Wanderings In South America, Charles Waterton [phonics reader txt] 📗

grows, The sturdy oak, with broad-spread boughs.

A few miles before you reach Buffalo the road is low and bad, and in stepping out of the stage I sprained my foot very severely; it swelled to a great size, and caused me many a day of pain and mortification, as will be seen in the sequel.

Buffalo looks down on Lake Erie, and possesses a fine and commodious inn. At a little distance is the Black Rock, and there you pass over to the Canada side. A stage is in waiting to convey you some sixteen or twenty miles down to the falls. Long before you reach the spot you hear the mighty roar of waters and see the spray of the far-famed Falls of Niagara rising up like a column to the heavens and mingling with the passing clouds.

At this stupendous cascade of Nature the waters of the lake fall 176 feet perpendicular. It has been calculated, I forget by whom, that the quantity of water discharged down this mighty fall is 670,255 tons per minute. There are two large inns on the Canada side; but after you have satisfied your curiosity in viewing the falls, and in seeing the rainbow in the foam far below where you are standing, do not, I pray you, tarry long at either of them. Cross over to the American side, and there you will find a spacious inn which has nearly all the attractions: there you meet with great attention and every accommodation.

The day is passed in looking at the falls and in sauntering up and down the wooded and rocky environs of the Niagara; and the evening is often enlivened by the merry dance.

Words can hardly do justice to the unaffected ease and elegance of the American ladies who visit the Falls of Niagara. The traveller need not rove in imagination through Circassia in search of fine forms, or through England, France and Spain to meet with polished females. The numbers who are continually arriving from all parts of the Union confirm the justness of this remark.

I was looking one evening at a dance, being unable to join in it on account of the accident I had received near Buffalo, when a young American entered the ballroom with such a becoming air and grace that it was impossible not to have been struck with her appearance.

Her bloom was like the springing flower
That sips the silver dew,
The rose was budded in her cheek,
Just opening to the view.

I could not help feeling a wish to know where she had

Into such beauty spread, and blown so fair.

Upon inquiry I found that she was from the city of Albany. The more I looked at the fair Albanese the more I was convinced that in the United States of America may be found grace and beauty and symmetry equal to anything in the Old World.

I now for good and all (and well I might) gave up the idea of finding bugs, bears, brutes and buffaloes in this country, and was thoroughly satisfied that I had laboured under a great mistake in suspecting that I should ever meet with them.

I wished to join in the dance where the fair Albanese was "to brisk notes in cadence beating," but the state of my unlucky foot rendered it impossible; and as I sat with it reclined upon a sofa, full many a passing gentleman stopped to inquire the cause of my misfortune, presuming at the same time that I had got an attack of gout. Now this surmise of theirs always mortified me; for I never had a fit of gout in my life, and, moreover, never expect to have one.

In many of the inns in the United States there is an album on the table in which travellers insert their arrival and departure, and now and then indulge in a little flash or two of wit.

I thought under existing circumstances that there would be no harm in briefly telling my misadventure; and so taking up the pen I wrote what follows, and was never after asked a single question about the gout.

C. Waterton, of Walton Hall, in the county of York, England, arrived at the Falls of Niagara in July 1824, and begs leave to pen down the following dreadful accident:

He sprained his foot, and hurt his toe,
On the rough road near Buffalo.
It quite distresses him to stagger a-
Long the sharp rocks of famed Niagara.
So thus he's doomed to drink the measure
Of pain, in lieu of that of pleasure.
On Hope's delusive pinions borne
He came for wool, and goes back shorn.
_N.B._--Here he alludes to nothing but
Th' adventure of his toe and foot;
Save this,--he sees all that which can
Delight and charm the soul of man,
But feels it not,--because his toe
And foot together plague him so.

I remember once to have sprained my ankle very violently many years ago, and that the doctor ordered me to hold it under the pump two or three times a day. Now in the United States of America all is upon a grand scale, except taxation; and I am convinced that the traveller's ideas become much more enlarged as he journeys through the country. This being the case, I can easily account for the desire I felt to hold my sprained foot under the Fall of Niagara. I descended the winding-staircase which has been made for the accommodation of travellers, and then hobbled on to the scene of action. As I held my leg under the fall I tried to meditate on the immense difference there was betwixt a house-pump and this tremendous cascade of Nature, and what effect it might have upon the sprain; but the magnitude of the subject was too overwhelming, and I was obliged to drop it.

