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World-Renowned Niagara Falls
leaves a large and smooth expanse, which at such times not infrequently lose the reaches from the sheet of falling water power of respiration in proceeding far to the very base of the gradually under- beneath the rocky ceiling. Notwithstandmined mountain. If the atmosphere be ing this and various other dangers to which all are equally exposed who venture to approach the Fall in boats, the fisherman frequently continues there for hours together, apparently without any apprehension of danger. The crumbling edge of the precipice, for it does crumble, proves that Niagara, like' all waterfalls, tends to work backwards.
The awe occasioned by a sight of this stupendous cataract is aptly expressed in the following lines, by J. G. C. Brainerd:

C HE thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain, While I look upward to thee. It would seem As if God poured thee from his hollow hand, And hung his bow upon thine awful front; And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake, The sound of many waters; and had bade Thy flood to chronicle the ages back, And notch His ages in the eternal rocks.
Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we, That hear the question of that voice sublime?
O, what are the notes that ever rung From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering side?
Yea, what is all the riot man can make In his short life, to thy unceasing roar?
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far Above its loftiest mountains? - a light wave, That breaks, and whispers of its Maker's might.
