Niagara Falls 



1850 



1850 BlGSBY, John J. The shoe and canoe. . . . Lond.: Chapman 



Bigsby and Hall. 1850. 2:1-34. 



A delightful, gossipy account of the general features of the Falls and 

 the sayings and doings of the party with whom the author visited them. 



1850 BREMER, FREDERIKA. The homes of the new world. Lond.: Hall, 



Bremer Virtue and Co. 1853. 2:194-202. 



It makes a grand and joyful impression, but has nothing in it 

 which astonishes or strikes the beholder. As you go toward the 

 great fall, which is on the Canada side, you see a broad mass 

 of water which falls perpendicularly from a plane in a horseshoe 

 or crescent form. One might say that the water comes from an 

 open embrace. The water calm and clear, and of the most 

 beautiful smaragdus-green colour, arches itself over the precipice 

 that breaks it, and it is then that the fury and wild power of 

 the fall first break forth, but even here rather majestically than 

 furiously. Trenton is a young hero, drunken with youthful life 

 and old sherry, which, in blind audacity, rushes forth on its 

 career, violent and terrible. Niagara is a goddess, calm and 

 majestic even in the exercise of her highest power. She is mighty, 

 but not violent. She is calm, and leaves the spectators so. She 

 has grand, quiet thoughts, and calls forth such in those who are 

 able to understand her. She does not strike with astonishment, 

 but she commands and fascinates by her clear, sublime beauty. 

 One sits by her knee and still can hear one's own thoughts and 

 the words of others, yes, even the falling water-drops from the 

 green trees which her waters have besprinkled. She is too great 

 to wish to silence, to wish to rule, excepting by her spiritual 

 power. She is — ah, she is what human beings are not, and 

 which, if they were, would make them god-like. 



But those many thousand people who come hither every year 

 — it is said that the place is visited by 60,000 persons annu- 

 ally — must they not grow a little greater and better by seeing 



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