Travelers Original Accounts: 1 801 -1 840 



whole breadth over a concave line of precipice, and thence pur- 1834 

 sues its course between lofty crags towards Ontario. A sort of awt on 

 bridge, two or three feet wide, stretches out along the edge of 

 the descending sheet, and hangs upon the rising mist, as if that 

 were the foundation of the frail structure. Here I stationed 

 myself in the blast of wind, which the rushing river bore along 

 with it. The bridge was tremulous beneath me, and marked 

 the tremor of the solid earth. I looked along the whitening 

 rapids, and endeavored to distinguish a mass of water far above 

 the falls, to follow it to their verge, and go down with it, in 

 fancy, to the abyss of clouds and storm. Casting my eyes across 

 the river, and every side, I took in the whole scene at a glance, 

 and tried to comprehend it in one vast idea. After an hour 

 spent thus, I left the bridge, and, by a staircase, winding almost 

 interminably round a post, descended to the base of the precipice. 

 From that point, my path lay over slippery stones, and among 

 great fragments of the cliff, to the edge of the cataract, where 

 the wind at once enveloped me in spray, and perhaps dashed 

 the rainbow round me. Were my long desires fulfilled? And 

 had I seen Niagara? 



Oh that I had never heard of Niagara till I beheld it! 

 Blessed were the wanderers of old, who heard its deep roar, 

 sounding through the woods, as the summons to an unknown 

 wonder, and approached its awful brink, in all the freshness 

 of native feeling. Had its own mysterious voice been the first 

 to warn me of its existence, then, indeed, I might have knelt 

 down and worshipped. But I had come thither, haunted with 

 a vision of foam and fury, and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling 

 down out of the sky, — a scene, in short, which nature had too 

 much good taste and calm simplicity to realize. My mind had 

 struggled to adapt these false conceptions to the reality, and find- 

 ing the effort vain, a wretched sense of disappointment weighed 

 me down. I climbed the precipice, and threw myself on the 

 earth, feeling that I was unworthy to look at the Great Falls, and 

 careless about beholding them again. . . . 



191 



