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[Among travellers’ descriptions of the natural marvels of this continent, much has been written of perhaps the greatest of them all, the celebrated cataract of the Niagara River. The Thousand Islands 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 remains of Table-Rock, and gazing on the tumbling, heaving, foaming world of waters, which seem to fill the whole horizon of vision, the mind becomes oppressed with a feeling of awe, and realizes to its full extent nature’s grandest vision.

With one vast leap the broad river shoots headlong into an abyss whose real depth we are left to imagine, since the feet of the cataract are forever hidden in a white cloud of mist, shrouded in a dense veil which no eye can penetrate. At the centre of the curve, where the water is deepest, the creamy whiteness of the remainder of the cataract is replaced by a hue of deep green. It seems one vast sheet of liquid emerald, curving gracefully over the edge of the precipice, and swooping downward with endless change yet endless stability, its green tinge relieved with countless flecks of white foam.

The mind cannot long maintain its high level of appreciation of so grand a scene. The mighty monotony of the view soon loses its absorbing hold on the senses, and from sheer reaction one perforce passes to prosaic conceptions of the situation. For our part, we found ourselves purchasing popped corn from a peripatetic merchant who ludicrously misplaced the h’s in his conversation, and, taking a seat above the Falls, where the edge of the rapids swerved in and broke in mimic billows at our feet, we enjoyed mental and creature comforts together.

One need but return to the American side, and cross to the islands which partly fill the river above the Falls, to obtain rest for his overstrained brain among quieter aspects of nature. Goat Island one cannot appreciate without a visit. Travellers, absorbed in the wilder scenery, rarely do justice to its peculiar charm. Instead of the contracted space one is apt to expect, he finds himself in an area of many acres in extent, probably a mile in circumference, its whole surface to the water’s edge covered with dense forest. Passing inward from its shore, scarce twenty steps are taken before every vestige of the river is lost to sight, and on reaching its centre we find ourselves, to all appearance, in the heart of a primeval forest—only the subdued roar of the rapids reminding us of the grand scene surrounding. On all sides rise huge trunks of oaks and beeches, straight, magnificent trees, many of the beeches seemingly from six to eight feet in circumference, their once smooth bark covered inch by inch with a directory of the names of notoriety-loving visitors. 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 took car for Lewistown, the railroad running for its whole length in full view of the river, whose lofty and rigidly-erect walls, stretching in unbroken lines for miles below the cataract, give striking evidence of the vast work performed by the stream in cutting its way, century after century, through the ridge of solid limestone that separates the lakes. Far down below the level of the railroad the water is seen, placidly winding through the deep gorge, or speeding onward in rapids, its hue intensely green, its banks as lofty and precipitous as the Palisades of the Hudson.

Before Lewistown is reached the ridge sinks to the river level. At this point the cataract began its long career, inch by inch eating its way backward through the former rapids, until they were converted into one mighty vertical downfall. At Lewistown boat is taken for Toronto—of which city only a lake view of warehouses and church steeples is seen as we change boats for the lake journey.

For the rest of the day and evening we steamed along in full view of the Canadian shore, an ever-changing panorama of farm lands, sandy bluffs, occasional hamlets, and several towns of some pretensions to size and beauty. Kingston, a city at the head of the lake, is reached at four o’clock in the morning. Immediately after leaving this thriving town the state-rooms begin to disgorge their occupants, for we now enter the broad throat of the St. Lawrence River, and here the Thousand Islands begin. Who that has a soul beyond cakes and ale would let the desire to indulge in his own dreams cheat him from enjoying one of nature’s loveliest visions?

For some four hours thereafter the boat runs through an uninterrupted succession of the most beautiful island scenery. These islands number, in fact, more than eighteen hundred, and are of every conceivable size and shape; some so minute that they seem but rock pediments to the single tree that is rooted upon their surface, while the rocky shores of others stretch for a mile or more along the channel. They are all heavily wooded, with here and there a light-house, or a rude hovel, as the only indication of man’s contest with primitive nature.

