with a flood of grandeur and loveliness, and fill himself, if he be capable of such filling, with a flood of romance.  The tropics will unfold to him all that vegetation in its greatest richness can produce.  In Paris he will find the supreme of polish, the ne plus ultra of varnish according to the world’s capability of varnishing.  And in London he will find the supreme of power, the ne plus ultra of work according to the world’s capability of working.  Any one of such journeys may be more valuable to a man—­nay, any one such journey must be more valuable to a man—­than a visit to Niagara.  At Niagara there is that fall of waters alone.  But that fall is more graceful than Giotto’s tower, more noble than the Apollo.  The peaks of the Alps are not so astounding in their solitude.  The valleys of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica are less green.  The finished glaze of life in Paris is less invariable; and the full tide of trade round the Bank of England is not so inexorably powerful.

I came across an artist at Niagara who was attempting to draw the spray of the waters.  “You have a difficult subject,” said I.  “All subjects are difficult,” he replied, “to a man who desires to do well.”  “But yours, I fear is impossible,” I said.  “You have no right to say so till I have finished my picture,” he replied.  I acknowledged the justice of his rebuke, regretted that I could not remain till the completion of his work should enable me to revoke my words, and passed on.  Then I began to reflect whether I did not intend to try a task as difficult in describing the falls, and whether I felt any of that proud self-confidence which kept him happy at any rate while his task was in hand.  I will not say that it is as difficult to describe aright that rush of waters as it is to paint it well.  But I doubt whether it is not quite as difficult to write a description that shall interest the reader as it is to paint a picture of them that shall be pleasant to the beholder.  My friend the artist was at any rate not afraid to make the attempt, and I also will try my hand.

That the waters of Lake Erie have come down in their courses from the broad basins of Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and Lake Huron; that these waters fall into Lake Ontario by the short and rapid river of Niagara; and that the falls of Niagara are made by a sudden break in the level of this rapid river, is probably known to all who will read this book.  All the waters of these huge northern inland seas run over that breach in the rocky bottom of the stream; and thence it comes that the flow is unceasing in its grandeur, and that no eye can perceive a difference in the weight, or sound, or violence of the fall whether it be visited in the drought of autumn, amid the storms of winter, or after the melting of the upper worlds of ice in the days of the early summer.  How many cataracts does the habitual tourist visit at which the waters fail him!  But at Niagara the waters never fail.  There it thunders over its ledge in a volume that never ceases and is never diminished—­as it has done from times previous to the life of man, and as it will do till tens of thousands of years shall see the rocky bed of the river worn away back to the upper lake.