Niagara Falls 

 1881 I quote from my companion's note-book on the spot. 



Hardy 



' There was a break in the wood, a flash of white, a cloud of 

 spray tossed high above the tree-tops; then the dark woods 

 closed again. That glimpse, flashing upon us and passing before 

 we could fully realize that the great tumbling mass was indeed 

 Niagara, can hardly be called our first view of it. ... It 

 was dark when we reached the Clifton house; the roar of the 

 falls filled our ears, we stepped out upon the balcony, and there 

 was a sight we can never forget. It was a moonless night, and 

 in the dusk we could only obscurely trace the vast vague out- 

 line of the two falls, divided by the blurred mass of shapeless 

 shadows which we learned was Goat Island. As we looked 

 upon them silently, and listened to the ceaseless boom like dis- 

 tant thunder, which shook the ground beneath our feet, across the 

 snowy veil of the American Fall, to our left, shot rays of rosy 

 light, which melted into amber, then into emerald. They were 

 illuminating the great waters with coloured calcium lights! In 

 whose benighted mind rose the first thought of dressing Niagara 

 up like a transformation scene in a pantomime? It was like 

 putting a tinsel crown and tarlatan skirts on the Venus of Milo. 

 But these brilliant rays which fell across the American Falls, 

 and which were turned on and off like a dissolving view, did not 

 reach to the Horseshoe Fall away to our right. Vast, solemn, 

 shadowy, we could just distinguish its form in the darkness, could 

 hear the deep murmur of its awful voice. And there, between 

 it and us, what was that we saw? Was it some huge pale ghost 

 standing sentinel before Niagara? White, spectral, motionless, 

 it rose up and reached towards the stars — shapeless, dim, vague 

 as a veiled ghost. There was something almost supernatural 

 about it, it was like a colossal spectre, wrapped in a robe of 

 strange dim light. 



" * How fine and upright the column of spray is tonight,' said 

 a strange voice beside us. This broke the illusion. But yet it 

 seemed impossible that our ghost should be only a pillar of rising 



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