Sketches New and Old Page 9

  NIAGARA [ Written about 1871.]

  Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels areexcellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities forfishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not evenequaled elsewhere. Because, in other localities, certain places in thestreams are much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just asgood as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, andso there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you candepend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of thisstate of things have never heretofore been properly placed before thepublic.

  The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasantand none of them fatiguing. When you start out to "do" the Falls youfirst drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege oflooking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the NiagaraRiver. A railway "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had theangry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend astaircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge ofthe water. After you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; butyou will then be too late.

  The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw thelittle steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids--how firstone paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then theother, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard,and where her planking began to break and part asunder--and how she didfinally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat oftraveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeenminutes, I have really forgotten which. But it was very extraordinary,anyhow. It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell thestory nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss aword or alter a sentence or a gesture.

  Then you drive over to Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery betweenthe chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, andthe chances of having the railway-train overhead smashing down onto you.Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together,they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.

  On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks ofphotographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make anostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and yoursolemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in thelight of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublimeNiagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or thenative depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime.

  Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately

  pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of countrycousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied anduncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in theirawe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment ofthat majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whosevoice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who wasmonarch here dead and forgotten ages before this sackful of smallreptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world'sunnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of agesafter they shall have gathered themselves to their blood-relations, theother worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust.

  There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to displayone's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires asort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you aresatisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the newSuspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Caveof the Winds.

  Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, andput on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque,but not beautiful. A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flightof winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding longafter the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long beforeit had begun to be a pleasure. We were then well down under theprecipice, but still considerably above the level of the river.

  We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our personsshielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clungwith both hands--not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to.Presently the descent became steeper and the bridge flimsier, and spraysfrom the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheetsthat soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in thenature of groping. Now a furious wind began to rush out from behind thewaterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, andscatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that Iwanted to go home; but it was too late. We were almost under themonstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was invain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound.

  In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and, bewilderedby the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowytempest of rain, I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad storming,roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my earsbefore. I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back.The world seemed going to destruction. I could not see anything, theflood poured down savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and themost of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung aleak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that thebridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery andprecipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But wegot through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could standin front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water,and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfullyin earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it.

  The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I loveto read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read ofhis inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain andforest, and his general nobility of character, and his statelymetaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the duskymaiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements.Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. When Ifound the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork, andstunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing humanbeings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms andbodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion.I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the nobleRed Man.

  A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array ofcuriosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about theFalls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous tospeak to them. And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading overto Luna Island, I came upon a noble Son of the Forest sitting under atree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. He wore a slouch hat andbrogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus does the banefulcontact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pompwhich is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his nativehaunts. I addressed the relic as follows:

  "Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a-Whack happy? Does the greatSpeckled Thunder sigh for the war-path, or is his heart contented withdreaming of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest? Does the mightySachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied tomake bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface? Speak, sublimerelic of bygone grandeur--venerable ruin, speak!"

  The relic said:

  "An' is it mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takin' for a dirtyInjin, ye drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged divil! By the piperthat played before Moses, I'll ate ye!"

  I went away from there.

  By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon agentle daughter of the aborigines
in fringed and beaded buckskinmoccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her.She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong familyresemblance to a clothes-pin, and was now boring a hole through hisabdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment, and then addressedher:

  "Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the Laughing Tadpolelonely? Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race,and the vanished glory of her ancestors? Or does her sad spirit wanderafar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave Gobbler-of-the-Lightnings is gone? Why is my daughter silent? Has she ought againstthe paleface stranger?"

  The maiden said:

  "Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye dare to be callin' names? Lave this, orI'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!"

  I adjourned from there also.

  "Confound these Indians!" I said. "They told me they were tame; but, ifappearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath."

  I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. I cameupon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampumand moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship:

  "Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and HighMuck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you!You, Beneficent Polecat--you, Devourer of Mountains--you, RoaringThundergust--you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye--the paleface from beyondthe great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned yourranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and avain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, havedepleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property ofothers has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in yoursimple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper.Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy andtomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with thepicturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light ofthe nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of thepurlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall theirmighty deeds! Remember Uncas!--and Red jacket! and Hole in the Day!--andWhoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves under mybanner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes--"

  "Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Hang him!""Dhround him!"

  It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flashin the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins--asingle flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of themin the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me.They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gaveme a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee likea saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult toinjury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet.

  About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vestcaught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could getloose. I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at thefoot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several inchesabove my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed round andround in it forty-four times--chasing a chip and gaining on it--eachround trip a half-mile--reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-fourtimes, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time.

  At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipein his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept theother on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind.Presently a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept around hesaid:

  "Got a match?"

  "Yes; in my other vest. Help me out, please."

  "Not for Joe."

  When I came round again, I said:

  "Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but willyou explain this singular conduct of yours?"

  "With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I canwait for you. But I wish I had a match."

  I said: "Take my place, and I'll go and get you one."

  He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldnessbetween us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea,in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw mycustom into the hands of the opposition coroner on the American side.

  At last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peaceby yelling at people on shore for help. The judge fined me, but I had theadvantage of him. My money was with my pantaloons, and my pantaloonswere with the Indians.

  Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a very critical condition. At least Iam lying anyway---critical or not critical. I am hurt all over, but Icannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done takinginventory. He will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus farhe thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others.

  Upon regaining my right mind, I said:

  "It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork andmoccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from?"

  "Limerick, my son."