Niagara Falls 



1851 So we consent to cloaks, but we positively decline India-rubber 



caps, especially after an advance to six cents by a gallant friend 

 upon the captain's bid for our " bunnets." The men must shift 

 for themselves. Here we are in the roar and the rush and the 

 spray. Whew! it drives, it sweeps, and the steady thunder of 

 the Cataract booms, cramming the air with sound. Only a few 

 of us hold the upper deck. Nor are we, who have no mantles, 

 all unprotected, for shawls wont to protect flowers from the 

 summer wind, now shield us from the spray of Niagara. 



We sweep along upon our leaf, which quivers and skims the 

 foam — sweep straight into the blinding white, thick, suffocating 

 mist of the Cataract, strain our eyes, as we gasp, for the curve 

 of the Fall, for the parapet above, and in a sudden break of the 

 cloud, through which breathes cold the very air of the rush of 

 waters, we catch a glorious glimpse of a calm ocean pouring 

 white and resistless from the blue sky above into the white clouds 

 below, and behold the very image of that Mind's process whose 



might .. M 



oves on 



His undisturbed affairs." 



I glance backward upon the deck, which is raked by the 

 scudding gusts of spray, and see a line of wet men crouching 

 together, like a group of Esquimaux, with their faces upturned 

 toward the Fall. They sit motionless, and staring, and appalled, 

 like a troop in Dante's Inferno. But straight before us — good 

 God! pilot, close under the bow there, looming through the 

 mist! Are you blind? are you mad? or does the Cataract mock 

 our feeble power, and will claim its victims? A black rock, 

 ambushed in the surge and spray, lowers before us. We are 

 driving straight upon it — we all see it, but we do not speak. 

 We fancy that the boat will not obey — that the due fate shall 

 reward this terrific trifling. Straight before us, a boat's length 

 away, and lo! swerving with the current around the rock, on 

 and farther, with felicitous daring, the little " Maid of the Mist " 

 dances up to the very foot of the Falls, wrapping herself saucily 



258 



