The Niagara Book: A Complete Souvenir of Niagara Falls : Containing Sketches, Stories and Essays--descriptive, Humorous, Historical and Scientific |
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abundance American Fall bank beauty Blondin brick bridge brink British Buffalo built Canada Canadensis Canadian side cataract Cave channel chasm cliff deep Devil's Hole DEVIL'S HOLE MASSACRE distance edge electricity English excavation fact Falls of Niagara famous flow foot Fort Niagara Fort Schlosser French Goat Island gorge height Hennepin horse power Horse Shoe Falls hundred feet imagination impression Indian Iroquois Jameson kangaroo Lake Erie Lake Ontario land Lawrence Lewiston located look lower machinery Margaret Fuller mighty miles mind nature Navy Island never Niagara Falls Niagara River pass plunge Portage Power House precipice present Queenston rainbows rapids region revolving roar rushing says scene seems shaft shore Sir William Johnson slope species spray stone stream Table Rock thing tion trees tunnel upper valley water wheels Whirlpool wind wonder York
Popular passages
Page 47 - ... silent sea of pines How silently ! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black. An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge ! but when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity ! 0 dread and silent mount ! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer 1 worshipped the Invisible alone.
Page 47 - And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!
Page 139 - THE thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain, While I look upward to thee. It would seem As if God poured thee from His hollow hand, And hung His bow upon thine awful front; And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake, The sound of many waters ; and had bade Thy flood to chronicle the ages back, And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks.
Page 52 - Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away. This way, this way. Call her once before you go. Call once yet. In a voice that she will know : "Margaret! Margaret!
Page 125 - Still, when the sun is on them, do they shine and glow like molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white smoke. But always does the mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist which is never laid : which has haunted this place with the same dread solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep,...
Page 138 - Thou dost make the soul A wondering witness of thy majesty, But as it presses with delirious joy To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step And tame its rapture with the humbling view Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand In the dread presence of the Invisible, As if to answer to its God through thee.
Page 123 - It was not until I came on Table Rock, and looked - Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright- green water! - that it came upon me in its full might and majesty. Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first effect, and the enduring one - instant and lasting - of the tremendous spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections of the Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness: nothing of gloom or terror.
Page 124 - ... the solemn rocks three miles below ; watching the river as, stirred by no visible cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke the echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneath the surface, by its giant leap; to have Niagara before me, lighted by the sun and by the moon, red in the day's decline, and grey as evening slowly fell upon it; to look upon it every day, and wake up in the night and hear its ceaseless voice: this was enough.
Page 125 - I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long ; still are the rainbows spanning them a hundred feet below. Still, when the sun is on them, do they shine and glow like molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white smoke. But always does the mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from its unfathomable...
Page 127 - But I had come thither, haunted with a vision of foam and fury, and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling down out of the sky, — a scene, in short, which nature had too much good taste and calm simplicity to realize.