Niagara Falls 



1875 OFFENBACH, Jacques. America and the Americans. Lond. : 



Offenbach William Reeves. (1877.) Pp. 74-75. 



Offenbach was by his own account much affected at the sight of the 

 Falls. " The sight of this vast amphitheatre," he writes, " of this pro- 

 digious mass of water, falling with a report of thunder, like the sound of 

 a great earthquake, produced in me a vertigo, and caused me to forget all 

 I had read, all I had heard, and all my fancy had imagined." Like many 

 another traveler, he was much annoyed by pedlars and guides. 



1875 THOROLD, Rev. A. W. To Niagara and back. Pt. 2. (Good 



Thorold words. 1875. 16:125-131.) 



As to the abiding impression left on me by Niagara, this 

 certainly I can say, that of all the glorious things in God's 

 creation I have been permitted to see in the four quarters of 

 the globe — and they have not been few — Niagara comes first. 

 On various minds it leaves various impressions; and perhaps this 

 is significative of its real power. To Charles Dickens, for 

 instance, it gave the thought of peace. My own impression of it 

 is not perhaps so much embodied in any one distinct idea, as in a 

 sort of many-sided quiet yet rapturous enjoyment that possessed 

 me about it. It made me so wonderfully happy to see it then; 

 it still makes me so happy to recollect it now. There is its color, 

 as it falls, so dazzingly white before it falls, so exquisitely green, 

 the greenness of emeralds. There is its motion, forever going 

 on, day and night, summer and winter, year after year, age after 

 age ; the very embodiment and idea of quiet but irresistible power, 

 wearing away the rocks, defying the wind to drive it back, and 

 the frost to congeal it, with always the same volume of water, in 

 heat or cold, in drought or rain. It is changing every moment, 

 yet it is everlasting, ever bringing down fresh fountains from the 

 lakes and hills of the north; in its actual substance different 

 moment by moment. Yet for almost infinite years before the 

 first human foot trod those woodland solitudes, or human face 

 gazed tremblingly down on its awful beauty, it has been rolling 

 on, unseen except by its Maker, towards the distant sea. And 

 then its sound! The wonderful thing is that it does not sound 



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