liffs, retiring to their source,
Shews countless ages it has run its course.
The Schlosser fall eight hundred ninety-two
Will count the feet how broad this current grew.
Two thousand with two hundred crescent line
Will the full breadth of Horse-Shoe Fall define.
The little fall, with width of seventy-three,
Will tell whence Neptune feeds his hungry sea.
Tumbling one hundred sixty feet, they all
Make one loud groaning in Niagara Fall.
Thick hov'ring mists in mountain vapours rise,
Bright colour'd rainbows gild the azure skies.
The dazzled eye, fill'd with the novel blaze
Beholds, astonished, their refracted rays.
Nor ends the awful scene, till down the view,
Through the dark gulf, these boiling floods pursue.
Their course 'tween mountain rocks, which form the shore,
Through which, tremendous raging billows roar.
Until they form a bay, where tide-worn trees,
In conflicts wild rage round the whirlpool seas:
Huge splintered logs here twisting round and round,
With many a turn before they quit the ground;
At length escaping from the circling tide,
Side-long slide off, and with a bouncing glide,
Head-long adown through rapid streams are toss'd,
Until in wide Ontario's lake are lost.
Neptune thus roused leaves now the wat'ry plain,
To seek the source from whence he holds his reign.
Full in the view of this tremendous scene,
Adjacent here, a table rock is seen;
Where love-sick swains in clambering groups repair,
Conducting tim'rous nymphs with anxious care:
'Dew'd with the spray, the wild'red eye surveys,
The rushing waters shout their Maker's praise.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Revolving years have since rolled on apace,
Since patriots here, convened to form we're told,
The school to train the military band,
And Putnam's fortress still we may behold.

The season was now far advanced. Alida and her brother felt uneasy at
being so long separated from their father. The rest of the party were
anxious again to see their friends in the city. After tarrying a few
days at Forsyth's Hotel, they determined to proceed on their way back
again to New-York without delay.

[_Travels_ (chapter IX begins):

As the season was so far advanced, I wished to reach New York
without delay.]

They therefore concluded to travel soon, and visit Lake Champlain to its
southern extremity, then to Saratoga, Albany, taking the Catskill
mountains by the way, a