to pay a second visit 

 to Niagara, after having in the interval, visited many of the great 

 Falls of Lower Canada, — cataracts in comparison to which all 

 European Falls are puerile — and we felt our curiosity excited 

 to divine what impression a second visit would make; far from 

 being disappointed, we felt that before Niagara, in spite of its 

 inferiority of elevation, all shrunk to playthings. It is not 

 the mere weight and volume of water that should give this 

 far-famed cataract the first rank. Every surrounding object 

 seems to be on a corresponding scale of magnificence. The wide 

 liquid surface of the river above, with its swelling banks, con- 

 trasted by the deep blue floods below, as boiling up from their 

 plunge into the unfathomed basin, they shock against one another, 

 and race down towards the distant lake; the extreme beauty of 

 the forested defile, with its precipices and slope; the colouring 

 of the waters, which in the upper part of its descent is that of the 

 emerald ; the mystery and thick gloom which hide the foot of the 

 Falls, and add to their apparent height, and the floating clouds 

 of vapour, now hurried over the face of the landscape, as though 



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