Niagara Falls 



1853 Moodie, Mrs. Susanna Strickland. Life in the clearings. Lond. : 



Moodie R. Bentley. 1853. Pp. 330-371. 



A sympathetic description of the beauties of Niagara, interspersed with 

 bits about people and hotel gossip. 



" Chained to the spot, 

 Mute with admiration." 



The removal of all the ugly mills along its shores would 

 improve it, perhaps, and add the one charm it wants, by being 

 hemmed in by tasteless buildings, — the sublimity of solitude. 



Oh, for one hour alone with nature, and her great master- 

 piece Niagara ! What solemn converse would the soul hold with 

 its Creator at such a shrine, and the busy hum of practical life 

 would not mar with its discord this grand " thunder of the 

 waters! " Realities are unmanageable things in some hands, and 

 the Americans are gravely contemplating making their sublime 

 Fall into a motive power for turning machinery. 



Ye Gods! What next will the love of gain suggest to the 

 gold-worshippers? The whole earth should enter into a protest 

 against such an act of sacrilege — such a shameless desecration 

 of one of the noblest works of God. 



Niagara belongs to no particular nation or people. It is an 

 inheritance bequeathed by the great Author to all mankind, — an 

 altar raised by his own almighty hand,-— at which all true wor- 

 shippers must bow the knee in solemn adoration. I trust that 

 these free glad waters will assert their own rights, and dash into 

 mist and spray any attempt made to infringe their glorious liberty. 



1853 MURRAY, AMELIA M. Letters from the United States, Cuba, and 



Murray Canada. New York: Putnam & Co. 1856. Pp. 109-115. 



The author is impressed by the exorbitant fees charged at Niagara. 



The English are accused of being a grasping nation in requiring 

 fees for sights, but nothing I ever met with equals the charges 

 for the contemplation of Nature here. The possessor of Goat 

 Island makes one thousand pounds a year of those strangers or 

 visitors who land on its shores; but this day we were actually 



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