never to be caught napping, he slept with his eyes open. The effect was really frightful. By the light of the moon, streaming through the window, I saw his cunning optics-full of bargain and sale- glaring upon Sometimes it seemed as if all the mortal light had departed from them; yet still they glared into mine. I aver, with sincerity, that those eyes never closed the live-long night. They seemed alive—yet dead. I thought of Coleridge's lines in the Antient Marinere :'

me.

'An orphan's curse might drag to hell
A spirit from on high;

But oh! more terrible than that,

Is the curse of a dead man's eye:

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.'

One who is not single, in every sense of the word, should bestow his rib and maid in an adjacent apartment, taking himself what the gods might be willing to confer in such emergencies. As I said, I woke early; and performing certain orisons with a razor belonging to the establishment, (God knows how many chins it has reaped in its time!) before a glass which screwed my countenance into a horrific caricature I made ready to accompany 'self and party' to the Falls.

BEHOLD us on the deck of the steamer Victory. The breeze of morning is fresh and fair; the engine hisses and trembles; carriages throng to the pier; ladies, with albums under their arms, thick green veils over their pretty faces, and in habiliments of travel, throng on board. Agitation and expectancy give them color; veil after veil is put back, like gossamer; calm brows and glancing eyes appear. Among these, Ollapod recognises many-some, seen and flirted with of yore. By and by the green waters of Erie begin to melt into the less turbulent Niagara; you float calmly along, observing and observed. How much pleasure is clustered in such moments!

THERE is, among those who have not seen it, a wonderful misapprehension respecting the river Niagara. It is not like a river: it seems a moving lake. Grand Island, too, with the uninitated, is deemed a small tract of ground, without particular attractions-a place, perhaps, for the country-seat of some millionaire. Yet it is between three and four leagues long and the greater part of it is a solid wilderness—with, as it were, a lake on either side. Perhaps, untravelled reader, this may give you an idea of the river of Niagara.

As you approach the northern end of Grand Island, anticipation stands on tip-toe. I ascended to that sacred portion of the steamer y'clept the roof of the wheel-house, where the sound of the paddles gurgled out a kind of lullaby to my spirit. The blue sky had changed: from the waves of Ontario, and the stretch of Niagara, the morning mists had arisen, and formed into clouds. These rolled upward, in long ribs of purple and gold, from the north, one above another, like some celestial stair-case, leading, as did the dreamy ladder of Jacob, into

Heaven. As we parted the ripples with a nimble prow, the deer were seen, starting from their coverts, in the woods of the island, while the eagle, scared from the arms of his favorite and aspiring cedar, soared with his shrill scream into the abyss of Heaven, where his form was soon swallowed up in the distance.

SHORTLY after you leave Grand Island, you expand into a scene which, to my agitated remembrance, resembles the Tappan Zee of the Hudson. All now is expectation. Every eye is bent to the north. How far is it from Chippewa?' asked I, of a friendly delegation of journalists and legislators, whose genial spirits and intercourse I cherish with the warmest recollection. 'Not far,' was the answer; 'you will be there soon.'

Ar the distance of five miles from Niagara Falls, you catch the first distinct view. Is it sublime? No- for distance so softens and deceives, that you cannot appreciate it. You strain your onward-looking eyes, till the retina aches with gazing. What do you see? A cloud of apparent smoke, along the northern border, the nil ultra of the lake you are ploughing; and on either side all is apparently a wide shore of rocks and woods and beyond, a terrible gulf, of which you see nothing but the ceaseless cloud that rises at its dim and dismal edge.

'AND that is Niagara said I, as the mountainous spray, volume after volume, swelled upward in the sun. Well I seem disappointed.'

Do you?' said my friend, the legislator, with a triumphant accent on the first branch of the interrogation. You see the cataract is as yet afar off; just put your hand to your ear, guarding it from the tumult of the machinery, and tell me if you do not hear something?'

I did so; and sonorous, full, and replete with a sense of awe, the voice of the cataract swelled in my ear.

