Travelers* Original Accounts Since 1840 



Niagara to Buffalo. 1864 



«oy a Borrett 



Chicago, September 4th, 1 864. 

 ...... 



Passing by a suspension bridge which connects Goat Island 

 with the mainland, we walked to the lowest corner of the islet, 

 and stood at once upon the brink of the precipice down which 

 thunders the American Fall. No scene that I have ever wit- 

 nessed overwhelmed me with such uncontrollable wonder as that 

 which I looked upon, when I first stood on the margin of the 

 plunge of the mighty cataract. The height, the power, and 

 volume of the Falls exceeded my utmost expectations. I had 

 been told that I should be disappointed ; but if there be any who 

 have been, I cannot conceive what their imagination could have 

 anticipated. I own I expected more noise, but the state of the 

 atmosphere affects that, and the roar of the Falls, like that of 

 Bottom and Earl Russell, will at one time be as paltry and 

 insignificant as at another it will be grand and terrifying. I should 

 like to have the power to give you some idea of the sublimity 

 of the scene, but it is utterly useless to attempt a description of 

 what is wholly indescribable. The tortuous surgings of the 

 rapids, the sudden calmness at the brow of the cataract, the 

 majestic sea-green curve in which the liquid mass glides over the 

 edge of the precipice, the silvery ringlets into which it is broken 

 up soon after leaving the brink of the rock, the feathery mist in 

 which it showers down into the cloud of spray that ever veils the 

 last fifty feet of the Fall, and the infernal writhe and whiteness 

 in which it reappears in the depths of the abyss, — all these wond- 

 rous features of the Queen of Cataracts must be seen, watched, 

 sat beside for hours and days, before the mind can grasp the mag- 

 nificence of the scene. But we were as yet only in sight of the 

 American Fall. A walk along the further side of Goat Island 

 brought us in view of the Canadian Fall, and then I found that 

 I had been expending my fullest admiration and astonishment 

 upon a mere thread of Niagara, the thousandth part of its volume 



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