XX - NIAGARA

Summary

My journey hitherward by a morning's sail from Toronto across Lake Ontario, seemed to me, as regards a certain dull vacuity in this episode of travel, a kind of calculated preparation for the uproar of Niagara—a pause or hush on the threshold of a great impression; and this, too, in spite of the reverent attention I was mindful to bestow on the first seen, in my experience, of the great lakes. It has the merit, from the shore, of producing a slight ambiguity of vision. It is the sea, and yet just not the sea. The huge expanse, the landless line of the horizon, suggest the ocean ; while an indefinable shortness of pulse, a kind of fresh–water gentleness of tone, seem to contradict the idea. What meets the eye is on the scale of the ocean, but you feel somehow that the lake is a thing of smaller spirit. Lake–navigation, therefore, seems to me not especially entertaining. The scene tends to offer, as one may say, a sort of marine–effect missed. It has the blankness and vacancy of the sea, without that vast essential swell which, amid the belting brine, so often saves the situation to the eye. I was occupied, as we crossed, in wondering whether this dull reduction of the main contained that which could properly be termed “scenery.” At the mouth of the Niagara Eiver, however, after a sail of three hours, scenery really begins, and very soon crowds upon you in force. The steamer puts into the narrow channel of the stream, and heads upward between high embankments.