Niagara Falls 



1834 rabbits and goats, and then gathering new wild-flowers from the 

 multitude which blossomed under our feet, the roar of the falls 

 solemnizing all. The timid ones sat in the alcove erected above 

 the Horseshoe Fall, while the rest went down to the Terrapin 

 Bridge and Tower. The tower, forty feet high, is built on rocks 

 in the midst of the rapids, and its summit affords an absolutely 

 complete view of the scene. The bridge is built on logs which 

 extend from rock to rock in the rapids to the edge of the preci- 

 pice, the flood gushing beneath in a dizzying whirl. At my first 

 visit this bridge had been complete, and, to all appearance, secure. 

 I had stood on its extreme point, which projected over the preci- 

 pice. There I hung suspended above the fall, standing in the 

 air on the extremity of a beam, and without any suspicion that I 

 was not perfectly safe. It was there that I learned some of the 

 secrets of the cataract. I saw there what can be seen nowhere 

 else, the emerald columns broken and forced up, and falling 

 again in gushes of diamonds, which again were melted into 

 wreaths of dazzling snow. It was now too late to see this any 

 more. The bridge had broken down some way from the end; 

 the handrail was gone; and the brink of the precipice was no 

 longer accessible. We got to the tower, however, and farther; 

 and Charley and his father stepped down from the bridge among 

 the rocks, and stood amid the water very near the brink of 

 the great fall! Their position was shown to be perfectly safe 

 by the verdure of these rocks. Slight shrubs, rooted in their 

 crevices, were full of leaf. Their smallest twigs were tossed in 

 the never-dying breeze without being snapped. Yet we were 

 glad when our friends were safe on the bridge again. 



We descended the Biddle staircase — the spiral staircase fixed 

 against the perpendicular rock in Goat Island — and pursued 

 a narrow path from its foot back to the fall, where we found a 

 glacier ! An enormous pile of snow and ice lay against the rock, 

 so solid, under this intense June sun, that Charley climbed to 

 the top of it. Here every successive pulse of the cataract was 

 like a cannon shot a few yards off, so that there was no standing 



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