Travelers' Original Accounts Since 1 840 



United States Custom-house officer was on board, and "Oh, 1913 

 my! " as our Canadian friends exclaimed, " he did just rout! " AIcc-Tweedie 

 He searched rigorously; even small hand-bags were denuded of 

 every bottle and packet for inspection, so particular are the 

 authorities in these matters. 



Leaving the lake at M Niagara on the Lake," we had a pleas- 

 ant seven miles' run up the river to Lewiston, where the electric 

 tram awaited us. This calm, pretty, reposeful Niagara River 

 is the outlet of several enormous lakes which divide parts of 

 America from Canada. Though near the foot of the great Falls, 

 it looked so quiet and peaceful that we experienced much diffi- 

 culty in realising that those thousands of miles of lakes, and 

 those great cataracts, could be emptying themselves through this 

 comparatively small river into the sea. 



It was early in October; the hotels were shutting up for the 

 winter, the boats making their last passages, and yet the hun- 

 dreds and hundreds of wooden baskets, full of peaches, grapes, 

 greengages, apples, and pears, which carpeted the wharf, all 

 grown near Niagara, hardly suggested winter, but rather warm 

 summer weather, which indeed it was, for the thermometer stood 

 at 78° in the shade. 



It is a wonderful tram-car journey, that gorge line — some 

 seven miles long — from Lewiston to Niagara Falls, built so 

 close to the edge that often the rails are barely two feet from 

 the side of a cliff dropping sheer down some twenty to forty 

 feet, with a cataract or whirlpool swirling away below. On our 

 left the cliff rose perpendicularly some two hundred or three 

 hundred feet. 



As we neared the village of Niagara Falls the road became 

 more and more beautiful; and a huge rock here, a cave there, 

 added grandeur to the scene. 



At the whirlpool we drew up for a moment; it seemed almost 

 like a small lake, so completely was it shut in, but the waters 

 were comparatively calm as they swirled round and round in 

 endless rotation. Here was the very representation of the 



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