At eight o'clock on the morning of the 27th I left Chicago
for Niagara, which was so temptingly near that I resolved to make a detour by
that route to New York. The line from the city which I took skirts the southern
extremity of Lake Michigan for many miles, and leaving its borders at New
Buffalo, traverses the southern portion of the state of Michigan by Albion and
Jackson to the town of Detroit, or the outflow of Lake St. Clair into Lake
Erie, a distance of 284 miles, which was accomplished in about twelve hours.
The most enthusiastic patriot could not affirm the country was interesting. The
names of the stations were certainly novel to a Britisher. Thus we had Kalumet,
Pokagon, Dowagiac, Kalamazoo, Ypsilanti, among the more familiar titles of
Chelsea, Marengo, Albion, and Parma.
It was dusk when we reached the steam ferry-boat at Detroit,
which took us across to Windsor; but through the dusk I could perceive the
Union Jack waving above the unimpressive little town which bears a name so
respected by British ears. The customs' inspections seemed very mild; and I was
not much impressed by the representative of the British crown, who, with a
brass button on his coat and a very husky voice, exercised his powers on behalf
of Her Majesty at the landing-place of Windsor. The officers of the railway
company received me as if I had been an old friend, and welcomed me as if I had
just got out of a battle-field. “Well, I do wonder them Yankees have ever let
you come out alive?” “May I ask why?” “Oh, because you have not been praising
them all round, sir. Why even the Northern chaps get angry with a Britisher, as
they call us, if he attempts to say a word against those cursed niggers.”
It did not appear the Americans are quite so thin-skinned,
for whilst crossing in the steamer a passage of arms between the Captain, who
was a genuine John Bull, and a Michigander, in the style which is called chaff
or slang, diverted most of the auditors, although it was very much to the
disadvantage of the Union champion. The Michigan man had threatened the Captain
that Canada would be annexed as the consequence of our infamous conduct. “Why,
I tell you,” said the Captain, “we'd just draw up the negro chaps from our
barbers’ shops, and tell them we’d send them to Illinois if they did not lick
you; and I believe every creature in Michigan, pigs and all, would run before
them into Pennsylvania. We know what you are up to, you and them Maine chaps;
but Lor' bless you, sooner than take such a lot, we'd give you ten dollars a head
to make you stay in your own country; and we know you would go to the next
worst place before your time for half the money. The very Bluenoses would
secede if you were permitted to come under the old flag.”
All night we travelled. A long day through a dreary,
illsettled, pine-wooded, half-cleared country, swarming with mosquitoes and
biting flies, and famous for fevers. Just about daybreak the train stopped.
“Now, then,” said an English voice; “now, then, who's for
Clifton Hotel? All passengers leave cars for this side of the Falls.”
Consigning our baggage to the commissioner of the Clifton, my companion, Mr.
Ward, and myself resolved to walk along the banks of the river to the hotel,
which is some two miles and a half distant, and set out whilst it was still so
obscure that the outline of the beautiful bridge which springs so lightly
across the chasm, filled with furious hurrying waters, hundreds of feet below,
was visible only as is the tracery of some cathedral arch through the dim light
of the cloister.
The road follows the course of the stream, which whirls and
gurgles in an Alpine torrent, many times magnified, in a deep gorge like that
of the Tête Noire.
As the rude bellow of the steam-engine and the rattle of the train proceeding
on its journey were dying away, the echoes seemed to swell into a sustained,
reverberating, hollow sound from the perpendicular banks of the St. Lawrence.
We listened. “It is the noise of the Falls,” said my companion; and as we
walked on the sound became louder, filling the air with a strange quavering
note, which played about a tremendous uniform bass note, and silencing every
other. Trees closed in the road on the river side; but when we had walked a
mile or so, the lovely light of morning spreading with our steps, suddenly
through an opening in the branches there appeared, closing up the vista —
white, flickering, indistinct, and shroud-like — the Falls, rushing into a
grave of black waters, and uttering that tremendous cry which can never be
forgotten.
I have heard many people say they were disappointed with the
first impression of Niagara. Let those who desire to see the water-leap in all
its grandeur, approach it as I did, and I cannot conceive what their
expectations are if they do not confess the sight exceeded their highest ideal.
I do not pretend to describe the sensations or to endeavor to give the effect
produced on me by the scene or by the Falls, then or subsequently; but I must
say words can do no more than confuse the writer's own ideas of the grandeur of
the sight, and mislead altogether those who read them. It is of no avail to do
laborious statistics, and tell us how many gallons rush Over in that down-flung
ocean every second, or how wide it is, how high it is, how deep the
earth-piercing caverns beneath. For my own part, I always feel the distance of
the sun to be insignificant, when I read it is so many hundreds of thousands of
miles away, compared with the feeling of utter inaccessibility to anything
human which is caused by it when its setting rays illuminate some purple ocean
studded with golden islands in dreamland.
Niagara is rolling its waters over the barrier. Larger and
louder it grows upon us.
