FALLS OF NIAGARA. 149 avoid thinking with the peasant, that the fountains of the upper world must be shortly drained down into the yawning gulf; while the classic scholar cannot fail to be reminded of the countryman of Horace, who being unable to ford a river from the impetuosity of its torrent, took up a resolution to wait till the stream had all run by. But this mighty torrent, with resistless force, continues to pour on,-continues to pour down, -in the same mighty, impetuous volume, -with the same unceasing roar; and will thus continue to flow on, as seems its destiny, till time shall cease;-the concentrated, impressive, and amazing symbol of the power of Omnipotence, proclaiming His majesty from age to age. "In winter these falls present, if not a still grander spectacle, yet one almost equally grand, and much more picturesque. The spray, drifting over the adjacent shores, has transformed the commonest objects into shapes of such fairy-like beauty as is otherwise only conceived in dreams. All things are enveloped in gleaming ice. The islands are laid with a pavement as pure and as solid as the most stainless Parian. The rocks that shoot up from the far depths of the precipice are hooded and wrapped in vast breadths of ice, like monks doing homage to the Genius of Peace. The trees, bound down to the earth by their snowy vestments, are like a worshipping choir of white-robed nuns. Everywhere but in the immediate channel of the swollen and surging river the ice-king reigns supreme. Under his magic touch nature is visibly idealized. Stalactite groves, and towers of crystal, and forests glittering with brilliants and pearls, seem no longer a figment of genius, but a living and beaming reality."* This stupendous spectacle, viewed under any circumstances, cannot be exaggerated by the most lofty poetical description; and every attempt hitherto made to describe it in poetry and prose have come infinitely short of the reality. The scene is altogether such as to exhaust all the epithets of beauty and grandeur that human language can command in the most laboured delineations. In its widest scope the subject is suited only for the genius of a Milton, or some poet who could " soar beyond a middle flight," and in sublimest language assert eternal providence, and justify the ways of God to man. Freeman. : 150 THE UNITED STATES. It is thus beautifully and impressively, though far from adequately, apostrophized by Brainard: "Stupendous cataract ! brain The thoughts are strange that crowd into my And notch his centuries on the eternal rocks. O what are all the notes that ever rung From war's loud trumpet by thy thundering side? In his short life to thine unceasing roar? And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to Him Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far That breaks and whispers of its Maker's might.” The writer, when gazing on this stupendous scene, probably for the last time, and standing entranced with the final view, found himself exclaiming involuntarily, and with much emotion, in the words applied by a late writer to Mont Blanc: "Farewell, then, O Niagara! still may'st thou move onwards into the lone eternity;-still, while the long ages, morning and evening, light on thee the rosy fires of their perpetual sacrifice; still, while suns shed on thy front the full flood of their perpetual glory, while moons bathe thy countenance in their sleeping beams, while stars weave mystic circles round thy brow, while clouds sail full-bosomed around thee, and thunders exult in their dreadful revelry! But thou,-thou art still the same when the poor mortal, and myriads like to him, who bow, and shall bow down before thy mystic presence, with all their hopes and fears, and joys and sorrows, shall be less than the least particle of the elements,thy scorn!" i CHAPTER XIII. VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS.—Their number and variety. Indigenous trees, shrubs, and flowers. Their peculiarities, as found in different sections of the country. The trees, shrubs, and plants of America, domestic and wild animals, birds, reptiles, fish, are far too numerous and various for minute detail. Of the whole number of phænogamous plants,—such as have visible organs of re-production, and which are estimated at 38,000, Baron Humboldt gives 17,000 to the temperate and tropical regions of America. The United States alone are estimated to contain 2891 species, while only 385 are found in Europe. The immense forests of the more northern part of the Continent contain trees, tall and straight, of extraordinary height and girth, like columns of a vast Gothic cathedral, whose mysterious winding aisles, overhung with an impervious foliage, form lofty, vaulted, magnificent arcades; amongst them are pines and firs of every variety; oaks of several species; walnut and chestnut; yew, ash, beech, cypress, elm, willow, poplar, alder, lime, with others common to the other continent, but often of different species; they are found in vast profusion, often, as already said, loftier, of far greater dimensions, and bearing different leaves and fruit to those of the same names in Europe. In the neighbourhood of the lakes are chiefly found the pine, spruce, hemlock, maple, oak, elm, and tamarak; and towards the more western regions, the sycamore, hickory, sugar-maple, together with a profusion of wild vines that in summer interlace the forests. The dark green