[This description, it may be said, does not apply to the present time, when mansions and hotels have taken possession of many of these islands, and evidences of man’s occupancy are somewhat too numerous.]

Every few turns of the wheel reveal some new feature of the scene, unexpected channels cutting through the centre of a long, wooded reach, broad open spaces studded with islets, narrow creek-like channels between rocky island shores, in which the whole river seems contracted to a slender stream, while farther on the channel expands to a mile in width, and glimpses of other channels open behind distant islands. Quick turns in our course plunge us into archipelagoes, through which a dozen channels run and wind in every direction. Sudden openings in the wooded shore along which we are swiftly gliding yield glimpses of charming islands, here closing the view, there cut by narrow channels which reveal more distant wooded shores, and lead the imagination suggestively onward till we fancy that scenes of fairy-like beauty lie hidden beyond those leafy coverts, enviously torn from our sight by the remorseless onward flight of the boat. For hours we sit in rapt delight, drinking in new beauty at every turn, and heedless of the fact that the breakfast gong has long since sounded, and the more prosaic of the passengers have allowed their physical to overcome their mental hunger.

One tall, long-whiskered old devotee of “cakes and ale,” hailing from somewhere in Ohio, shaped somewhat like a note of interrogation, and sustaining his character by asking everybody all sorts of questions, did not, I am positive, digest his breakfast well, for I took a wicked pleasure in assuring him that we had passed far the most beautiful portions of the scenery while he was engaged in absorbing creature comforts, and that the world beside had nothing to compare with the fairy visions he had lost. Old Buckeye, as I had irreverently christened him, wished his breakfast was in Hades, and at once set out on a tour of interrogation to learn if he could not return by the same route and pick up the lost threads of beauty he had so idly dropped.

Another of our fellow-passengers was an English gentleman of perfect Lord Dundreary pattern, his every movement being so suggestive of those of his stage counterpart as to furnish us an unfailing source of amusement. At Prescott, Canada, a New England college boat-club came on board with their boat, and highly amused the passengers during the remainder of the journey with a long succession of comical songs. Three of them were sons of one of our venerable New England professors, one an unvenerable professor himself, yet their tanned faces, worn habiliments, and wild songs bore so strong a flavor of the backwoods that it was hard mentally to locate them within college walls.

We were roused from dinner by the announcement that the Long Sault Rapid was at hand, and gladly deserted one of the meanest tables we had ever encountered to partake of one of nature’s rarest banquets.

The boat was entering what seemed a heaving sea, the waters lifting into dangerous billows, and tossing our craft with unmitigated rudeness, until it became almost impossible to retain a level footing. But the appearance of these rapids was different from what we had been led to expect. The frightful aspect of danger, the rapid down-hill plunge of the boat, and all the fear-inspiring adornments of the guide-books, while they might be visible from the shore, did not appear to those on the deck. Apparently the boat was fixed in the heart of a watery turmoil, her onward motion lost in her various upward and sidelong movements, while as for fear, its only evidence lay in little shrieks full of laughter, as the equilibrium of the craft was suddenly destroyed.

Five minutes or so of this experience carried us through the perilous portion of the great rapid, and brought us into safe waters again. The St. Lawrence has various other rapids between the Long Sault and Montreal, differing in appearance, some of them being, as far as the eye can reach, a succession of crossing and tumbling waves, which give the boat unexpected little heaves, and appear like the waves of a tossing sea. Here the water plunges rapidly down a narrow throat between two islands, there it curves round a rocky shore, on which it breaks in ocean-like billows. But the only point where danger becomes apparent to untrained eyes is at the La Chine Rapids, near Montreal, where the river runs through a narrow foaming channel between two long ridges of rock, over which the water tumbles with a terrible suggestion of peril.

The peak of Montreal mountain has been long visible, and now we rapidly approach the long line of Victoria bridge, the great pride of Canadian engineering. Under this we glide with a gymnast at the mast-head, whose erected feet seem nearly to touch the bridge; and in a short time we round in to the wharf and are ashore in the largest city of Canada.