r,
could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I
realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters
were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the
Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came,
unsought and unwelcome, images, such as never haunted it before, of
naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks; again and
again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over,
and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking
behind me.

As picture, the falls can only be seen from the British side. There
they are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate
the magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat,
as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the
road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with
delight. But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to
the great fall. There all power of observing details, all separate
consciousness, was quite lost.

Once, just as I had seated myself there, a man came to take his first
look. He walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a
moment, with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it to
his own use, he spat into it.

This trait seemed wholly worthy of an age whose love of _utility_ is
such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of
men coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to
fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but
these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the
age or truly the America. A little leaven is leavening the whole mass
for other bread.

The whirlpool I like very much. It is seen to advantage after the
great falls; it is so sternly solemn. The river cannot look more
imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just
below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark the hidden
vortex seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice above could not
proclaim,--a meaning as untold as ever.

It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been
swallowed by the cataract is like to rise suddenly to light here,
whether uprooted tree, or body of man or bird.

The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift
that they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The
fountain beyond the Moss Islands