Niagara Falls 



1827-28 alarmed, and so much overcrowded with new and old images, — 

 all exaggerated, — that in spite of the conviction that the whole 

 was nonsense, I felt obliged to draw back from the edge of the 

 rock; and it required a little reflection, and some resolution, to 

 advance again to the brink. 



On the 1 st of August, 1 827, I drove once more to the Falls, 

 intending merely to bid good-by to them, and come away. 1 

 therefore left the carriage at the top of the bank, and said to 

 the coachman that he need not take out his horses, but wait in the 

 shade before the inn, till I came up again from the Table Rock. 

 This was at noon, but it was not till three o'clock that I could 

 disentangle myself from the scene. Indeed, to speak without 

 exaggeration or affectation, I must own, that upon this visit — 

 the last, in all human probability, I shall ever pay to these Falls, 

 I was almost overwhelmed — if that be the proper word to 

 use — with the grandeur of this extraordinary spectacle. I felt, 

 as it were, staggered and confused, and at times experienced a 

 sensation bordering on alarm — I did not well know at what — 

 a strong mysterious sort of impression that something dreadful 

 might happen. At one moment I looked upon myself as utterly 

 insignificant in the presence of such a gigantic, moving, thundering 

 body — and in the next, was puffed up with a sort of pride and 

 arrogant satisfaction, to think that I was admitted into such com- 

 pany, and that I was not altogether wasting the opportunity: — 

 at others I gave up the reins of my imagination altogether, and 

 then tried to follow, but with no great success, some of the 

 innumerable trains of wild and curious reflections which arose in 

 consequence — though, after all, nothing can be conceived more 

 vague than those wandering thoughts, except it be their present 

 ghostlike recollection. 



During these three hours, which I am disposed to reckon as 

 the most interesting of my whole life, my mind was often brought 

 back from such fanciful vagaries with a sudden start — only, 

 however, to relapse again and again. More than once I really 

 almost forgot where I was, and became more than half uncon- 



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