Читать книгу The Niagara River - Archer Butler Hulbert - Страница 27

To the first Sister Island leads a massive stone bridge. From this bridge is to be obtained a fine view of the Hermit's Cascade beneath. This little fall receives its name from having been the favourite bathing place of the Hermit of Niagara, a strange half-witted young Englishman by the name of Francis Abbott who lived in solitude here for two years preceding his death by drowning in 1831, during his sojourn at the Falls.

These three islands are replete with small bits of scenery and overflowing with beauty. In them are to be found the smaller attractions of Niagara; not so much of the stern majesty and awful grandeur, but smaller and more comprehensible features come before the view following each other in rapid succession. On the second Sister Island is one point which should be visited by every one. Just before reaching the bridge to third Sister Island, by turning to the right and proceeding along a somewhat difficult path for a short distance one comes to a point at the water's edge and finds lying right below him the boiling waters with their white, feathery spray; here also is the small cataract between the second and third islands fed by the most rapid although small stream of Niagara. From this point is to be obtained one of the most varied of scenic effects of any point at the Falls. The scenery from the third Sister must be seen to be appreciated. From its upper end one looks directly at the low cliff which forms the first descent of the Rapids. Here the waters start from the peaceful stream above on their maddening race for the Falls. Out along the line of the cliff the waters deepen and increase in rapidity toward the Canadian shore. Just below this ledge, probably three hundred feet from the head of the island, the current is directed against some obstruction which causes it to spout up into the air, causing what is called the Spouting Rock.

Many have been the changes wrought by the waters themselves since white men knew the Falls; but a thousand years hence the visitor to Niagara will behold the main fall not from Terrapin Rocks or Porter's Bluff, but from this third Sister Island. The Rapids then shall have almost entirely disappeared, but their beauty will be compensated for by the additional grandeur of the fall itself. The gorge will have widened and the fall itself shall have added fifty feet to its height, making it two hundred feet high. Third Sister Island should be gone over thoroughly, for it offers some of the finest views, especially of colouring, above the Falls, and many of them.

Niagara owes its sublime array of colour to the purity of its water. Nothing finer has been written on this subject than the words of the artist Mrs. Van Rensselaer, whom we quote:

To this purity Niagara owes its exquisite variety of colour. To find the blues we must look, of course, above Goat Island, where the sky is reflected in smooth if quickly flowing currents. But every other tint and tone that water can take is visible in or near the Falls themselves. In the quieter parts of the gorge we find a very dark, strong green, while in its rapids all shades of green and grey and white are blended. The shallower rapids above the Falls are less strongly coloured, a beautiful light green predominating between the pale-grey swirls and the snowy crests of foam—semi-opaque, like the stone called aquamarine, because infused with countless air-bubbles, yet deliciously fresh and bright. The tense, smooth slant of water at the margin of the American fall is not deep enough to be green. In the sunshine it is a clear amber, and when shadowed, a brown that is darker, yet just as pure. But wherever the Canadian fall is visible its green crest is conspicuous. Far down-stream, nearly two miles away, where the railroad-bridge crosses the gorge, it shows like a little emerald strung on a narrow band of pearl. Its colour is not quite like that of an emerald, although the term must be used because no other is more accurate. It is a purer colour, and cooler, with less of yellow in it—more pure, more cool, and at the same time more brilliant than any colour that sea-water takes even in a breaking wave, or that man has produced in any substance whatsoever. At this place, we are told, the current must be twenty feet deep; and its colour is so intense and so clear because, while the light is reflected from its curving surface, it also filters through so great a mass of absolutely limpid water. It always quivers, this bright-green stretch, yet somehow it always seems as solid as stone, smoothly polished for the most part, but, when a low sun strikes across it, a little roughened, fretted. That this is water and that the thinnest smoke above it is water also, who can believe? In other places at Niagara we ask the same question again.

From a distance the American fall looks quite straight. When we stand beside it we see that its line curves inward and outward, throwing the falling sheet into bastion-like sweeps. As we gaze down upon these, every change in the angle of vision and in the strength and direction of the light gives a new effect. The one thing that we never seem to see, below the smooth brink, is water. Very often the whole swift precipice shows as a myriad million inch-thick cubes of clearest glass or ice or solidified light, falling in an envelope of starry spangles. Again, it seems all diamond-like or pearl-like, or like a flood of flaked silver, shivered crystal, or faceted ingots of palest amber. It is never to be exhausted in its variations. It is never to be described. Only, one can always say, it is protean, it is most lovely, and it is not water.

Then, as we look across the precipice, it may be milky in places, or transparent, or translucent. But where its mass falls quickly it is all soft and white—softer then anything else in the world. It does not resemble a flood of fleece or of down, although it suggests such a flood. It is more like a crumbling avalanche, immense and gently blown, of smallest snowflakes; but, again, it is not quite like this. Now we see that, even apart from its main curves, no portion of the swiftly moving wall is flat. It is all delicately fissured and furrowed, by the broken edges of the rock over which it falls, into the suggestion of fluted buttresses, half-columns, pilasters. And the whiteness of these is not quite white. Nor is it consistently iridescent or opalescent. Very faintly, elusively, it is tinged with tremulous stripes and strands of pearly grey, of vaguest straw, shell-pink, lavender, and green—inconceivably ethereal blues, shy ghosts of earthly colours, abashed and deflowered, we feel, by definite naming with earthly names. They seem hardly to tinge the whiteness; rather, to float over it as a misty bloom. We are loath to turn our eyes from them, fearing they may never show again. Yet they are as real as the keen emerald of the Horseshoe.[10]

One should walk through the New York State Reservation, which extends for some distance above the commencement of the Rapids, to get a more complete view of the scenery above the Falls, the wooded shores of Goat Island, the swiftly moving waters, the broad river, the beginning of the Canadian Rapids, and the Canadian shore in the distance. On up the river at a distance are to be seen those forest-clad shores of Navy Island and Grand Island.

On the Canadian side of the river, after crossing the steel arch bridge just below the Falls, beautiful Victoria Park is first reached. From this position a new and entirely different view of the American Fall is obtained from almost directly in front. Turning and going up the river a fine view of the Horseshoe is obtained from a distance. Just opposite the American Fall is Inspiration Point, from which the best view of the Falls is to be obtained. From here one can watch the little Maid of the Mist as she makes her trips through the boiling waters below.