On our way, a fellow passenger, experienced in sight-seeing, had recommended to us to take our first view from the American side, and from below, instead of the usual view from Table Rock. We therefore crossed the river a little distance below the Falls, without giving way to the temptation of gazing for a moment at the view before us, though the roar was terrible in our ears. Then we walked on the American side, closer, closer till we were within twenty feet of the cataract. The spray dripped over us, the rocks were slippery to our feet, the roar of a thousand floods seemed in our bewildered ears; and below, as it were, the reverberating yells of damned spirits tossing, and whirling, and dashing and howling forever. Then we looked up. The volume of water seemed coming down from the very heavens upon us. We uttered a faint cry of terror—turned round and fled. That is to say, we fled several yards. No matter. We were impressed sufficiently with the physical grandeur of the scene. It was oppressive, overwhelming. Afterward, when we roamed over all these rocks and took views from every point, and gazed at the cataract’s wondrous beauty as well as power, we found a moral grandeur with which our souls sympathized, and to which they rose to enjoy and adore. These jottings down of our impressions can give no idea to one who has not visited the Falls, and to one who has, will scarcely enhance his recollections. I mention them only to illustrate a trait of Claire’s character. A mother with her child were wandering along among the loose stones and sharp rocks close to the terrible whirlpool from which we had just turned. The mother had let go the child’s hand, and he, a lad of some four or five years old, slipped from the stone on which he stood, and as a natural consequence was in imminent danger of his life. But one rock, and that slippery and sloping, intervened between the little fellow and certain death. The mother screamed, but was motionless from mere horror; Claire, who at once forgot every thing about her but what was connected with the living drama before her, pulled at a stroke her scarf from her neck, and giving me one end to hold, while she held the other, slid her feet rapidly down to the very brink of the torrent, caught the boy firmly by his foot and stood holding him. She was as pale as death, but as firm and strong in her attitude as if she stood on the parlor floor. She dared not move, and I had not strength, and was too distrustful of the strength of the scarf, to dare to pull them up.