Niagara Falls 



i860 breakers. They seemed to jump at it, like a pack of maddened 

 wolves, and to pull one another back, and then to tumble and 

 flow away, forever different, forever the same. The strong guys 

 starting from the rocks of the precipice and the level of the rapids 

 could stay it, after all, only a little part of its length, and beneath 

 them and up through them, the black cedars thrust their speary 

 tops, with that slant toward the middle of the gorge, which must 

 be from the pull of the strong draft between its walls. They 

 made a fine contrast of color with the floods breaking snowy 

 white from their bulks of glassy green ; and for the rest there was 

 the perfect blue of the summer heaven over all. 



There was no testing of the guys, whether they were slack or 

 taut, or of the cable, whether it was in condition, and in fact no 

 one thought of either, such was the surprise of seeing that pink 

 figure of a man spring out into space from some source which 

 I, at least, had not observed. He was in the conventional silk 

 fleshings of the rope-dancer, and he carried a very long balancing 

 pole. At first there was some reality in the apparition. One 

 felt he was a fellow-man about to dare death for our amusement, 

 but as he began to run down the slope of the cable toward the 

 centre, one rapidly lost this sense, and beheld him as a mere 

 feature of the general prospect. Perhaps he was aware of this 

 effect and chose to startle us back to our consciousness of his 

 humanity, or perhaps it was a wonted trick, intended to heighten 

 the interest of the spectacle. At any rate, in the very middle of the 

 river, he seemed suddenly to falter, and he swayed from side to 

 side as if he were going to fall. A sort of groan went through 

 the crowd, and several women fainted. Then Blondin made 

 believe to recover himself, and began to climb the slope of this 

 cable to the further shore. I do not know just how far this was, 

 but I think it may have been well on to half a mile; as to the 

 height above the rapids where the cable hung it looked like a 

 hundred and fifty feet. I made some vague notes of these matters 

 after Blondin vanished into the crowd beyond, but there was not 

 much time for conjecture. He came into sight again almost at 



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