The aspect of the American city in winter time is decidedly quite the reverse of attractive, but there was a far larger fixed population than we expected to have seen, and the fame of our arrival had gone abroad, so that there was a small assemblage round the stove in the bar-room and in the passage to see us start. I don’t mean to see us in particular, but to stare at any three strangers who turned up so suspiciously and unexpectedly at this season. The walls of the room in the hotel were covered with placards, offering large bounties and liberal inducements to recruits for the local regiment of volunteers; and I was told that a great number of men had gone for the war after the season had concluded--but Abolition is by no means popular in Niagara. It was resolved that we should drive round to the British side by the Suspension Bridge, a couple of miles below, as the best way of inducting my companions into the wonders of the Falls; and I prepared myself for a great surprise in the difference between the character of the scene in winter and in summer. For some time the road runs on a low level below the river bank, and does not permit of a sight of the cataract. The wooden huts of the Irish squatters looked more squalid and miserable than they were when I saw them last year--wonderful combinations of old plank, tarpaulin, tinplate, and stove pipes. “It’s wonderful the settlement doesn’t catch fire!” “But it does catch fire. It’s burned down often enough. Nobody cares: and the Irish grin, and build it up again, and beat a few of the niggers, whom they accuse of having blazed ’em up. They’ve a purty hard time of it now, I think.” There are too many free negroes and too many Irish located in the immediate neighbourhood of the American town, to cause the doctrines of the Abolitionists to be received with much favour by the American population; and the Irish of course are opposed to free negroes, where they are attracted by papermills, hotel service, bricklaying, plastering, housebuilding, and the like--the Americans monopolising the higher branches of labour and money-making, including the guide business. At a bend in the road we caught a glimpse of the Falls, and I was concerned to observe they appeared diminished in form, in beauty, and in effect. The cataract appeared of an ochreish hue, like bog-water, as patches of it came into sight through breaks in the thick screen of trees which line the banks. The effect was partly due to the rain, perhaps, but was certainly developed by the white setting of snow through which it rushed. The expression on my friends’ faces indicated that they considered Niagara an imposition. “The Falls are like one of our great statesmen,” quoth the guide, “just now. There’s nothing particular about them when you first catch a view of them; but when you get close and know them better, then the power comes out, and you feel small as potatoes.”