Travelers' Original Accounts Since 1 840 



haps, the feeling of irritation or unrest produced by the ceaseless 1865 

 jar and tumult of the Falls, which become well nigh unbearable Ru8seI1 

 at night, and vex one's slumbers with unquiet dreams, in which 

 water plays a powerful part. The American side is not so much 

 affected in that way. The Horseshoe presents by far the greatest 

 mass of water; its rush is grander — the terrible fathomless gulf 

 into which it falls is more awe-inspiring than anything on the 

 American side; but the latter offers to the visitor greater variety 

 of colour — I had nigh said of substance — in the water. At 

 its first tremendous blow on the seething surface of the basin, the 

 column of water seems to make a great cavern, into which it 

 plunges bodily, only to come up in myriad millions of foaming 

 particles, very small, bright, and distinct, like minute, highly 

 polished shot. These gradually expand and melt into each other 

 after a wild dance in the caldron, which boils and bubbles with 

 its awful hell-broth forever. In the centre of the Horseshoe, 

 which is really more the form of two sides of an obtuse-angled 

 triangle, the water, being of great depth — at least thirty feet 

 where it falls over the precipice — is of an azure green, which 

 contrasts well with the yellow, white, and light emerald colours 

 of the shallower and more broken portions nearer the sides. 



It would be considered rather presumptuous in any one to 

 think of improving upon Niagara, but I cannot help thinking that 

 the effect would be increased immensely if the island which 

 divides the cataract into the Horseshoe and the American Falls, 

 and the rock which juts up in the latter and subdivides it 

 unequally, were removed or did not exist; then the river, in one 

 grand front of over one thousand yards, would make its leap 

 en masse. The American Falls are destitute of the beauty given 

 by the curve of the leap to the Horseshoe; they descend perpen- 

 dicularly, and are lost in a sea of foam, not in an abyss of water, 

 but in the wild confusion of the vast rocks which are piled up 

 below. But they are still beautiful exceedingly, and there is 

 more variety of scene in the islands, in the passage over the 

 bridges to Goat Island and to the stone tower, which has been 



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