Travelers' Original Accounts Since 1840 



The Rapids before Niagara are not of water only. The 1851 

 Cataract is the centre of a vortex of travel — a maelstrom which urt,s 

 you scarcely suspect until you are swimming round in its intense 

 swiftness, and feel that you are drawn nearer and closer, every 

 moment, to an awful and unimagined Presence. 



. . . Within a certain circumference every body is Niaga- 

 rized, and flies in a frenzy to the centre as filings to the magnet. 

 Before the train stopped, and while I fancied that we were slack- 

 ening speed for a way-station — I, listening the while to the 

 pleasant music of words, that weaned my hearing from any roar 

 of waters — a crowd of men leaped from the cars, and ran like 

 thieves, lovers, soldiers, or what you will, to the " Cataract," as 

 the conductor said. I looked upon them at once as a select 

 party of poets, overwhelmed by the enthusiastic desire to see the 

 Falls. It was an error: they were " knowing ones," intent upon 

 the first choice of rooms at the *' Cataract House." I followed 

 them, and found a queue, as at the box-office of the opera in 

 Paris — a long train of travellers waiting to enter their names. 

 Not one could have a room yet, (it was ten o'clock,) but at 

 half-past two every body was going away, and then every body 

 could be accommodated. . . . 



Disappointment in Niagara seems to be affected, or childish. 

 Your fancies may be very different, but the regal reality sweeps 

 them away like weeds and dreams. You may have nourished 

 some impossible idea of one ocean pouring itself over a precipice 

 into another. But it was a wild whim of inexperience, and is 

 in a moment forgotten. If, standing upon the bridge as you 

 cross to Goat Island, you can watch the wild sweep and swirl 

 of the waters around the wooded point above, dashing, swelling 

 and raging, but awful from the inevitable and resistless rush, 

 and not feel that your fancy of a sea is paled by the chaos of 

 wild water that tumbles toward you, then you are a child, and 

 the forms of your thought are not precise enough for the pro- 

 foundest satisfaction in great natural spectacles. 



253 



