Travelers' Original Accounts Since 1840 



them as a reduced picture with delight. But what I liked best 1843 

 was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall. There all 

 power of observing details, all separate consciousness, was quite 

 lost. 



The whirlpool I like very much. It is seen to advantage 

 after the great falls; it is so sternly solemn. The river cannot 

 look more imperturable, almost sullen in its marble green, than 

 it does just below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark 

 the hidden vortex, seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice 

 above could not proclaim, — a meaning as untold as ever. 



It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been 

 swallowed by the cataract, is like to rise suddenly to light here, 

 whether uprooted tree, or body of man or bird. 



The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they 

 are so swift that they cease to seem so ; you can think only of their 

 beauty. The fountain beyond the Moss Islands, I discovered 

 for myself, and thought it for some time an accidental beauty 

 which it would not do to leave, lest I might never see it again. 

 After I found it permanent, I returned many times to watch the 

 play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond, nature seems, 

 as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. 

 She delights in this, — a sketch within a sketch, a dream within 

 a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in 

 the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the 

 flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all 

 the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the scene in con- 

 genial thought with its genius. 



People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see 

 it further deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an appre- 

 hension: the spectacle is capable to swallow up all such objects; 

 they are not seen in the great whole, more than an earthworm 

 in a wide field. 



The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many 

 of the fairest love to do homage here. The Wake Robin and 



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