Here the velocity is amazing and in its deep bass
roar that, "night and day, weeks, months, years and centuries,
speaks in the same mighty voice," you gain the real might and
majesty of Niagara. Here you will have that trinity of grandeur,
power, and beauty indelibly impressed upon your memory. Here,
too, you gaze again in silence and admiration at the awful mass
of troubled water. The marvelous flood of livid green waters
rushes into the yawning abyss below, where it is broken into
fine spray that rises like steam from an immense cauldron. One
feels an irresistible fascination at this point but all good
things must end and you reluctantly turn away.
Now you find yourself observing the wild flowers, ferns, and
grasses with which the cliffs are clothed. All along these
inaccessible walls are "hanging gardens" whose masses of the
dainty fern make smaller Niagaras of brightest verdure. Virginia
creeper and various vines throw down long ropes of green, as if
to help their flower friends up the steep walls; thatching their
sides with softest beauty. The bluemint, butterfly weed and
harebell venture far out along the slightest ledges where only a
few, "who are willing to gain beauty as well as bread by the
sweat of their brows observe them."
People are after all more interesting than natural phenomena.
Here some will sit through the long summer hours discussing
morals, industry, women's suffrage, the immortality of the soul
or some item about the latest divorce scandal, while the
sublimity of Niagara lies all unnoticed before them.
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