Niagara Falls 



1897 



D. W. The glory of Niagara. (Life and health, Aug. 1897. 1897 

 Pp. 264-266.) D. W. 



The writer urges the need of time for due comprehension of the wonders 

 and beauties of Niagara. He also tells of the improvements at the hotels 

 and elsewhere about the Falls since prereservation days. 



1899 



Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Schuyler. Niagara. (Cent., June, 1899 

 1899. 36:184-202.) Van 



Rensselaer 



Mrs. Van Rensselaer gives a veiy detailed description of the Falls at 

 different seasons of the year. The sound of the Falls is described as 

 musical rathei than terrifying, as so many visitors have found it. The 

 author feels that " Niagara's true effect is one of permanence." 



And the best season for Niagara? Each has its own claim. 

 Winter sometimes gives the place an arctic picturesqueness, a 

 dazzling semi-immobility, utterly unlike its affluent, multicolored 

 summer aspect ; but one could hardly wish to see it only in winter, 

 or in winter first of all. It is most gorgeously multicolored, of 

 course, when its ravine and its islands commemorate its long-dead 

 Indians by donning the war-paint of autumn. And it is most 

 seductively fair in early spring. Then, at the beginning of May, 

 when the shrubs are leafing and the trees are growing hazy, its 

 islands are the isles of paradise. This is the time of the first 

 wild flowers. Spread beneath the forest that still admits the sun- 

 floods through its canopies, massed in the more open glades, and 

 wreathed along the edges of pathways and shores, they fill Goat 

 Island full, whitely bank and carpet it — snowy trilliums in 

 myriads, bloodroots, dicentras, smilacinas, and spring-beauties, 

 varied by rose-tinted spring-cresses and yellow uvularias, and 

 underlaid by drifts of violets. Hardly anywhere else over so 

 large an area can these children of May grow in such profusion, 

 for even when the sun shines hottest upon them the air is always 

 delicately dampened by the spraying floods. Here nature so 

 faithfully fosters them that they need (186) not be jealously 



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