At Home And Abroad | Page 6

The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many of the
fairest love to do homage here. The Wake-robin and May-apple are in
bloom now; the former, white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow
of the fall, and fit to make a garland for its presiding deity when he
walks the land, for they are of imperial size, and shaped like stones for
a diadem. Of the May-apple, I did not raise one green tent without
finding a flower beneath.
And now farewell. Niagara. I have seen thee, and I think all who come
here must in some sort see thee; thou art not to be got rid of as easily as
the stars. I will be here again beneath some flooding July moon and sun.
Owing to the absence of light, I have seen the rainbow only two or
three times by day; the lunar bow not at all. However, the imperial
presence needs not its crown, though illustrated by it.
General Porter and Jack Downing were not unsuitable figures here. The
former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island
and the Wake-robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with
deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sunk the
first stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining
representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege.
He told us all about the Americanisms of the spectacle; that is to say,
the battles that have been fought here. It seems strange that men could
fight in such a place; but no temple can still the personal griefs and
strifes in the breasts of its visitors.
No less strange is the fact that, in this neighborhood, an eagle should be
chained for a plaything. When a child, I used often to stand at a
window from which I could see an eagle chained in the balcony of a
museum. The people used to poke at it with sticks, and my childish
heart would swell with indignation as I saw their insults, and the mien
with which they were borne by the monarch-bird. Its eye was dull, and
its plumage soiled and shabby, yet, in its form and attitude, all the king
was visible, though sorrowful and dethroned. I never saw another of the
family till, when passing through the Notch of the White Mountains, at
that moment glowing before us in all the panoply of sunset, the driver

shouted, "Look there!" and following with our eyes his
upward-pointing finger, we saw, soaring slow in majestic poise above
the highest summit, the bird of Jove. It was a glorious sight, yet I know
not that I felt more on seeing the bird in all its natural freedom and
royalty, than when, imprisoned and insulted, he had filled my early
thoughts with the Byronic "silent rages" of misanthropy.
Now, again, I saw him a captive, and addressed by the vulgar with the
language they seem to find most appropriate to such occasions,--that of
thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their existence,
as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer. Probably he
listened to the voice of the cataract, and felt that congenial powers
flowed free, and was consoled, though his own wing was broken.
The story of the Recluse of Niagara interested me a little. It is
wonderful that men do not oftener attach their lives to localities of great
beauty,--that, when once deeply penetrated, they will let themselves so
easily be borne away by the general stream of things, to live anywhere
and anyhow. But there is something ludicrous in being the hermit of a
show-place, unlike St. Francis in his mountain-bed, where none but the
stars and rising sun ever saw him.
There is also a "guide to the falls," who wears his title labelled on his
hat; otherwise, indeed, one might as soon think of asking for a
gentleman usher to point out the moon. Yet why should we wonder at
such, when we have Commentaries on Shakespeare, and Harmonies of
the Gospels?
And now you have the little all I have to write. Can it interest you? To
one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what
thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and
semicolons in the paragraph,--mere stops. Yet I suppose it is not so to
the absent. At least, I have read things written about Niagara, music,
and the like, that interested me. Once I was moved by Mr. Greenwood's
remark, that he could not realize this marvel till, opening his eyes the
next morning after he had seen it, his doubt as to the possibility of its
being still there taught him what he had experienced. I remember this
now