I had
likened Niagara to a vast mill-dam, because I could find no peer to set
beside it; so now, in my weakness, the sublime pageant of the "Flying
Cloud" could search out nothing higher in my recollection with which to
compare it than a wild, ride of my youth in a canoe, for a half mile or
so, down the rapids of a river.
But morning was at hand. The rich golden glow of night, to which the
dwellers on the earth's surface are accustomed, as we passed to higher
altitudes, had given place to a thin inky blue. This was obscured by no
fleck or mist, and yet the stars shone through it faint and dim,
despoiling the firmament of its glory. The same loss of power was
manifest on the ushering in of day. The auroral flame, which ordinarily
greets us in the east with such a ruddy laugh, was now nothing better
than a wan and dismal smile; and even the sun, as he struggled up from
what seemed a bed of leaden mist, brought with him only a pallid,
lifeless twilight. It was not that his rays were impeded by cloud or
haze; he had lost his power to shine. He hung there in the heavens like
a great white shield, and looked down on us as rayless and powerless
and devoid of life as a dead man's eye.
Having at length wearied myself with gazing, and feeling chill and weak
from the coldness and tenuity of the atmosphere, I subsided into the
comfort and companionship of the cabins below.
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