THE DESTRUCTION OF NIAGARA.

DURING the past few months, .occasional allusions have been made in the English newspapers to an agitation which is going on at present in America concerning the condi- tion and prospects of the Falls of Niagara; if the minds of our

readers had not been thus prepared for the idea suggested by the above title, it would doubtless strike them as ridiculous. That Niagara, probably the most gigantic natural phenomenon in the world, apparently so immutable that it has become the favourite symbol of eternity, whose very name is said to have passed unchanged into every language spoken by civilised man- kind,—that Niagara, of all things under the sun, can be in any danger of destruction at the hands of man, seems simply in- credible. It is true, however, and although the allusions mentioned above are—like so many English statements about America—inaccurate in many respects, they are most unfortunately so in conveying the idea that public sentiment in America has been duly aroused to a sense of the importance of the danger, and that recent legislative action has provided against it. The Falls of Niagara can- not be regarded as specially belonging to America, but must be considered as existing for the advantage of mankind; no traveller crosses the ocean without visiting them, and England has already taken an important part in the efforts for their preservation,—indeed, we may almost say that it was an Eng- lishman with whom these efforts originated. It is much to be desired, therefore, that the English public should understand what is involved in the question, how great is the necessity for preservative measures, and what form it is proposed that these measures shall take. If once these points were clearly understood and widely known, there would certainly be such a distinct ex- pression of opinion in England as would render easier the task to be accomplished in America, for in spite of the frequent and half-joking assumption of careless independence, every one who is really familiar with American life knows that by the vast majority of our "kin beyond sea" any genuine word from England is received with kindly respect.

In the first place, then, in what way is Niagara being de- stroyed,—what is the danger from which it is to be preserved ? There is a story of a man who desired to approach Niagara under perfect conditions, and who, therefore, left the train at some distance from the village of Niagara Falls, and made his way on foot, endeavouring during his walk to bring himself into a proper state of mind to be acted upon by the beneficent in- fluences of the vast spectacle. At the moment, however, when he stepped into full view of the cataract, he was accosted by a brisk individual, who offered him for a small sum a piece of coloured glass, illustrating its use by turning his back to the Falls, putting his head between his legs, and thus contemplating the scene upside down and through his coloured medium. "That, Sir," said he, when he had resumed his normal attitude, "is the way to obtain the most impressive and gorgeous view of the Falls. Ten cents !" This story illustrates the first of the two processes by which Niagara is being destroyed. For years there has been a constant stream of visitors to the little village, and in the absence of any restrictive legislation, the result is just what we should expect. Nearly the whole of the population consists of people who make a living by preying on the casual visitor. Every opportunity is seized for charging a toll, the cab-drivers and shopkeepers are in leagne to procure the sale of useless knick-knacks and so-called "Indian goods," touts and " runners " accost you at every turn, and every trick short of actual swindling is employed to squeeze money from the unfortunate traveller. The extent to which this is practised has led to the saying that every sane adult American citizen knows two things about Niagara,—first, that there is a great waterfall there; second, that a man's pocket will be emptied there quicker than anywhere else in the Union. The fees to the various points of interest around the Falls—counting those only which it is necessary to see—amount to twenty-four shillings for each person. And without paying, there is nothing to be seen. It is a positive fact that there is no spot on the American side from which the Falls can be seen without paying a fee. And when the visitor has paid for admission to the principal point of view he finds himself in a so-called "park," where crowds of excur- sionists hold picnics, with a "pavilion," where they dance, an illuminated spray fountain, and elaborate arrangements for throwing coloured electric lights upon the Falls. There is only one place on the American side where the visitor is left in un- disturbed enjoyment of the scene, viz., Goat Island, the large island which divides the Rapids into the American and Horse- shoe Falls. Owing to the good taste of its owners, the Porter family, and to certain peculiar testamentary conditions under which they acquired it, this lovely island has been saved from the " improvements " which are raining Niagara; but these con-

ditions are valid only during the minority of one member of the family, and he will shortly come of age. From every other point the visitor is invited, and frequently compelled, to see Niagara under some more or less distorted form, if not, like the man in the story, actually upside down, and every healthful influence is excluded by the irritation produced by the constant demand for money to maintain these evils.

The second method of the destruction of Niagara is worse Hawthorne congratulates the Assabeth, the sluggish river of Concord, upon "the incurable indolence by which it is saved from becoming the slave of human ingenuity," and it is the swift- ness and incalculable power of the Niagara River which are likely to prove its ruin. For they offer an irresistible temptation to what Mr. Ruskin calls "the pontifical rigidities of the engineering mind," and already along the bank and on the islands there are saw-mills and chain-mills and paper-mills, the Rapids are blocked up by wing-dams and ice-barriers, the gas-works discharge their tar down the cliff, and in place of the luxurious foliage with which the cliffs were once crowned, the whole length of them is disfigured by these various erections, and by heaps of lumber and refuse. Every day new mills are planned, new obstructions put out into the Rapids, and trees cut down. Now that the storage of electricity is an accomplished fact, the land which gives access to water-power is increasing rapidly in value. There is little left except Goat Island, and when that is bought by some manufacturer of pulp or spoons or spittoons, denuded of its forest growth, pierced by canals, and crowned with a tall

chimney, the last blow of the destroyer will have been struck, and the beauty of Niagara will be gone for ever.

