Travelers' Original Accounts Since 1840 



The record of "three delightful days" at the Falls in August, 1887. iqs7 

 It was the author's third visit and he was able to say: " Each visit Caine 

 deepens the impression that so far as I have seen Nature, Niagara is 

 the sublimest and most beautiful sight on earth." 



Wallace, Alfred Russel. My life; a record of events and 1887 

 opinions. Lond. : Chapman and Hall. 1905. 2:127—128. Wallace 



On my way back to Washington I spent four days at Niagara, 

 living at the old hotel on the Canadian side, in a room that 

 looked out on the great fall, and where its continuous musical 

 roar soothed me to sleep. It was a hard frost, and the American 

 falls had great ice-mounds below them, and ranges of gigantic 

 icicles near the margins. At night the sound was like that of a 

 strong, steady wind at sea, but even more like the roar of the 

 London streets heard from the middle of Hyde Park. When 

 in bed a constant vibration was felt. I spent my whole time 

 wandering about the falls, above and below, on the Canadian 

 and the American sides, roaming over Goat Island and the Three 

 Sisters Islands far in the rapids above the Horse-shoe Fall, which 

 are almost as impressive as the fall itself. The small Luna Island 

 dividing the American falls was a lovely sight; the arbor-vitae 

 trees {Thuya Americana}, with which it is covered, young and 

 old, some torn and jagged, but all to the smallest twigs coated 

 with glistening ice from the frozen spray, looked like groves of 

 gigantic tree corals — the most magnificent and fairy-like scene 

 I have ever beheld. All the islands are rocky and picturesque, 

 the trees draped with wild vines and Virginia creepers, and afford 

 a sample of the original American forest vegetation of very great 

 interest. During these four days I was almost entirely alone, 

 and was glad to be so. I was never tired of the ever-changing 

 aspects of this grand illustration of natural forces engaged in 

 modelling the earth's surface. Usually the centre of the great 

 falls, where the depth and force of the water are greatest, is 

 hidden by the great column of spray which rises to the height 

 of four hundred or five hundred feet; but occasionally the wind 



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