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In this manner I spent some hours, watching the varied impression, made
by the cataract, on those who disturbed me, and returning to unwearied
contemplation, when left alone. At length my time came to depart.
There is a grassy footpath, through the woods, along the summit of the
bank, to a point whence a causeway, hewn in the side of the precipice,
goes winding down to the Ferry, about half a mile below the Table Rock.
The sun was near setting, when I emerged from the shadow of the trees,
and began the descent. The indirectness of my downward road continually
changed the point of view, and showed me, in rich and repeated
succession, now, the whitening rapids and majestic leap of the main
river, which appeared more deeply massive as the light departed; now,
the lovelier picture, yet still sublime, of Goat Island, with its rocks
and grove, and the lesser falls, tumbling over the right bank of the St.
Lawrence, like a tributary stream; now, the long vista of the river, as
it eddied and whirled between the cliffs, to pass through Ontario toward
the sea, and everywhere to be wondered at, for this one unrivalled
scene. The golden sunshine tinged the sheet of the American cascade,
and painted on its heaving spray the broken semicircle of a rainbow,
heaven’s own beauty crowning earth’s sublimity. My steps were slow, and
I paused long at every turn of the descent, as one lingers and pauses,
who discerns a brighter and brightening excellence in what he must soon
behold no more. The solitude of the old wilderness now reigned over the
whole vicinity of the falls. My enjoyment became the more rapturous,
because no poet shared it, nor wretch devoid of poetry profaned it; but
the spot so famous through the world was all my own!