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Margaret Fuller
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CHAPTER I. |
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Niagara, June 10, 1843. |
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Since you are to share with me such foot-notes as may be made on the pages of my life during this summer's wanderings, I should not be quite silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama. Yet I, like others, have little to say where the spectacle is, for once, great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us only its own presence. "It is good to be here," is the best as the simplest expression that occurs to the mind. We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away. So great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again less readily. Having "lived one day" we would depart, and become worthy to live another.
We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or
too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with
cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much braced up by such an atmosphere,
do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there
is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms and
motions come and go, the tide rises
and recedes, the wind, at its mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but
here is really an incessant, an indefatigable motion. Awake or asleep,
there is no escape, still this rushing round you and through you. It is in
this way I have most felt the grandeur—somewhat eternal, if not
infinite.
At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own
rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a
double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the
thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual
repetition through all the spheres.
When I first came I felt nothing but a quiet satisfaction. I found that
drawings, the panorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the position
and proportions of all objects here; I knew where to look for everything,.
and everything looked as I thought it would.
Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of the
finest sunsets that ever enriched this world. A little cow-boy, trudging
along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some time,
he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment, he said
approvingly "that sun looks well enough;" a speech worthy of Shakspeare's
Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the cradle, as you
please to take it.
Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in a
prince's palace, or "stumping" as he boasts to have done, "up the Vatican
stairs, into the Pope's presence, in my old boots," I felt
here; it looks really well enough , I felt, and was inclined, as you
suggested, to give my approbation as to the one object in the world that
would not disappoint.
But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so easy as
well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful observer its
own standard by which to appreciate it. Daily these proportions widened
and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got, at last, a proper
foreground for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I think I
really saw the full wonder of the scene. After awhile it so drew me into
itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such
as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence. The
perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no other
sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and look behind me
for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these
waters were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the
Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came,
unsought and unwelcome, images, such as never haunted it before, of naked
savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks; again and again this
illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over, and tried to
shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me.
As picture, the Falls can only be seen from the British side. There they
are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate the
magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat,
1* 6 as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with delight, But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall. There all power of observing details, all separate consciousness, was quite lost. Once, just as I had seated myself there, a man came to take his first look. He walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a moment, with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it to his own use, he spat into it. This trait seemed wholly worthy of an age whose love of utility is such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of men coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the age or truly the America. A little leaven is leavening the whole mass for other bread. The whirlpool I like very much. It is seen to advantage after the great falls; it is so sternly solemn. The river cannot look more imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark the hidden vortex, seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice above could not proclaim,—a meaning as untold as ever.
It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been swallowed
by the cataract, is like to rise suddenly to light here, whether up-rooted
tree, or body of man or bird.
The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift that
they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The fountain
beyond the Moss Islands, I discovered for myself, and thought it for some
time an accidental beauty which it would not do to leave, lest I might
never see it again. After I found it permanent, I returned many times to
watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond, nature seems,
as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She
delights in this,—a sketch within a sketch, a dream within a dream.
Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of
stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowers that star its
bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent,
and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its genius.
People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see it further
deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the spectacle is
capable to swallow up all such objects; they are not seen in the great
whole, more than an earthworm in a wide field.
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 termerity with
deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sank 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 visiters.
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 striding
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 carly 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 any where and any how. But there is something ludicrous in being the
hermit of a showplace, 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 labeled 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, either, when we have Commentaries on
Shakspeare, 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 with pleasure,
though, or because, it is exactly the opposite to what I myself felt. For
all greatness affects different minds, each in "its own particular kind,"
and the Variations of testimony mark the truth of feeling.
I will add a brief narrative of the experience of another here, as being
much better than anything I could write, because more simple and
individual.
"Now that I have left this 'Earth-wonder,' and the emotions it excited are
past, it seems not so much like profanation to analyze my feelings, to
recall minutely and accurately the effect of this manifestation of the
Eternal. But one should go to such a scene prepared to yield entirely to
its influences, to forget one's little self and one's little mind. To see
a miserable worm. creep to the brink of this falling world of
waters, and watch the trembling of its own petty bosom, and fancy that
this is made alone to act upon him
excites—derision?—No,—pity."
As I rode up to the neighborhood of the falls, a solemn awe imperceptibly
stole over me, and the deep sound of the ever-hurrying rapids prepared my
mind for the lofty emotions to be experienced. When I reached the hotel, I
felt a strange indifference about seeing the aspiration of my life's
hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage bills upon the walls,
looked over the register, and, finding the name of an acquaintance, sent
to see if he was still there. What this hesitation arose from, I know not;
perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to enter this temple which
nature has erected to its God.
At last, slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to
Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter
of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar,
my emotions overpowered me, a choaking sensation rose to my throat, a
thrill rushed through my veins, "my blood ran rippling to my finger's
ends." This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon
me—neither the American nor the British fall moved me as did these
rapids. For the magnificence, the sublimity of the latter I was prepared
by descriptions and by paintings. When I arrived in sight of them I merely
felt, "ah, yes, here is the fall, just as I have seen it in picture." When
I arrived at the terrapin bridge, I expected to be overwhelmed, to retire
trembling from this giddy
eminence, and gaze with unlimited wonder and awe upon the immense mass
rolling on and on, but, somehow or other, I thought only of comparing the
effect on my mind with what I had read and heard. I looked for a short
time, and then with almost a feeling of disappointment, turned to go to
the other points of view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any
surpassing emotion at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs,
and the middle of the river, and from below the table rock, it was still
"barren, barren all." And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling most
moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set
off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after
nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge, and
leaned over the parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their
might. It was grand, and it was also gorgeous; the yellow rays of the moon
made the broken waves appear like auburn tresses twining around the black
rocks. But they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a
mightier emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I passed on to the
terrapin bridge. Everything was changed, the misty apparition had taken
off its many-colored crown which it had worn by day, and a bow of silvery
White spanned its summit. The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness to
the distant parts of the waters, and while the rapids were glancing in her
beams, the river below the falls was black as night, save where the
reflection of the sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blued steel.
No gaping
tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses, or sketching on cards the
hoary locks of the ancient river god. All tended to harmonize with the
natural grandeur of the scene. I gazed long. I saw how here mutability and
unchangeableness were united. I surveyed the conspiring waters rushing
against the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like
toppling ambition, o'erleaping themselves, they fall on t'other side,
expanding into foam ere they reach the deep channel where they creep
submissively away.
Then arose in my breast a genuine admiration, and a humble adoration of
the Being who was the architect of this and of all. Happy were the first
discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and
upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own. With what gusto does
Father Hennepin describe "this great downfall of water," "this vast and
prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and
astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its
parallel. 'Tis true Italy and Swedeland boast of some such things, but we
may well say that they be sorry patterns when compared with this of which
we do now speak." 2 |
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