Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/111

Rh carriage drives. It is like a bouquet thrown between the American and Canadian Falls, separated from the shore by a distance of three hundred yards. We ran under the great trees, climbed the slopes, and went down the steps; the thundering roar of the falls was redoubled, and the air saturated with spray.

"Look!" cried the Doctor.

Coming from behind a mass of rock, the Niagara appeared in all its splendor. At this spot it meets with a sharp angle of land, and falling round it, forms the Canadian cascade, called the "Horse-shoe Fall," which falls from a height of one hundred and fifty-eight feet, and is two miles broad.

In this, one of the most beautiful spots in the world, Nature has combined everything to astonish the eye. The fall of the Niagara singularly favors the effects of light and shade; the sunbeams falling on the water, capriciously diversify the color; and those who have seen this effect, must admit that it is without parallel. In fact, near Goat Island the foam is white; it is then a fall of snow, or a heap of melted silver, pouring into the abyss. In the center of the cataract the color of the water is a most beautiful sea-green, which indicates its depth, so that the Detroit, a ship drawing twenty feet and launched on the current, was able to descend the falls without grazing. Towards the Canadian shore the whirlpool, on the contrary, looks like metal shining beneath the luminous rays, and it is melted gold which is now poured into the gulf. Below, the river is invisible from the vapors which rise over it. I caught glimpses, however, of enormous blocks of ice accumulated by the cold of winter; they take the form of monsters, which, with open jaws, hourly absorb the hundred millions of tons poured into them by the inexhaustible Niagara. Half a mile below the cataract the river again became tranquil, and presented a smooth surface, which the winds of April had not yet been able to ruffle.

"And now for the middle of the torrent," said the Doctor to me.

I could not imagine what the Doctor meant by those words, until he pointed to a tower built on the edge of a rock some hundred feet from the shore, almost overhanging the precipice. This monument, raised in 1833, by a