Niagara Falls 



1853 In the evening we took a stroll, by the pale light of a young 



Kingston moon, to Table Rock, where we stood indelibly impressing on 

 our minds the scene before us. Beautiful and grand as it is, I 

 cannot at all enter into the feelings of those (supposing people to 

 feel as they write) who speak of Niagara as showing the great- 

 ness and power of the Almighty; who describe it as drawing 

 them nearer to heaven by its sublimity, and talk of it as impress- 

 ing them with a sense of the insignificance of man, the littleness 

 of human affairs, and very much in a similar strain. Such terms, 

 we agreed, are not only inappropriate and often ridiculous, but 

 approaching even to blasphemous. The creative power of the 

 Almighty is shown as much in the smallest of the creatures which 

 crawl the earth as in the largest animal which has life; and it 

 appears to me, that instead of fancying we hear His voice in the 

 roar of the cataract, in the rattling of the thunder, in the raging 

 of the tempest on the billowy ocean, we might rather consider, on 

 such occasions, He has thought fit to relax His omnipotence over 

 the elements. Justly we may pray to Him for aid against the 

 injuries they may inflict; but, looking on Him as we ought as a 

 God of mercy and love, we cannot associate strife, and tumult, 

 and disorder, with His attributes. Surely He created rivers to 

 irrigate the land and to afford easy means of communication to 

 those dwelling on it. Niagara is an exception to the ordinary 

 rule. It was allowed to exist, perhaps, as an ornament on the face 

 of nature, or to test the ingenuity of man to counteract the impedi- 

 ment offered to the free navigation of those inland seas. It is no 

 wonder, surely. A poet may describe it as his fervent imagina- 

 tion may dictate, but, in earnest unexaggerated prose, it consists 

 simply of a good-sized river falling over a very ordinary-sized 

 cliff, and very, very inferior in grandeur or in terror-inspiring 

 power to a storm on the ocean when lightnings dart from the 

 lowering sky, the wind howls, and the waves, lashed to fury, 

 threaten the labouring ship. Let us give Niagara its due. It is a 

 Very beautiful sight, and more worthy of a visit than most sights 



