Travelers' Original Accounts Since 1 840 



seen it in a picture." When I arrived at the Terrapin bridge, 1843 

 I expected to be overwhelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy 

 eminence, and gaze with unlimited wonder and awe upon the 

 immense mass rolling on and on ; but, somehow or other, I thought 

 only of comparing the effect on my mind with what I had read 

 and heard. I looked for a short time, and then with almost a 

 feeling of disappointment, turned to go to the other points of 

 view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing 

 emotion at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs, and the 

 middle of the river, and from below the table rock, it was still 

 '* barren, barren all." And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling 

 most moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, deter- 

 mined to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not 

 go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went 

 down to the bridge, and leaned over the parapet, where the boil- 

 ing rapids came down in their might. It was grand, and it was 

 also gorgeous; the yellow rays of the moon made the broken waves 

 appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks. But 

 they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a 

 mightier emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I passed 

 on to the terrapin bridge. Everything was changed, the misty 

 apparition had taken off its many-colored crown which it had 

 worn by day, and a bow of silvery white spanned its summit. 

 The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness to the distant parts 

 of the waters, and while the rapids were glancing in her beams, 

 the river below the falls was black as night, save where the 

 reflection of the sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blued 

 steel. No gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses, or 

 sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient river god. All 

 tended to harmonize with the natural grandeur of the scene. I 

 gazed long. I saw how here mutability and unchangeableness 

 were united. I surveyed the conspiring waters rushing against 

 the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like 

 toppling ambition, o'erleaping themselves, they fall on t'other 



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