Niagara Falls 



1833 Everything around and about you appears to reply to the 



cataract, and to partake of it, none more so than the evergreen 

 forest, which is bathed from year to year in the dew of the 

 river. These noble trees, as they tower aloft on the soil, are sus- 

 tained from youth to age by the invigorating spray of the mighty 

 Falls. Their leaves are steeped, summer after summer, in the 

 heavy dew; their trunks echo the falling waters, from the day 

 they rise from the sod, to that in which they are shaken to the 

 ground; and the fibres of the huge moss-grown trunk on which 

 you sit, prostrate and mouldering on the rich soil beneath, bedded 

 in the fresh grass and leaves, still vibrates to the sound of its 

 thunders, and crumbles gradually to dust. But all this proves 

 nothing — as a matter-of-fact man might say — but I am 

 Niagara-mad. We have much before us, and many sublime 

 scenes, though none may vie with that, before which we have 

 been lingering: — allons! 



Not so well known as some others, perhaps, but well worth reading. 



1833 Power, Tyrone. Impressions of America, during the years 1834, 



Power and 1835. Lond. : Richard Bentley. 1836. 1:391-411. 



From this house [Chippewa] the eternal mist caused by the 

 great fall may be plainly seen curling like a vast body of light 

 smoke, and shooting occasionally in spiral columns high above the 

 treetops; but not a sound told of its neighborhood, although we 

 were not five miles distant from it, and the day was calm and 

 clear. At about three miles from this, as the vehicle slowly 

 ascended a rise, I heard for the first time the voice of the waters, 

 and called the attention of my friends within the carriage to the 

 sound. 



It was at the moment we struck the foot of the hill leading up 

 to the hotel [Clifton House] that the rapid and the great horse- 

 shoe fall became visible over the sunken trees to our right, almost 

 on a level with us. I have heard people talk of having felt 

 disappointed on a first view of this stupendous scene: by what 



T068 



