“Or you take your place upon the deck of the Maid of the Mist, hard by the suspension bridge, and are steamed up to the foot of the cataract. The little steamer answers but poorly to her romantic name. She swings wearily from her moorings, and goes panting and tugging up the current. Yet she manages to hold her course, unless the wind blows too strong down-stream, and slowly wins her way close up to the huge rocks on which the waters of the American fall are broken and shattered into the thickest of spray. In that spray a sharp and angry gust of wind tears a sudden rent, and through it you catch a glimpse of the green crest of the Horseshoe fall, sinking grandly into the ocean of vapor below. Or better still, if in some calm moonlight night, you glide, with the boatman, along the foot of the American fall, keeping just outside of the dark line of shadow, you will find there is nothing on earth so weird and ghost-like as the spectacle before you. The column of spray rises from the blackness below, like the specter of some gigantic tree, and spreads solemnly up into the clear air above. “The mere summer tourist, however, sees but half the glory of Niagara. In the winter the great rocks at the foot of the fall are piled up with an accumulation of frozen spray to the depth of half a hundred feet. By creeping cautiously up the slippery ascent, you may stand face to face with the cataract, half-way up its giddy hight. Every shrub on its margin is loaded with glittering ice. The thick-branched evergreens are bowed beneath its weight, and bend to the ground like enormous plumes. The face of the cold gray rock is cased in the frozen element, and ribbed with pillars and pilasters which flash back the reflection of all the gems in the rays of the sun; and when in a clear, unclouded day, that sun shines down in its splendor, the scene is one of matchless magnificence and glory.”