“I hope the hotel is not full,” quoth my friend. I confess,
for the time, I forgot all about Niagara, and was perturbed concerning a
breakfastless ramble and a hunt after lodgings by the borders of the great
river.
But although Clifton Hotel was full enough, there was room
for us, too; and for two days a strange, weird kind of life I led, alternating
between the roar of the cataract outside and the din of politics within; for,
be it known, that at the Canadian side of the Falls many Americans of the Southern
States, who would not pollute their footsteps by contact with the soil of
Yankee-land, were sojourning, and that merchants and bankers of New York and
other Northern cities had selected it as their summer retreat, and, indeed,
with reason; for after excursions on both sides of the Falls, the comparative
seclusion of the settlements on the left bank appears to me to render it
infinitely preferable to the Rosherville gentism and semi-rowdyism of the large
American hotels and settlements on the other side.
It was distressing to find that Niagara was surrounded by
the paraphernalia of a fixed fair. I had looked forward to a certain degree of
solitude. It appeared impossible that man could cockneyfy such a magnificent
display of force and grandeur in nature. But, alas! it is haunted by what poor
Albert Smith used to denominate “harpies.” The hateful race of guides infest
the precincts of the hotels, waylay you in the lanes, and prowl about the
unguarded moments of reverie. There are miserable little peep-shows and
photographers, bird-stuflfers, shell-polishers, collectors of crystals, and
proprietors of natural curiosity shops.
There is, besides, a large village population. There is a
watering-side air about the people who walk along the road worse than all their
mills and factories working their water-privileges at both sides of the stream.
At the American side there is a lanky, pretentious town, with big hotels, shops
of Indian curiosities, and all the meagre forms of the bazaar life reduced to a
minimum of attractiveness which destroy the comfort of a traveller in Switzerland.
I had scarcely been an hour in the hotel before I was asked to look at the
Falls through a little piece of colored glass. Next I was solicited to purchase
a collection of muddy photographs, representing what I could look at with my
own eyes for nothing. Not finally by any means, I was assailed by a gentleman
who was particularly desirous of selling me an enormous pair of cow’s-horns and
a stuffed hawk. Small booths and peep-shows corrupt the very margin of the
bank, and close by the remnant of the " Table Rock," a Jew (who, by
the by, deserves infinite credit for the zeal and energy he has thrown into the
collections for his museum), exhibits bottled rattlesnakes, stuffed monkeys,
Egyptian mummies, series of coins, with a small living menagerie attached to
the shop, in which articles of Indian manufacture are exposed for sale. It was
too bad to be asked to admire such lusus naturÓ• as double-headed calves and dogs with three
necks by the banks of Niagara.
As I said before, I am not going to essay the impossible or
to describe the Falls. On the English side there are, independently of other
attractions, some scenes of recent historic interest, for close to Niagara are
Lundy's Lane and Chippewa. There are few persons in England aware of the exceedingly severe fighting which
characterized the contests between these Americans and the English and Canadian
troops during the campaign of 1814. At Chippewa, for example, Major General
Riall who, with 2000 men, one howitzer; and two twenty-four-pounders, attacked
a, force of Americans of a similar strength, was repulsed with a loss of 500
killed and wounded; and on the morning of the 25th of July the action of
Lundy's Lane, between four brigades of Americans and seven fieldpieces, and
3100 men of the British and seven field-pieces, took place, in which the
Americans were worsted, and retired with a loss of 854 men and two guns, whilst
the British lost 878. On the 14th of August following, Sir Gordon Drummond was
repulsed with a loss of 905 men out of his small force in an attack on Fort
Erie; and on the 17th of September an American sortie from the place was
defeated with a loss of 510 killed and wounded, the British having lost 609. In
effect the American campaign was unsuccessful; but their failures were redeemed
by their successes on Lake Champlain, and in the affair of Plattsburg.
There was more hard fighting than strategy in these battles,
and their results were not, on the whole, creditable to the military skill of
either party. They were sanguinary in proportion to the number of troops
engaged, but they were very petty skirmishes considered in the light of
contests between two great nations for the purpose of obtaining specific
results. As England was engaged in a great war in Europe, was far removed from the
scene of operations, was destitute of steam-power, whilst America was fighting,
as it were, on her own soil, close at hand, with a full opportunity of putting
forth all her strength, the complete defeat of the American invasion of Canada
was more honorable to our arms than the successes which the Americans achieved
in resisting aggressive demonstrations.
In the great hotel of Clifton we had every day a little war of
our own, for there were —— but why should I mention names? Has not government
its bastiles? There were in effect men, and women too, who regarded the people
of the Northern States and the government they had selected very much as the
men of ’98 looked upon the government and people of England; but withal these strong Southerners were not
very favorable to a country which they regarded as the natural ally of the
abolitionists, simply because it had resolved to be neutral.
