th the big waterfall are
given herewith. Of these, one has been called the finest
description of Niagara ever written. It is from the pen of
the late Sir Edwin Arnold, the author of "The Light of
Asia," and appeared originally in the London _Daily
Telegraph_.

The second selection is John Galt's account, partly
historical and partly imaginative, of the discovery of the
cataract. John Galt (1779-1839) was a native of Scotland. He
was the author of several novels that were popular in their
day. He traveled extensively, and wrote many articles on
historical and geographical subjects.

THE SPLENDOR OF NIAGARA.

BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.

Before my balcony the great cataract is thundering, smoking, glittering
with green and white rollers and rapids, hurling the waters of a whole
continent in splendor and speed over the sharp ledges of the long, brown
rock by which Erie, "the Broad," steps proudly down to Ontario, "the
Beautiful."

The smaller but very imposing American Falls speaks with the louder voice
of the two, because its coiling spirals of twisted and furious flood crash
in full impulse of descent upon the talus of massive boulders heaped up at
its foot.

The resounding impact of water on rocks, the clouds of water-smoke which
rise high in the air, and the river below churned into a whirling cream of
eddy and surge and backwater, unite in a composite effect, at once
magnificent and bewildering.

Far away, Niagara River is seen winding eagerly to its prodigious leap.
You can discern the line of the first breakers, where the river feels the
fatal draw of the cataracts, its current seeming suddenly to leap forward,
stimulated by mad desire, a hidden spell, a dreadful and irresistible
doom.

Far back along the gilded surface of the upper stream, these lines of
dancing, tossing, eager, anxious, and fate-impelled breakers and billows
multiply their white ranks, and spread and close together their leaping
ridges into a wild chaos of racing waves as the brink is approached. And
then, at the brink, there is a curious pause--the momentary peace of the
irrevocable. Those mad upper waters--reaching the great leap--are suddenly
all quiet and glassy, and appear rounded and green as the border of a
field of young rye, at the moment when they turn the angle of the dreadful
ledge and hurl themselves into the snow-white gulf of noise and mist and
mystery underneath.

There is nothin