" After the storm had
abated we started onward once more.
CHAPTER XV
NIAGARA
"Flow on forever in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty; * * * God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead; and the cloud
Mantles around thy feet."
--Mrs. Sigourney.
Niagara! What a wealth of memories come thronging to you as you
repeat the name! Some with visions of an emerald sea, filled
with the eternal roar and grandeur of many waters; others with
haunting melodies, quiet and tender as an Aeolian harp thrummed
by an unseen hand. What a poem of blended power and beauty was
here unfolded by Nature through countless centuries! Geological
grandeur such as one seldom sees elsewhere awaits you here;
splendor inconceivable is here wrought in ever varied and
powerful forms of beauty, giving rise to a sublimity of thought
and exuberance of feeling too powerful for words.
The awe felt in looking at this wild mass of raging water
humbles and overwhelms you; you feel the presence of a majesty
and grandeur in its onward sweep before unknown to you. When it
is dashed to gauzy, irised spray it seems as gentle as the
pearly mists of dawn, but its deep thunder-like detonations tell
of a mighty power. Beauty blended with the most awe-inspiring
sublimity is the order of passionate, impetuous Niagara.
The broad river takes the waters of the four lakes--Superior,
Huron, Michigan and Erie--to its turbulent bosom and bears them
about twenty-two miles from Lake Erie, where it becomes a raging
torrent and rushes in frenzied madness over the precipice
forming the incomparable falls.
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