ALL now was expectancy and enthusiasm. I could scarcely stand still. Before me, like the pillar of fire to the host of the Israelites, rose that eternal column of snowy mist, tinct and garnished by the sunbeam and I had caught the sound of Niagara!

I SCARCELY know how I left Chippewa. I am aware that all my travelling movements and precautions were executed with habitual discretion; but I cannot explain to any one the new sensations I experienced on our way to the Falls. When at the distance of some two miles from the cataract, there seemed to be an increasing shadow, like that of an eclipse, in the atmosphere. The dimness increased; and on passing a lapse of woods, and emerging again in sight of the river, I felt assured that a storm was coming on. I ordered our postillion to stop.

VOL. VIII.

60

Is there no house,' I inquired, between this and Niagara? There is a thunder shower coming on; I hear it growling.'

IT would have done your heart good, to have heard the laugh of that driver. It was loud and long; it bubbled up from his heart, as if what he had just heard was the best joke he had listened to for years.

'Bless your soul, friend, it's not going to rain. What you see, is the cloudy mist, and what you hear, is the roar of them Falls, yender. Jest wait a minute - and then

'STOP!' said I, rising in our barouche, while, gilded by the westering sun, I caught, as we wheeled around a clump of trees, the first ▾ view of the vast green gulf and circle of the Horse-Shoe Fall.

My good reader, you must excuse my enthusiasm. It has been said that Niagara cannot be described. I think it can be. Cannot one record on paper the thoughts provoked by the objects of grandeur and magnificence that have met his eye? Verily, I trow so; and I will try. The first mistake corrected by an approach to Niagara, is as to its width. You have supposed it an outlet from one lake to another, pressed into narrow boundaries, and urged onward by irresistible impulses. You were deceived by fancy. The river is like some bay of an ocean; as if indeed the Atlantic and Pacific, one far below the other, should meet, by the former being narrowed to the width of one or two miles, and falling to the depth of more than two hundred feet, with rocks and islands on the edge of the vast gulf, frowning and waving between.

VERY Soon we reached the Pavilion. The selection of an apartment, visitation to the barber, and the donning of a cool summer dress, were all speedily accomplished. The ceaseless hum of the Falls was in my hearing- it shook the windows of the Pavilion, from which I gazed. Below, at a few rods distance, the mighty Niagara plunged into its misty abyss: above, to the south, it seemed as if an ocean, fierce as that tide which 'keeps due on to the Propontic and the Hellespont,' was rushing madly down to some undiscovered cavern, where its fury was lost and suspended forever.

DESCENDING through the garden and the open common which intervene between the Pavilion and the distant river to the eastward, we struck the road, and observed the sign which pointed TO THE FALLS.' Here let me say a word, which I think will give the idea of Niagara vividly to one who has never seen it. It seemed to me, as I looked from the window of the Pavilion, that the river was very nearly on a level with the house. Well, I passed over the places I have men

tioned; and at the guide-post aforesaid, we began to make a most precipitous descent, over rude stair-cases, bedded in miry clay. In a few moments we were nearly on a level with the river, which was in full view, and close at hand. At that instant, the first impression of the vast power of Niagara struck my mind; but it was faint and feeble, compared with those that succeeded. For miles, looking upward at the stream, it resembled a foaming ocean, vexed by the storms of the equinox. We proceeded to the house which heads the perpendicular descent to the bed of the river, at the foot of the Falls. Those who dress for deeds of aquatic daring with more deliberation than myself, would have changed their ordinary attire for those simple and coarse habiliments usually adopted by those adventurous spirits who get their drenched certificates for going under the sheet - but for my part, I had not the patience. Endowing myself with an oil-cloth surtout, I began to descend the stair-case leading to the base of the cataract.

THE descent seemed interminable. I thought I had travelled an hour, still moving round and round-in darkness, and alone. It was a solemn probation, during which I had time to nerve my spirit for the grandeur and the awe with which it was soon to be impressed. At last, I made my egress from the stair-case into the presence of the Wonder.

