. The Niagara book : a complete souvenir of Niagara Falls : containing sketches, stories and essays--descriptive, humorous, historical and scientific. when Blondin had got such adistance into the danger, he, too, became an illusionof Repose ; and I defy the most skeptical reader, whowas not then present, to gainsay me. Why those rapids just below the large SuspensionBridge were chosen to stretch Blondins cable over, Ido not know, unless it was because the river narrowsto a gorge there, and because those rapids are morehorrid, in the eighteenth-century sense, than any otherfeature of Niagara. T
. The Niagara book : a complete souvenir of Niagara Falls : containing sketches, stories and essays--descriptive, humorous, historical and scientific. when Blondin had got such adistance into the danger, he, too, became an illusionof Repose ; and I defy the most skeptical reader, whowas not then present, to gainsay me. Why those rapids just below the large SuspensionBridge were chosen to stretch Blondins cable over, Ido not know, unless it was because the river narrowsto a gorge there, and because those rapids are morehorrid, in the eighteenth-century sense, than any otherfeature of Niagara. They have been a great deal ex-ploited since Blondins time by adventurers who haveattempted to swim them, and to navigate them in bar-rels and buoys and India-rubber balls, or if not quiteIndia-rubber balls, I do not know why. But at thattime no craft but the Maid-of-the-Mist, the little steam-boat which used to run up to the foot of the cataract,had ever dared them. She, indeed, flying from theperennial pun involved in her name, not to mention theSheriffs officer who had an attachment for her,weathered the rapids and passed in and out of the AM. A bit of Americari Falls from below the Cave of t^e Winds—Summer, NIAGARA, FIRST AND LAST. 17 Whirlpool, and escaped into the quiet of Canadianwaters, with the pilot and her engineer on I saw her at Quebec where she hadchanged her name, as other American refugees inCanada have done, and had now become the Maid-of-Orleans, in recognition of her peaceful employ of car-rying people to and from the Isle of Orleans. Buther adventurous voyage was still fresh on the lipsof guides and hackmen when I was first at Niagara,and I looked at the Rapids and the Whirlpool with aninterest peculiarly fearful because of it. As usual, I walked to the scene of the exploit Iwas about to witness, but there were a good manypeople walking, and they debated on the way whetherBlondin would cross that day or not. It had beenraining over night, a
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