Travelers' Original Accounts Since 1840 



tion may have been. I do not deny that I should still prefer the i860 

 pinnacle, but that is because I prefer Gothic architecture ; and I H ™ 611 * 

 advise the reader not to hope for it. If he has a pleasure in deli- 

 cate decoration, the closely stippled slopes of the ice-cone will 

 give it to him; it is like that fine jeweller's work on the grain of 

 dead gold where the whole surface is fretted with infinitesimal 

 points. When these catch the sun of such a blue midwinter sky 

 as lifted its speckless arch above the ice-cone on the day I saw 

 it, the effect is all that one has a right to ask of mere nature. I 

 am trying to hint that I would have built the ice-cone somewhat 

 differently, if it had been left to me, but that I am not hyper- 

 critical. If it seems a little low, a little lumpish in the retrospect, 

 still it has its great qualities, which I should be the last in refusing 

 to recognize. 



The name ice-bridge had deceived me, but the ice-bridge did 

 not finally disappoint me. It is not a bridge at all. It is the 

 channel of the river blocked as far as the eye can see down the 

 gorge with huge squares and oblongs of ice, or of frozen snow, 

 as they seem, and giving a realizing effect to all the remembered 

 pictures of arctic scenery. This was curiously heightened by 

 some people with sleds among the crowds, making their way 

 through the ice pack from shore to shore; there wanted only the 

 fierce dash of some Esquimaux dog-team and the impression 

 would have been perfect. It was best to look down upon it all 

 from the cliffs, when at times the effect was more than arctic, 

 when it was lunar; you could fancy yourself gazing upon the 

 face of a dead world, or rather a plaster mask of it, with these 

 small black figures of people crawling over it like flies. It was 

 perfectly still that day, and in spite of the diapason of the Falls, 

 an inner silence possessed the air. From the cliffs along the 

 river the cedars thrust outward, armored in plates of ice, like the 

 immemorial effigies of old-time warriors, and every cascade that 

 had flung its bannerol of mist to the summer air, was now furled 

 to the face of the rock and frozen fast. Again a sense of the 

 repose, which is the secret of Niagara's charm, filled me. 



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