Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/115

Rh Blondin astonished us by his daring, what must we think of his friend who accompanied him, riding on his back during this aerial promenade?

"Perhaps he was a glutton," said the Doctor, "and Blondin made wonderful omelets on his tight-rope."

We were now on Canadian ground, and we walked up the left bank of the Niagara, in order to see the Falls under a new aspect. Half an hour later we reached the English hotel, where the Doctor ordered our breakfast, whilst glanced through the "Travelers' Book," where figured several thousand names: among the most celebrated I noticed the following:—Robert Peel, Lady Franklin, Comte de Paris, Duc de Chartres, Prince de Joinville, Louis Napoleon (1846), Prince and Princess Napoleon, Barnum (with his address), Maurice Sand (1865), Agassiz (1854), Almonte, Prince Hohenlohe, Rothschild, Bertin (Paris), Lady Elgin, Burkhardt (1832), etc.

"And now let us go under the Falls," said the Doctor to me, when we had finished breakfast.

I followed Dean Pitferge. A negro conducted us to the dressing-room, where we were provided with waterproof trousers, mackintoshes, and glazed hats. Thus equipped, our guide led us down a slippery path, obstructed by sharp-edged stones, to the lower level of Niagara. Then we passed behind the great fall through clouds of spray, the cataract falling before us like the curtain of a theater before the actors. But what a theater! Soaked, blinded, deafened, we could neither see nor hear in this cavern as hermetically closed by the liquid sheets of the cataract as though Nature had sealed it in by a wall of granite.

At nine o'clock we returned to the hotel, where they relieved us of our streaming clothes. Returning to the bank, I uttered a cry of surprise and joy, "Captain Corsican!"

The captain heard, and came towards me.

"You here!" he cried; "what a pleasure to see you again!"

"And Fabian and Ellen?" I asked, shaking his hands.

"They are here, and going on as well as possible; Fabian full of hope, almost merry; and our poor Ellen little by little regaining reason."

"But how is it that I meet you at Niagara?"

"Niagara," repeated Corsican. "Well, it is the prin-