On the Canadian side these rebels were secure. British
authority was embodied in a respectable old Scottish gentleman, whose duty it
was to prevent smuggling across the boiling waters of the St. Lawrence, and who
performed it with zeal and diligence worthy of a higher post. There “was indeed
a withered triumphal arch which stood over the spot where the young Prince of
our royal house had passed on his way to the Table Rock, but beyond these signs
and tokens there was nothing to distinguish the American from the British side,
except the greater size and activity of the settlements upon the right bank.
There is no power in nature, according to great engineers, which cannot be
forced to succumb to the influence of money. The American papers actually
announce that “Niagara is to be sold;”
the proprietors of the land upon their side of the water have
resolved to sell their water privileges! A capitalist could render the islands
the most beautifully attractive places in the world.
Life at Niagara is like that at most watering-places, though
it is a desecration to apply such a term to the Falls; and there is no bathing
there, except that which is confined to the precincts of the hotels and to the
ingenious establishment on the American side, which permits one to enjoy the
full rush of the current in covered rooms with sides pierced, to let it come
through with undiminished force and with perfect security to the bather. There
are drives and picnics, and mild excursions to obscure places in the
neighborhood, where only the roar of the Falls gives an idea of their presence.
The rambles about the islands, and the views of the boiling rapids above them,
are delightful; but I am glad to hear from one of the guides that the great
excitement of seeing a man and boat carried over occurs but rarely. Every year,
however, hapless creatures crossing from one shore to the other, by some error
of judgment or miscalculation of strength, or malign influence, are swept away
into the rapids, and then, notwithstanding the wonderful rescues effected by
the American blacksmith and unwonted kindnesses of fortune, there is little
chance of saving body corporate or incorporate from the headlong swoop to
destruction.
Next to the purveyors of curiosities and hotel-keepers, the
Indians, who live in a village at some distance from Niagara, reap the largest
profit from the crowds of visitors who repair annually to the Falls. They are a
harmless and by no means elevated race of semi-civilized savages, whose
energies are expended on whiskey, feather fans, bark canoes, ornamental
moccasins, and carved pipe-stems. I had arranged for an excursion to see them
in their wigwams one morning, when the news was brought to me that General
Scott had ordered, or been forced to order the advance of the Federal troops
encamped in front of Washington, under the command of McDowell, against the
Confederates, commanded by Beauregard, who was described as occupying a most
formidable position, covered with entrenchments and batteries in front of a
ridge of hills, through which the railway passes to Richmond.
The New York papers represent the Federal army to be of some
grand indefinite strength, varying from 60,000 to 120,000 men, full of fight,
admirably equipped, well disciplined, and provided with an overwhelming force
of artillery. General Scott, I am very well assured, did not feel such
confidence in the result of an invasion of Virginia, that he would hurry raw
levies and a rabble of regiments to undertake a most arduous military
operation.
The day I was introduced to the General he was seated at a
table in the unpretending room which served as his boudoir in the still humbler
house where he held his head-quarters. On the table before him were some plans
and maps of the harbor defences of the Southern ports. I inferred he was about
to organize a force for the occupation of positions along the coast. But when I
mentioned my impression to one of his officers, he said, “Oh, no, the General
advised that long ago; but he is now convinced we are too late. All he can
hope, now, is to be allowed time to prepare a force for the field, but there
are hopes that some compromise will yet take place.”
The probabilities of this compromise have vanished; few
entertain them now. They have been hanging Secessionists in Illiniois, and the
court-house itself has been made the scene of Lynch law murder in Ogle county.
Petitions, prepared by citizens of New York to the President, for a general
convention to consider a compromise, have been seized. The Confederates have
raised batteries along the Virginian shore of the Potomac. General Banks, at
Baltimore, has deposed the police authorities “proprio motu,” in spite of the protest of the
board. Engagements have occurred between the Federal steamers and the
Confederate batteries on the Potomac. On all points, wherever the Federal
pickets have advanced in Virginia, they have Encountered opposition and have
been obliged to halt or to retire.
* * * * * * * * * *
As I stood on the veranda this morning, looking for the last
time on the Falls, which were covered with a gray mist, that rose from the
river and towered unto the sky in columns which were lost in the clouds, a
voice beside me said, “Mr. Russell, that is something like the present
condition of our country, mists and darkness obscure it now, but we know the
great waters are rushing behind, and will flow till eternity.” The speaker was
an earnest, thoughtful man, but the country of which he spoke was the land of
the South. “And do you think,” said I, “when the mists clear away the Falls
will be as full and as grand as before?” “Well,” he replied, “they are great as
it is, though a rock divides them; we have merely thrown our rock into the
waters, — they will meet all the same in the pool below.” A colored, boy, who
has waited on me at the hotel, hearing I was going away, entreated me to take
him on any terms, which were, I found, an advance of nine dollars, and twenty
dollars a month, and, as I heard a good account of him from the landlord, I
installed the young man into my service. In the evening I left Niagara on my
way to New York.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, Vol. 1, p. 360-7
