pretend to the all-absorbing enthusiasm of some more fortunate
spectators, nor deny that very trifling causes would draw my eyes and
thoughts from the cataract.

The last day that I was to spend at Niagara, before my departure for the
Far West, I sat upon the Table Rock. This celebrated station did not
now, as of old, project fifty feet beyond the line of the precipice, but
was shattered by the fall of an immense fragment, which lay distant on
the shore below. Still, on the utmost verge of the rock, with my feet
hanging over it, I felt as if suspended in the open air. Never before
had my mind been in such perfect unison with the scene. There were
intervals, when I was conscious of nothing but the great river, rolling
calmly into the abyss, rather descending than precipitating itself, and
acquiring tenfold majesty from its unhurried motion. It came like the
march of Destiny. It was not taken by surprise, but seemed to have
anticipated, in all its course through the broad lakes, that it must
pour their collected waters down this height. The perfect foam of the
river, after its descent, and the ever-varying shapes of mist, rising
up, to become clouds in the sky, would be the very picture of confusion,
were it merely transient, like the rage of a tempest. But when the
beholder has stood awhile, and perceives no lull in the storm, and
considers that the vapor and the foam are as everlasting as the rocks
which produce them, all this turmoil assumes a sort of calmness. It
soothes, while it awes the mind.

Leaning over the cliff, I saw the guide conducting two adventurers
behind the falls. It was pleasant, from that high seat in the sunshine,
to observe them struggling against the eternal storm of the lower
regions, with heads bent down, now faltering, now pressing forward, and
finally swallowed up in their victory. After their disappearance, a