Luna Island is the last point which one can reach from Goat Island
toward the American shore. Proceeding toward the Canadian Fall, one
reaches at a short distance the Biddle Stairs. Here a break in the
foliage reveals a grand view down the gorge with the Canadian Fall
directly in front. A stairway leads to a wooden building down which runs
a spiral stairway to the rocks below. This stairway received its name
from Nicholas Biddle, of old National Bank fame, who proposed this
means of reaching the rocks below and offered a contribution for its
construction. The offer was rejected, but his name was given to the
structure. A trip to the rocks below this point is well worth while,
difficult though it be; the descent of the spiral stairway is eighty
feet. Turning to the right one comes out upon a ledge of rock with the
roaring waters below and the line of the cliff above, along the top of
which objects appear at only half their real size. Passing around a
short curve there bursts upon one's view the fall which forms the Cave
of the Winds--a most beautiful sheet of water. The passage of the cave
can hardly be described by the pen. Here one is assailed on all sides by
fierce storms and clouds of angry spray. The cave seems at first dark
and repelling, for in this maddening whirl of wind and water one is at
first almost blinded; but as soon as the eye becomes accustomed to the
darkness, it can follow the graceful curve of the water to where it
leaves the cliff above. The dark, forbidding, terraced rocks are seen
dripping with water. The passage of the cave is too exciting to be
essayed by persons with weak hearts, but the return across the rocks in
front of it on a bright day is genuinely inspiring. Here the symbol of
promise is brought down within one's very reach; above, around, on all
sides are to be seen colours rivalling the conception of any
artist--whole circles of bows, quarter circles, half circles, here
within one's very grasp. The far fabled pot of gold is here a boiling,
seething mass of running, shimmering silver. If possible, more glorious
than all else, up above, along the sky-line, there appears the shining
crest of the American Fall, glimmering in the sunlight like the silvery
range of some snow-covered mountains.
[Illustration: The Cave of the Winds.]
In size the cave is about one hundred feet wide, a hundred feet deep,
and about one hundred and sixty feet high. At one point in the cave, on
a bright day, by standing in the very edge of the spray, one becomes the
centre of a complete circle of rainbows, an experience probably
unequalled elsewhere.
About half-way between the stairway and the cave is the point from
which, in 1829, Sam Patch made his famous leap, elsewhere described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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