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Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") by Nathaniel Hawthorne
page 8 of 34 (23%)
certainly was an immense water-power here; but that, after all, they
would go twice as far to see the noble stone-works of Lockport, where
the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were
succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in
his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge
of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different
components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horse
shoe falls, which is, indeed, the central point of interest. His whole
soul seemed to go forth and be transported thither, till the staff
slipped from his relaxed grasp, and falling down--down--down--struck
upon the fragment of the Table Rock.

In this manner I spent some hours, watching the varied impression, made
by the cataract, on those who disturbed me, and returning to unwearied
contemplation, when left alone. At length my time came to depart.
There is a grassy footpath, through the woods, along the summit of the
bank, to a point whence a causeway, hewn in the side of the precipice,
goes winding down to the Ferry, about half a mile below the Table Rock.
The sun was near setting, when I emerged from the shadow of the trees,
and began the descent. The indirectness of my downward road continually
changed the point of view, and showed me, in rich and repeated
succession, now, the whitening rapids and majestic leap of the main
river, which appeared more deeply massive as the light departed; now,
the lovelier picture, yet still sublime, of Goat Island, with its rocks
and grove, and the lesser falls, tumbling over the right bank of the St.
Lawrence, like a tributary stream; now, the long vista of the river, as
it eddied and whirled between the cliffs, to pass through Ontario toward
the sea, and everywhere to be wondered at, for this one unrivalled
scene. The golden sunshine tinged the sheet of the American cascade,
and painted on its heaving spray the broken semicircle of a rainbow,
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