lameson 



Travelers' Original Accounts: 1801-1840 



wards, or housewards I should say, through the leafy, gloomy, 1836 

 pathways — wet with the spray, and fairly tired out. 



We drove along the road above the Falls. There was the 

 wide river spreading like a vast lake, then narrowing, then boil- 

 ing, foaming along in a current of eighteen miles an hour, till 

 it swept over the Crescent rock in a sheet of emerald green, and 

 threw up the silver clouds of spray into the clear blue sky. The 

 fresh luxurious verdure of the woods, relieved against the dark 

 pine forest, added to the beauty of scene. . . . After a 

 pleasant dinner and music, I returned to the hotel by the light 

 of a full moon, beneath which the Falls looked magnificently 

 mysterious, part glancing silver light, and part dark shadow, 

 mingled with fleecy folds of spray, over which floated a soft, 

 sleepy gleam; and in the midst of this tremendous velocity of 

 motion and eternity of sound, there was a deep, deep repose, 

 as in a dream. It impressed me for the time like something 

 supernatural — a vision, not a reality. 



The good people, travellers, describers, poets, and others, who 

 seem to have hunted through the dictionary for words in which 

 to depict these cataracts under every aspect, have never said 

 enough of the rapids above — even for which reason, perhaps, 

 they have struck me the more; not that any words in any lan- 

 guage would have prepared me for what I now feel in this 

 wondrous scene. Standing to-day on the banks above the Cres- 

 cent Fall, near Mr. Street's mill, gazing on the rapids, they left 

 in my fancy two impressions which seldom meet together — that 

 of the sublime and terrible, and that of the elegant and graceful 

 — like a tiger at play. I could not withdraw my eyes ; it was 

 like a fascination. 



The verge of the rapids is considerably above the eye; the 



whole mighty river comes rushing over the brow of a hill, and 



as you look up, it seems coming down to overwhelm you. Then 



meeting with the rocks, as it pours down the declivity, it boils 



m 215 



