Preservation of the Falls 



The great spectacle may be called complete only when you 1871 

 have gone down the river some four miles, on the American side, 

 to the so-called rapids of the Whirlpool. Here the unhappy 

 stream tremendously renews its trouble. Two approaches have 

 been contrived on the cliff — one to the rapids proper, the other, 

 further below, to the scene of the sudden bend. The first con- 

 sists of a little wooden cage, of the " elevator " pattern, which 

 slides up and down a gigantic perpendicular shaft of horrible 

 flimsiness. But a couple of the usual little brides, staggering 

 beneath the weight of gorgeous cashmeres, entered the convey- 

 ance with their respective consorts at the same time with myself; 

 and, as it thus carried Hymen and his fortunes, we survived the 

 adventure. You obtain from below — that is, on the shore of 

 the river — a specimen of as noble cliff-scenery as the continent 

 can afford. The green embankment at the base of the sheer red 

 wall is by itself a very fair mountain-slope; and from this starts 

 erect, rugged and raw, a grandly spacious lateral section of 

 mother earth. As it stands, Gustave Dore might have drawn it. 

 He would have sketched with especial ardor certain parasitical 

 shrubs and boskages — lone and dizzy witnesses of autumn ; cer- 

 tain outward-peering wens and warts and other perpendicular 

 excrescences of rock; and, above all, near the summit, the 

 fantastic figures of sundry audacious minor cliffs, grafted upon the 

 greater by a mere lateral attachment and based in the empty air, 

 with great lone trees rooted on their verges, like the tower of the 

 Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. The actual whirlpool is a third 

 of a mile further down the river, and is best seen from the cliff 

 above. Thus seen, it seems to me by all odds the finest of the 

 secondary episodes of the Niagara drama, and one on which a 

 scribbling tourist, ineffectively playing at showman, may be con- 

 tent to ring down his curtain. The channel at this point turns 

 away to the right, at a clean right-angle, and the river, arriving 

 from the rapids just above with stupendous velocity, meets the 



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