Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/25

 low. Yet the distances are very deceptive; the most distant billow was scarcely more than a quarter of a mile off, though it appeared two miles or more. Many ducks were constantly floating a little way down from the Rapids,—then flying back and alighting again. The water farther up broken into lengths of four to six rods,—more, probably. Masses of ice under the edge of the cliff. Horace Mann asked me if I had not heard the sound of the Fall as we went from the depot to the hotel last night; but I had not, though it was certainly loud enough. I had probably mistaken it for a train coming, or a locomotive letting off steam,—of which we have so much at home. It sounds hardly so loud this morning, though now [at Niagara town] only a third of a mile off; the impression is as if I were surrounded by factories.

This saying was prophetic; for there are now many factories at Niagara deriving their power from the force of the great waterfall. Thoreau continues: