isitors. At our feet
wild flowers bloom, the twittering of birds is heard overhead, nimble
ground-squirrels fearlessly cross our path, soft mosses and thick grass
form a verdant carpet, and on all sides nature presents us one of her
most charming phases, a picture from Arcadia framed in the heart of a
scene of hurry and turmoil undescribable.

Near the edge of the Falls a rickety bridge leads to a small island on
which stands Terrapin Tower, which yields a fine outlook upon the
Horseshoe Fall, with its mists and rainbows. From the opposite side of
Goat Island we pass to the charming little Luna Island, from whose brink
one may lave his hand in the edge of the American Fall. From the upper
end of Goat Island bridges lead to the Three Sisters. These are small,
thickly-timbered islands, standing in the stream far back from the edge
of the precipice, but in the very foam and fume of the rapids, the
contracted stream dashing under their graceful suspension bridges with
frightful speed and roar.

From the bridge joining the two outer islands one may see the rapids in
their wildest aspect. Here the river, dashing fiercely onward, plunges
over a shelf of rock six or eight feet deep, and is tossed upward in so
tumultuous a turmoil of foam that the heart involuntarily stops beating
and the teeth set hard, as if one were preparing for a desperate
conflict with the fierce power beneath him. From every point on the
shore of the outer island the rapids are seen heaving and tossing as far
as the sight can reach, like the waves of a sea fretted by contrary
winds, here tossed many feet into the air, there sweeping fiercely over
a long ledge of rocks, and ever hurrying forward with eager speed to
where in the distance we see a long, curved, liquid edge, with a light
mist floating upward and hovering in the air beyond it. Here one hears
only the roar of the rapids. Indeed, anywhere in the nearer vicinity,
the sound of the rapids is chiefly heard, the voice of the cataract
itself predominating only on the Canadian side near the Horseshoe Fall.

Here, on this outreaching island, I sat for hours on the gnarled trunk
of a fallen tree that overhung the water, drinking in the grandeur and
glory of Niagara with a mental thirst that seemed unquenchable, and
feeling in my soul that I could willingly stretch the hours into days
and the days into weeks, and still descend with regret from the poetry
of life into its prose.

Leaving Niagara, I too