Preservation of the Falls 



process they arrived at this conclusion I profess myself utterly 1833 

 incapable of divining, since, even now that two years have almost 

 gone by, I find on this point my feelings are not yet to be 

 analyzed; I dare not trust myself to their guidance, and only 

 know that my wildest imaginings were forgotten in contemplating 

 this awful reality. 



I found no sensation equal to a long quiet contem- 

 plation of the mass entire, not as viewed from the balconies of 

 the hotel, but from some rocky point or wooded shade, where 

 house and fence and man and all his petty doings were shut out, 

 and the eye left calmly to gaze upon the awful scene, and the 

 rapt mind to raise its thoughts to Him who loosed this eternal 

 flood and guides it harmless as the petty brook. 



There never should have been a house permitted within sight 

 of the fall at least. How I have envied those who first sought 

 Niagara, through the scarce trod wilderness, with the Indian for 

 a guide ; and who slept upon its banks with the summer trees for 

 their only shelter, with the sound of its waters for their only 

 rdveille. 



Now, one is wakened here by a bell, which I never can liken 

 to any other than a dustman's, and can hardly find a spot whereto 

 parasols and smart forage-caps intrude not. 



I would even include in my denunciation the tower which is 

 now erected upon the piece of rock that abuts upon the great 

 fall, and standing in whose gallery you actually hang suspended 

 over the abyss; not but that the tower is in itself rudely simple, 

 and in good taste perhaps, but that one feels this place needs 

 no such accessories, and, instead of deriving advantage from them, 

 is degraded into a mere show by their presence; and, in saying 

 this much, I feel as though the application of the term was a 

 profanation. 



1069 



