CHAPTER I.


Niagara, June 10, 1843.

Since you are to share with me such foot-notes as may be made on the
pages of my life during this summer's wanderings, I should not be quite
silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama.
Yet I, like others, have little to say where the spectacle is, for once,
great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us
only its own presence. "It is good to be here," is the best as the
simplest expression that occurs to the mind.

We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away. So
great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with
what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again
less readily. Having "lived one day" we would depart, and become worthy
to live another.

We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or
too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with
cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much braced up by such an atmosphere,
do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there
is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms
and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at its
mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but here is really an incessant, an
indefatigable motion. Awake or asleep, there is no escape, still this
rushing round you and through you. It is in this way I have most felt
the grandeur--somewhat eternal, if not infinite.