ided the vulgar daring of those who
went out upon the Three Weird Sisters; for some whom they saw about to
go down the Biddle Stairs to the Cave of the Winds, they had no words to
express their contempt.

Then they made their excursion to the Whirlpool, mistakenly going down
on the American side, for it is much better seen from the other, though
seen from any point it is the most impressive feature of the whole
prodigious spectacle of Niagara.

Here within the compass of a mile, those inland seas of the North,
Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and the multitude of smaller lakes,
all pour their floods, where they swirl in dreadful vortices, with
resistless under-currents boiling beneath the surface of that mighty
eddy. Abruptly from this scene of secret power, so different from the
thunderous splendors of the cataract itself, rise lofty cliffs on every
side, to a height of two hundred feet, clothed from the water's edge
almost to their create with dark cedars. Noiselessly, so far as your
senses perceive, the lakes steal out of the whirlpool, then, drunk
and wild, with brawling rapids roar away to Ontario through the narrow
channel of the river. Awful as the scene is, you stand so far above it
that you do not know the half of its terribleness; for those waters that
look so smooth are great ridges and rings, forced, by the impulse of the
currents, twelve feet higher in the centre than at the margin. Nothing
can live there, and with what is caught in its hold, the maelstrom plays
for days, and whirls and tosses round and round in its toils, with a
sad, maniacal patience. The guides tell ghastly stories, which even
their telling does not wholly rob of ghastliness, about the bodies of
drowned men carried into the whirlpool and made to enact upon its dizzy
surges a travesty of life, apparently floating there at their pleasure,
diving and frolicking amid the waves, or frantically struggling to
escape from the death that has long since befallen them.

On the American side, not far below the railway suspension bridge, is an
elevator more than a hundred and eighty feet high, which is meant to
let people down to the shore below, and to give a view of the rapids
on their own level. From the cliff opposite, it looks a terribly frail
structure of pine sticks, but is doubtless stronger than it looks; and
at any rate, as it has never yet fallen to pieces, it may be pronounced
perfectly safe.

In the waiting-room at the top, Basil and