Niagara Fxills 



1859 line of foaming breakers begin to show white in their restless 

 anger, and looking from their massive deep slow plunges like a 

 sea of half-thawed snow as they rave and hiss and cast their 

 flakes high into the air. Every minute the race increases till the 

 bubble and rush from the seething waters fill your ear and prepare 

 the mind for that great scene below, where their majesty of 

 terrors culminates. Yet there seem no rocks among these 

 breakers, and you notice with surprise that all their heaving 

 struggles are back against the stream, as if the very waves them- 

 selves were conscious of the tremendous abyss into which they 

 were being hurried, and strove against their fate. But all in 

 vain do the surges rise; each second adds perceptibly to their 

 might and dash, till round Goat Island, where the great rapids 

 commence, and where the waves 



— " headlong plunge and writhe in agony " 



— a perfect hell of waters — the Charybdis of the western 

 world. None can stand on the frail bridge which spans the 

 Rapids here without a feeling of almost alarm as he looks 

 beneath and sees those surges, terribly beautiful, within fifty 

 yards of their great leap, smashing over everything with a force 

 that makes the very banks quiver with the vibration, plunging 

 and whirling down from rock to rock with a headlong delirious 

 fury that is at once dreadful and sublime. One minute and they 

 overwhelm the rocks in a crowd of waves, then receding with a 

 great convulsive leap and roar, leave the stones, bare, smooth, 

 and polished for a single instant, till drowned and hidden by 

 another surge that, thundering and rushing on, bounds from 

 stone to stone, 



" Crashing on cliffs which, downward worn and rent 

 With its fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a dreadful vent." 



It is here that the resistless might of the great Falls can be 

 best appreciated as you note the tumbling waters gathering 

 strength for that great avalanche of waves where, racing and 

 struggling over the cliff, they fall at last, and a mighty river is 



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