Perhaps, indeed, there was an unwarrantable tincture of vanity in an unknown wanderer wishing to have it in his power to tell the world that he had held his sprained foot under a fall of water which discharges 670,255 tons per minute. A gentle purling stream would have suited better. Now it would have become Washington to have quenched his battle-thirst in the Fall of Niagara; and there was something royal in the idea of Cleopatra drinking pearl-vinegar made from the grandest pearl in Egypt; and it became Caius Marius to send word that he was sitting upon the ruins of Carthage. Here we have the person suited to the thing, and the thing to the person.

If, gentle reader, thou wouldst allow me to indulge a little longer in this harmless pen-errantry, I would tell thee that I have had my ups and downs in life as well as other people: for I have climbed to the point of the conductor above the cross on the top of St. Peter's in Rome and left my glove there; I have stood on one foot upon the Guardian Angel's head on the Castle of St. Angelo; and, as I have just told thee, I have been low down under the Fall of Niagara. But this is neither here nor there; let us proceed to something else.

When the pain of my foot had become less violent, and the swelling somewhat abated, I could not resist the inclination I felt to go down Ontario, and so on to Montreal and Quebec, and take Lakes Champlain and George in my way back to Albany.

Just as I had made up my mind to it, a family from the Bowling-Green in New York, who was going the same route, politely invited me to join their party. Nothing could be more fortunate. They were highly accomplished. The young ladies sang delightfully; and all contributed their portion to render the tour pleasant and amusing.

Travellers have already filled the world with descriptions of the bold and sublime scenery from Lake Erie to Quebec:

The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing to the sky.

And there is scarce one of them who has not described the achievements of former and latter times on the different battle-grounds. Here great Wolfe expired. Brave Montcalm was carried, mortally wounded, through yonder gate. Here fell the gallant Brock; and there General Sheaffee captured all the invaders. And in yonder harbour may be seen the mouldering remnants of British vessels. Their hour of misfortune has long passed away. The victors have now no use for them in an inland lake. Some have already sunk, while others, dismantled and half-dismasted, are just above the water, waiting in shattered state that destiny which must sooner or later destroy the fairest works of man.

The excellence and despatch of the steamboats, together with the company which the traveller is sure to meet with at this time of the year, render the trip down to Montreal and Quebec very agreeable.

The Canadians are a quiet and apparently a happy people. They are very courteous and affable to strangers. On comparing them with the character which a certain female traveller, a journalist, has thought fit to give them, the stranger might have great doubts whether or not he were amongst the Canadians.

Montreal, Quebec and the Falls of Montmorency are well worth going to see. They are making tremendous fortifications at Quebec. It will be the Gibraltar of the New World. When one considers its distance from Europe, and takes a view of its powerful and enterprising neighbour, Virgil's remark at once rushes into the mind:

Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves.

I left Montreal with regret. I had the good fortune to be introduced to the Professors of the College. These fathers are a very learned and worthy set of gentlemen, and on my taking leave of them I felt a heaviness at heart in reflecting that I had not more time to cultivate their acquaintance.

In all the way from Buffalo to Quebec I only met with one bug; and I cannot even swear that it belonged to the United States. In going down the St. Lawrence in the steamboat I felt something crossing over my neck, and on laying hold of it with my finger and thumb it turned out to be a little half-grown, ill-conditioned bug. Now whether it were going from the American to the Canada side, or from the Canada to the American, and had taken the advantage of my shoulders to ferry itself across, I could not tell. Be this as it may, I thought of my Uncle Toby and the fly; and so, in lieu of placing it upon the deck, and then putting my thumb-nail vertically upon it, I quietly chucked it amongst some baggage that was close by and recommended it to get ashore by the first opportunity.

When we had seen all that was worth seeing in Quebec and at the Falls of Montmorency, and had been on board the enormous ship _Columbus_, we returned for a day or two to Montreal, and then proceeded to Saratoga by Lakes Champlain and George.

The steamboat from Quebec to Montreal had above five hundred Irish emigrants on board. They were going "they hardly knew whither," far away from dear Ireland. It made one's heart ache to see them