have also excited much admiration.
Fortunately, these two scenic wonders are sufficiently
contiguous to be dealt with in one record, and the compiler of
the present work ventures to give his own impressions of them,
from a printed statement made some twenty-five years ago.]

Who has not read in story and seen in picture, countless times, how the
water goes over at Niagara? I came here expecting to find every curve
and plunge of the river appealing like a household thing to my memory.
So in great measure it proved, yet travellers never succeed in
exhausting a situation in their narratives; something of the unexpected
always remains to freshen the sated appetite of new-comers.

Tourists are apt to be disappointed at first sight of the cataract.
Their expectations have been overwhetted; and, moreover, the first
glance is usually obtained from the American shore, an edgewise view
that gives but an inkling of the full majesty of the scene. Yet even
from this point of view we behold the river, almost at our feet, rushing
with concentrated energy to the brink of the precipice, and pouring
headlong, in an agony of froth and foam, into a fearful void, from which
forever rises a rainbow-crowned mist. To stand on the brink and gaze
into this terrible abyss, with the foaming waters plunging in a white
wall downward, is apt to rouse an undefined desire to cast one's self
after the torrent, while minute by minute the mind grows into a
realization of the sublimity of Niagara.

But to behold the cataract in the fulness of its might and glory one
must cross to the Canadian shore, and make his way on foot from the
bridge westward. Carriages will be found in abundance, manned by drivers
more importunate than mellifluous; but if the tourist would see the
Falls at leisure and from every point of view, he must be obdurate, and
resolutely foot his way along the river's precipitous bank.

First, arriving opposite the American Fall, we seat ourselves under a
tree, and gaze with admiration on this magnificent water front, spread
before us in one broad, straight sheet of milk-white foam, swooping ever
downward with graceful undulations, until beaten into mist on the rocks
below.

Passing onward, we approach that grand curved reach of falling water,
whose sublime aspect has been a fruitful theme for poet and artist
since America has had poetry and art. The Horseshoe Fall is the paragon
of cataracts. Sitting on what rema