d by the fires or the blasts of heaven. The
water itself is of a strange color, not transparent, but a pale
blue-green, like a discolored turquoise, or a stream of verdigris,
streaked with long veins and angry swirls of white, as if the angry
creature couldn't get out of that hole, and was foaming at the
mouth; for, before pursuing its course, the river churns round and
round in the sullen, savage, dark basin it has worn for itself, and
then, as if it had suddenly found an outlet, rushes on its foaming,
furious way down to Ontario. We had ridden there and alighted from
our horses, and sat on the brink for some time. It was the most
dismal place I ever beheld, and seemed to me to grow horribler
every moment I looked at it: drowning in that deep, dark,
wicked-looking whirlpool would be hideous, compared to being dashed
to death amid the dazzling spray and triumphant thunder of Niagara.

[There are but three places I have ever visited that produced upon me
the appalling impression of being accursed, and empty of the presence of
the God of nature, the Divine Creator, the All-loving Father: this
whirlpool of Niagara, that fiery, sulphurous, vile-smelling wound in the
earth's bosom, the crater of Vesuvius, and the upper part of the Mer de
Glace at Chamouni. These places impressed me with horror, and the
impression is always renewed in my mind when I remember them:
God-forsaken is what they looked to me.]

I do not believe this whirlpool is at all as generally visited as
the falls, and perhaps it might not impress everybody as it did me.

Quebec, where we have been staying, is beautiful. A fortress is
always delightful to me; my destructiveness rejoices in guns and
drums, and all the circumstance of glorious war. The place itself,
too, is so fiercely picturesque--such crags, such dizzy, hanging
heights, such perpendicular rocky walls, down to the very water's
edge, and such a broad, bright bay. The scenery all round Quebec is
beautiful, and we went to visit two fine waterfalls in the
neighborhood, but of course to us just now there is but one
waterfall in the world.... God bless you, dear!

Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. K.

TO MRS. JAMESON.

NEW YORK, Tuesd