foliage of the fir of these forests contrasting with the bright green of the hickory, maple,* chestnut, and other deciduous trees, renders their appearance inconceivably beautiful. The hard woods in the west principally consist of oak, ash, elm, maple, hickory, poplar, basswood, cherry, and large quantities of cedar. * Sugar- maple is found mostly in New England, and west of the Rocky Mountains. Among the trees and shrubs peculiar to this region that are of a highly ornamental character, are the plane,--the laurel or calico tree-its bloom of indescribable beauty,-the magnolias,-the tulip, commonly called whitewood tree, the magnificent largeleafed, umbrageous vallombrosa, compared with which the farfamed floral giant of that name in Tuscany is insignificant,--the acacias, with numerous shrubs and plants of such floral splendour and magnificence as become the primitive possessors of a virgin soil. Among the latter, together with foliage plants, which depend more upon their leaves for their beauty and interest than upon their flowers, are the sassafras, the red mulberry, the wax, with the several species of honeysuckle. One attribute of the exquisite floral beauty of the thousand lakes which gem the western part of Michigan, and belonging to a considerable extent to those of larger dimensions, is that their surface is ornamented with lilies, red, white, and yellow, in bud and full bloom, and other aquatic flowers of various shades of yellow, with here and there the freshest tufts of green weed, and the edge of the water fringed with the numerous rich-leaved plants which have their native habitat in such situations. Among the most luxuriant and beautiful of the first-named plants are the broad-leafed water-lily and wild lotus, which seems akin to the celebrated Victoria Regia that flourishes so magnificently in the southern rivers; while among the islands, and on their banks, are strewn the rose, the violet, the lily, the magnificent sun flower, asters and gentians, the purple and scarlet iris, the blue larkspur, the mocassin flower, the crimson and green lichen; with mosses, flowers, and vines, too various to have yet obtained a name. In the forests of the warmer regions, in addition to many enumerated as found in the west, are the palms, the magnolias (both umbrella-leaved tripetala and grandiflora), the cedar, the mahogany, the wild orange, the deciduous cypress, cotton-wood, poplar, oaks, mulberries, elms, willows, coffee-bean tree (a phaseolus, the giant of peas and beans), sweet-gum, locust, and others of the family of acacias and mimosas, the lime or linden tree, the double flowered horse chestnut, the laburnum, the black walnut, with numbers of other species that attain an amazing altitude and bulk. The black walnut tree in Western Virginia, near the Ohio, grows to the height of 100 feet from the ground to the branches; its trunk of an enormous size, and the fruit surpassing anything of the kind in the East. VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS. 153 The grape vine here attains the size of three feet eight inches in circumference, and the common sumach one foot in diameter. But the sycamore is the king of the Virginian forest; one being found in Mucus-bottom, Madison County, sixteen yards in circumference. In the cultivated districts is the cotton-plant of commerce, together with fruit trees of almost innumerable varieties, from the orange to the apple; the climate and soil being adapted to the production and sustentation of vegetable life common to both the temperate and torrid zones; while at the same time, none of the European fruit-bearing species are natives of America, but were introduced into the country by the early European settlers. The principal indigenous fruits and vegetables are the potato, the maize, tobacco, the banana, the love or tomato apple, the strawberry, and the medlar. All the fruits of the Old World, indeed, have been naturalised and cultivated in different parts of the New, and flourish to an extent and with such success as to rival the gardens and conservatories of Europe. Here are nectarines, apricots, peaches, apples, pears, and the choicest plums, together with vegetables, with one or two exceptions,* fully equal to those produced in the gardens and conservatories of England. Among the underwood and parasitical plants of the species corcoon and arum, wild fig and vanilla of the southern forest, are the saw-brier, the thorny robinia pseudo or false acacia, green brier, and supple jacks-vegetable pests, forming a combined mass of vegetation, which, from their thorny surface or flexile serpentine convolutions, render the uncultivated districts impenetrable, from the danger of strangling or laceration. In the lagoons and woods near the banks of the river St. Mary in Georgia, the forests abound with splendid trees of live oak and bay, cypress, black gum, and ash. Between Georgia and Florida, in the morass, one hundred and seventy-five miles in circumference, called by the Indians the O Refonoco Swamps, are forests of amazing stateliness and grandeur, so entwined and interlaced with flowering and other parasitical plants, as to present a barrier of parterres or hanging gardens in the air. The flowering trees and shrubs peculiar to the southern part of the Union most distinguished for their floral splendour, are Among some other European vegetables, turnips are said not to thrive in the United States. |