This is often the first near and general view of the Falls, and it is well calculated to produce the most astonishing impression on any one suddenly introduced to it. Supposing him to have arrived from Lockport, by a tedious progress through the forests, the visitor is conducted through a beautiful wood, presenting scenery of the softest character. But, with the roar of the cataract in his ear, he hurries rapidly through, till he stands on the very verge of the Fall, at the point where its mighty waters descend in one solemn unbroken mass into a gulf of spray, rising in clouds from the tortured waves beneath, and driven about by the gusts, till sometimes the whole river beneath, and the opposite shores, are momentarily concealed. As this misty curtain is withdrawn, the whole scene is disclosed. Beyond the American fall, which is immediately before him, and the wooded steeps of Goat Island, he sees the sublime curve of the Horse-shoe Fall; from below the centre of which, where the greatest mass of water descends, arises a tall and beautiful column of silvery vapour far into the sky. At this spot is the entrance of the long covered ladder by which the descent to the ferry is accomplished. At an opening in it, half way down the precipice, people usually stop (in spite of their hurry, and that absorbing matter, the care of their baggage) to enjoy the only view, perhaps, which brings them near to the falling column in the midst of its descent. It is, indeed, “horribly beautiful.” No one has better described the effect sometimes produced on the mind at Niagara, than Basil Hall. “On Sunday night, the 8th of July, we returned to the Falls, and walked down to the Table Rock, to view them by moonlight. Our expectations, as may be supposed, were high, but the sight was more impressive than we had expected. It possessed, it is true, what may be called a more sober kind of interest than that belonging to the wild scene behind the sheet of water above described. I may mention one curious effect:—it seemed to the imagination not impossible that the Fall might swell up, and grasp us in its vortex. The actual presence of any very powerful moving object is often more or less remotely connected with a feeling that its direction may be changed; and when the slightest variation would evidently prove fatal, a feeling of awe is easily excited. At all events, as I gazed upon the cataract, it more than once appeared to increase in its volume, and to be accelerated in its velocity, till my heated fancy became strained, alarmed, and so much over-crowded with new and old images,—all exaggerated; and in spite of the conviction that the whole was nonsense, I felt obliged to draw back from the edge of the rock; and it required a little reflection, and some resolution, to advance again to the brink.