“There are two or three things in the way of excursion which must sooner or later be performed. Some bright afternoon, when the west is all aglow, as you sit upon Table Rock, watching the clouds of spray momently torn from the face of the descending column, the guide with the hollow voice, whose mission is to conduct visitors behind the great sheet, presents himself. You commit yourself to his guidance, and donning the suit of yellow oil-skin, follow him down the spiral staircase, along the base of the precipice up to the verge of the cataract. You shudder, and hesitate to enter the blinding spray along that winding path, which seems in the dimness like a slender line drawn upon the face of the rock. The guide whispers a word of encouragement, deftly insinuating how boldly ‘the lady’ trod its slippery length. You take courage and advance. You can scarcely breathe, much less see; but you feel that the torrent is plunging from the immeasurable hight above into the unfathomable depth below. Somehow, how you hardly know, you have passed through the thick curtain of blinding spray, and are peering eagerly into the gray depth beyond. You are on Termination rock, and further than this mortal foot may never penetrate within the vail. Whichever way you turn, it is all cold gray mist, shrouding the overhanging rock and the overarching water above, and the profound depths below; all mist, cold gray mist above, below, around, except when you turn your eyes back along the path by which you entered, where you behold a strip of golden sky between the grim rock and the edge of the descending flood. Drenched and dripping, spent and exhausted, as a shipwrecked sailor flung by the surf upon some inhospitable shore, you follow your guide back along the misty path, and emerge gladly enough into the clear outer air, into the free sunshine, and beneath the bright sky. As you doff the heavy oil-skin integuments, a printed paper is put into your hand, certifying that you ‘have been under the great sheet of water, the distance of two hundred and forty feet from the commencement of the falls to the termination of Table Rock,’ verified by the signature of the proprietor of ‘Table Rock House.’ Your guide looks on you complacently, as though he would assure you that the great end of life was now attained, and you might take up your ‘=Nunc dimittis=.’