The description of Niagara has well been called the Ulyssean bow of travellers, and we shall not indulge in any superlative adjectives or soaring metaphors concerning it. Its discoverer, the Jesuit father Hennepin, told all that is necessary when he said, "the Universe does not afford its Parallel," and this is the point we would impress upon our readers. Niagara is unique, not Merely because it is the second waterfall in the world, for that alone would render it of little value, b-at also because it possesses most of the qualities which men are accustomed to seek in widely-separated parts of the earth. A common error is to suppose that the Falls themselves constitute the chief interest of Niagara. Nothing could be more mistaken ; the Falls are merely one of the constituent parts of the whole spectacle. The rapids, the islands, the cataract, the chasm below the cataract, the whirlpool iapids, the basin of the whirlpool,—all these are included in the word "Niagara." If one part be more impressive than the rest, we should agree with Mr. Howells, when he says, in that delightful book "Their Wedding Journey," that the Whirlpool Rapids, "seen from any point, are the most impressive feature of the whole prodigious spectacle of Niagara." But Niagara must not be thus split up ; it is a unique whole. One part of it is a characteristic bit of the English Lake scenery ; another is one of the features of Nor-way; another is the Maelstrom ; its colour surpasses that of the Rhone at its greenest ; its cliffs are those of the Rhine ; its rapids are those of the St. Lawrence ; and to all these it adds a resistless might that brings the spectator into closest communion with the eternal powers of the Universe, and inspires a feeling of sublimity which becomes almost over- whelming. It is a spectacle peculiarly adapted to exert a healthful and lasting influence upon the human mind :—

"If thou art worn and hard beset

With sorrows that thou would'st forget, If thou would'et read a lesson that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,"

go to Niagara; there is

" The cataract, whose angry roar shall smite Thy heart with courage.'

The writer well remembers spending the greater part of a bril- liant summer night on Goat Island, at the brink of the Horse-

shoe Fall. In the moonlight the rapids were like silver; each jet of spray sparkled as it rose, and the whole ocean seemed to be hurrying to pour itself into the misty gulf ; most beautiful of all, the famous lunar bow stretched in a perfect arch from side to side. All the weird beauty of the moonlight seemed concentrated in that one circle. In the stillness of the night, the "slumberous sound" of the waters was more impressive than during the noises of the day. Overhead the stars, the awful cataract underneath. No one can live long in such a scene, and remain an unchanged- man. In Matthew Arnold's verse, the sentiment of the place is perfectly expressed :—

" ! once more,' I cried, 'ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew; btill, still let me, as I gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you!'"

What, now, is it proposed to do, to make Niagara all that it should and may be ? The answer will occur to every one who knows the place, and may be given in a sentence. The proper treatment of Niagara cannot be better expressed than in the phrase, "Plus on lui ote, plus il est grand." Niagara must be delivered from its worst enemy, the sensational ; it must cease to be treated as a show, and must be restored to its original condition as a simple piece of Nature. This is a case in which the words of the old hymn are peculiarly applicable,—" only man is vile." Everything that man has done to Niagara must- be undone ; then only will its simplicity be restored, and with its simplicity its sublimity. The directors of a State Survey made a few years ago proposed that the land adjoining the rapids, falls, and chasm should be condemned by the State, and, with the erections on it, appraised and pur- chased. This land would be a strip a mile long, and varying in width from a hundred feet at the head of the Rapids to eight hundred feet at the Falls. The buildings would all be removed, the unsightly constructions along the banks would be swept away, appropriate trees planted, and the village thus shut out from view. This could be done for the sum of one million dollars. On the Canadian side, the cliffs have been left in their native picturesqueness ; there are fewer buildings to be re- moved, and, best of all, there is a military reserva- tion of sixty-six feet from the edge of the cliff. The difficulty and expense of restoration would consequently be very much less. It is needless to point out the material advantages to the immediate neighbourhood, and the moral advantage to the world at large, which would result from the establishment of this free international park. It is important, however, to remember that the employment of the water-power of Niagara would be in no way interfered with ; it would be

secured by a hydraulic canal, supplying, if necessary, twenty miles of factories, providing an unlimited amount of power, and

free from all objections.

The first suggestion for the preservation of Niagara Falls came from Mr. Church, an American artist. He drew the attention of Lord Dufferin, then Governor-General of Canada, to the matter, and from the latter came the first definite pro- position about the International Park. This was embodied in a message by Governor Robinson. Then came a memorial addressed jointly to Governor Cornell and the Governor-General of Canada, praying "that the State of New York and the Dominion of Canada should secure and hold for the world's good the lands adjacent to the Falls of Niagara." This memorial was signed by seven hundred persons, almost all of distinction. Among the English names are Lord Houghton, Lord Reay, Sir John Lubbock, W. R. Greg, Carlyle, Ruskin, Max Muller, Jowett, Leslie Stephen, and Frederic Harrison. Among the Americans are Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Palfrey, Parkman, Holmes, Gray, Agassiz, Howells, Norton, Child, and President Eliot. Previous to this, the New York State

Survey, to which we have alluded, had been made. An Act to carry out its suggestions has twice been presented to the Legislature, and allowed to perish in neglect. At last, a

short time ago, a Board of Commissioners was appointed to report upon the desirability of the purchase of the land by the State. It is this non-committal Bill which some of our contem- poraries have mistaken for the settlement of the question. Three weeks ago, the Commission adopted a resolution providing for the taking of land as described above. The matter is thus very much where it was two years ago, except that the restoration has become more difficult day by day. The Legislature will soon be called upon to decide upon the Report of the Commis- sion. We cannot believe that a measure which would be s'o welcome to the worl4 at large, which would confer both material and moral benefit upon the country, which is demanded by every sentiment of consideration for those who are to come after us, —a Measure in which future generations will find a proof of the civilisation of our age,—will be rejected because America, with its embarrassing public wealth and its gigantic private fortunes, cannot find the sum of two hundred thousand pounds for such a purpose. We do not hesitate to say that English opinion will

be unanimous upon the result, whichever way it may be, and we trust that the unanimity may be in the form of grateful recog- nition of an act of enlightened legislation,