Niagara Falls 



1871 channel of the stream, and heads upward between high embank- 

 james ments. From this point, I think, you really enter into relations 



with Niagara. Little by little the elements become a picture, rich 

 with the shadow of coming events. You have a foretaste of the 

 great spectacle of colour which you enjoy at the Falls. The 

 even cliffs of red-brown earth are crusted and spotted with 

 autumnal orange and crimson, and, laden with this gorgeous 

 decay, they plunge sheer into the deep-dyed green of the river. 

 As you proceed, the river begins to tell its tale — at first in broken 

 syllables of foam and flurry, and then, as it were, in rushing, 

 flashing sentences and passionate ejaculations. Onwards from 

 Lewiston, where you are transferred from the boat to the train, 

 you see it from the edge of the American cliff, far beneath you, 

 now superbly unnavigable. You have a lively sense of something 

 happening ahead ; the river, as a man near me said, has evidently 

 been in a row. The cliffs here are immense; they form a 

 vomitorium worthy of the living floods whose exit they protect. 

 This is the first act of the drama of Niagara; for it is, I believe, 

 one of the commonplaces of description, that you instinctively 

 convert it into a series of " situations." At the station pertaining 

 to the railway suspension-bridge, you see in mid-air, beyond an 

 interval of murky confusion produced at once by the farther 

 bridge, the smoke of the trains, and the thickened atmosphere of 

 the peopled bank, a huge far-flashing sheet which glares through 

 the distance as a monstrous absorbent and irradiant of light. And 

 here, in the interest of the picturesque, let me note that this 

 obstructive bridge tends in a way to enhance the first glimpse of 

 the cataract. Its long black span, falling dead along the shining 

 brow of the Falls, seems shivered and smitten by their fierce 

 effulgence, and trembles across the field of vision like some 

 enormous mote in a light too brilliant. A moment later, as the 

 train proceeds, you plunge into the village, and the cataract, save 

 as a vague ground-tone to this trivial interlude, is, like so many 

 other goals of aesthetic pilgrimage, temporarily postponed to the 

 hotel. 



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