Page:Awful phenomena of nature (1).pdf/18

18 “The next morning, with renewed delight, I beheld from my window—I may say, indeed, from my bed—the stupendous vision. The beams of the rising sun shed over it a variety of tints; a cloud of spray was ascending from the crescent; and as I viewed it from above it appeared like the steam rising from the boiler of some monstrous engine.

“This evening I went down with one of our party to view the cataract by moonlight. I took my favourite seat on the projecting rock, at a little distance from the brink of the fall, and gazed till every sense seemed absorbed in contemplation.—Although the shades of night increased the sublimity of the prospect, and ‘deepened the murmur of the falling floods,’ the moon in placid beauty shed her soft influence upon the mind, and mitigated the horrors of the scene. The thunders which bellowed from the abyss, and the loveliness of the falling element, which glittered like molten silver in the moonlight, seemed to complete, in absolute perfection, the rare union of the beautiful with the sublime.

While reflecting upon the inadequacy of language to express the feelings I experienced, or to describe the wonders which I surveyed, an American gentleman, to my great amusement, tapped me on the shoulder, and ‘guessed’ that it was ‘pretty droll!’ It was difficult to avoid laughing in his face; yet I could not help envying him his vocabulary, which had so eloquently released me from my dilemma.

“Though earnestly dissuaded from the ,