United States or Oman ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At Buffalo I had sufficient time, before taking the through sleeping car "Sweden," on the Erie Railway, to Chicago, to visit the Pan-American Exposition grounds. The scene, at night, as I approached, was very impressive. The buildings, illuminated with electricity furnished by the power-house at Niagara's thundering cataract, looked like palaces of gold. The flood of light was a brilliant yellow.
The boat that dances like a feather on the current a mile above Niagara's plunge is just as much lost as when it enters the swirling, swinging wrath of waters, unless some strong hand head it up stream and out of danger. A flirtation to-day is a ripple merely, but to-morrow it will be a breaker, and then a whirlpool, and after that comes hopeless loss of character.
Of Canada's entire timber area twice as great as Europe's standing timber three-quarters lie in British Columbia. Fruit equal to Niagara's, fisheries richer than the maritime provinces, mines yielding more than Klondike exist in this most favored of provinces. While the area is a half larger than Germany, the population is smaller than that of a suburb of Berlin.
Here a sudden turn in the channel causes the waters to impinge against the Canadian shore, where they have made a deep indentation, and to rush back to the American side in a great whirl or eddy, rendered more furious by the uneven bed of the river, and the narrow space into which it contracts. "Here the most terrific commotion of any of Niagara's tumultuous demonstrations is seen.
Unless I'm much mistaken, the pulse's quickened, the moment's coming, the threads are racing, Niagara's ahead. Here's the crisis! Heaven be with you! Down she goes. Courage, courage! Face it, be it! For God's sake don't wait on the mat now! There's the door! I'm on your side. Speak! Confront her, confound her soul! "Oh, I beg your pardon! Yes, this is Eastbourne. I'll reach it down for you.
"Adown Niagara's giant steep, The foaming breakers crowding leap, With wild tumultuous roar; The mighty din ascends on high, In deafening thunder to the sky, And shakes the rocky shore." The lady with the ringlets was absent with her party from the tea-table; I was not sorry to learn that she was gone. I had conceived a prejudice against her from the remark I heard her make about the Falls.
Wake, wake your shouts of triumph all through our mighty land, From California's golden hills to proud Potomac's strand. Atlantic's waves exulting Pacific's billows call, And great Niagara's cataracts in louder thunders fall. We've stayed the tempest black as night that on our country lowers, And backward dashed its waves of blood. The victory is ours!
A sound is on the midnight deep The voice of waters vast; And onward, with resistless sweep, The torrent rushes past, In frantic chase, wave after wave, The crowding surges press, and rave Their mingled might to cast Adown Niagara's giant steep; The fretted billows foaming leap With wild tumultuous roar; The clashing din ascends on high, In deaf'ning thunders to the sky, And shakes the rocky shore.
Two churches, twenty stores, a printing house, six taverns and a scholastic academy supplied the varied wants of Niagara's 500 citizens who overfilled its one hundred dwellings. From Lake Ontario, Newark, as it had been called, presented an inviting appearance.
Because one has been awe-stricken by Niagara's torrent, are the other waterfalls of the world to be uninteresting? No; to the man whose soul has really been impressed, every tiny stream that tumbles down in foam is related to the greater wonder, partaking to some extent of its beauty and grandeur.
Word Of The Day