Preservation of the Falls 



apparently felt, what all others since have felt, the utter insunS- 188S 

 ciency of language. He could but do little more than say, " The c -* r,er 

 Universe does not afford its parallel ! " But in the days of Father 

 Hennepin the greater part of the earth was still a sealed book. 

 Since that time every quarter of it has been explored. Rivers, 

 mightier far than the Niagara, have been discovered. The Nile 

 has been made to yield up his well-kept secret. The courses of 

 the great rivers of Central Africa, interrupted by mighty cata- 

 racts, have been followed. Humboldts have penetrated the 

 interior of the South American continent. The region of the 

 Yosemite and the valley of the Yellowstone have been scrutinized 

 by thousands of visitors. The world contains no undiscovered 

 cataract; but the sentence of Father Hennepin, in describing 

 Niagara, still remains true as when he uttered it, " The Universe 

 does not afford its parallel! " 



The profound interest with which Niagara is beheld and 

 remembered, and which gives it the first place among the great 

 spectacles of nature, is due to a variety of elements, nowhere else 

 to be found united. It is not owing chiefly to the sublimity of 

 the scene, for the great mountain summits in many parts of the 

 earth far surpass it in all the elements of the sublime. The love- 

 liness of foliage and flower is displayed in more enchanting forms 

 elsewhere in our own and in other lands. Finer examples of mere 

 picturesque beauty in falls or rapids may be found amid the won- 

 ders of the Yosemite and Yellowstone valleys, and in other parts 

 of the world. 



Undoubtedly the master feature of the scene is the near exhibi- 

 tion of overwhelming power. Nowhere else among the works of 

 nature is such an amount of physical energy concentrated within 

 so narrow a compass. But the mere spectacle of power — power 

 pitiless, remorseless, resistless, like that of the volcano, or the 

 tornado — could never impart the pleasure, or create the exalta- 

 tion which the visitor experiences here. Here the beholder, con- 

 founded and bewildered by the overwhelming sense of resistless 

 power, has but to return for an instant and find recovery and 



1119 