My first idea was, that a tremendous storm had brewed since I began to descend. Several rods to the south, the Falls, dimly seen, boomed and thundered with a noise so stunning, that I was almost distracted. At my feet, there rolled onward what seemed a lake of milk- having about it nothing dark—not even a glimpse of water-color. I saw, near by, a tall black figure, smiling graciously, like some good-natured Charon, ready to transport his customers across the River of Death. He announced himself as the conductor of gentlemen under the Falls. Taking his hand, I approached them. At a certain point, as we drew nigh, I begged him to stop. The mist had surged upward from my vision, and before me broke down, as it were, the Atlantic, from a height, so dizzy that it made the eye shrink from gazing; the distant side of the vast semicircle hid from view by a rainbow, and the awful mass of green, mad waters, rushing to the abyss, with a noise like the breaking up of chaos! What is like that scene? It is itself alone; to depict it, comparisons fail. You must describe itself.

I know not how it was, but such a sense of awe and majesty descended at that moment upon my spirit, that I burst into tears, and shivered through every nerve. What an awful hum and moaning pierced the hearing sense! Above me, hideous rocks rose for hundreds of feet; dark shelves, wet with the eternal tempest around them; and at every moment a stormy gust would drive a deluge of water in my face, taking my breath, and chilling me, as it were in the depth of the solstice, even to the bone. As we shouldered the dark ledges which extended under the sheet, I almost shrank from the desperate undertaking; and never did lover, howsoever deeply skilled in holy palmistry,' press the jew

elled hand of his mistress with such affection as that wherewith Ollapod grasped the sable fingers of his African conductor. His splay feet, and amphibious-looking heels, seemed to stamp him some creature of the elements; a Caliban, schooled to generous offices by some supernatural master.

WHEN you approach within ten feet or so of that tremendous launch of waters, then is the time to pause for a moment, to steep and saturate your soul with one preeminent and grand remembrance. For me, if millions of human beings had been around me, I should have felt alone-and as one who, having passed beyond the dominions of mortality, stood presented before the marvels of his God! It is a place for the silent adoration of the heart for Him

'Who made the world, and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountain.'

Whence came those ceaseless and resounding floods? From the 'hol-
low hand' of Omnipotence! Fancy stretches and plumes her adventu-
rous pinions from this point: she goes onward to the Upper Lakes,
and their peopled shores; she pursues her voyage to the dark streams
and inland seas of the west; and returning, finds their delegated
waters pouring heavily and with eternal thunder down that dizzy
steep! Thought, preying upon itself, is lost in one deep and profound
sense of awe of recollection
of prospect. I may change one

word from Byron, to express my meaning:

'By those that deepest feel, is ill exprest
The indistinctness of the laboring breast:
Where thousand thoughts begin, to end in one,
Which seek from all the refuge found in none.'

From the spot of which I speak, you can easily imagine that there has come upon you the deluge, or the day of doom. The voices of eternity seem to burden the air; look up, and the dark rocks, like the confines of Plegethon, seem tottering to their fall; where you stand, the whirlwind which bears upon its pinions drops heavier than those of the most dismal tempest that ever rent the wilderness on land, or wrecked an armament at sea, is moaning and howling. Casting a glance at the upper verge of the Falls, you see the turbulent rapids, thick, green, and high, shrinking back, as it were, from their perilous descent, until a mass of waves behind urges them, resistless, onward; to speak in thunder, and to rise in mist and foam, the children of strife, yet parents of the rainbow, that emblem of peace.

I ONCE asked an elderly friend, in whose domicil I was a favored inmate, and who suffered much from the gout, whether there might be any pain, known to myself, which would compare with it. No!' he replied: I never met any thing of the sort in my life: there is nothing on earth like it; and I am destitute of any descriptive comparison. Iam not dead at present; I hav' n't been as yet to Tophet; and therefore can't tell whether gout is like that, or purgatory; but I believe it to be as