Chapter IX: Part 9

During the formative years of what we now regard as an established literary taste, but which later generations will modify in turn, most American poetry was imitative of English models. Later, as has been shown, there was an assertively patriotic era; and later still, one of great laudation of America's newly-discovered wonders, which in the case of Niagara took the form of apostrophe and devotion. To the patriotic literature of Niagara, besides examples already cited, belongs Joseph Rodman Drake's "Niagara," printed with "The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems" in 1835.[83] It is a poem which would strike the critical ear of today, I think, as artificial; its sentiment, however, is not to be impeached. The poet sings of the love of freedom which distinguishes the Swiss mountaineer; of the sailor's daring and bravery; of the soldier's heroism, even to death. Niagara, like the alp, the sea, and the battle, symbolizes freedom, triumph and glory:

Then pour thy broad wave like a flood from the heavens,
Each son that thou rearest, in the battle's wild shock,
When the death-speaking note of the trumpet is given,
Will charge like thy torrent or stand like thy rock.

Let his roof be the cloud and the rock be his pillow,
Let him stride the rough mountain or toss on the foam,
Let him strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
In triumph and glory for God and his home!

Nine years after Drake came Mrs. Sigourney, who, notwithstanding her genuine love of nature and of mankind, her sincerity and occasional genius, was hopelessly of the sentimental school. Like Frances S. Osgood, N. P. Willis and others now lost in even deeper oblivion, she found great favor with her day and generation. Few things from her ever-productive pen had a warmer welcome than the lines beginning:

Up to the table-rock, where the great flood
Reveals its fullest glory,

and her "Farewell to Niagara," concluding

... it were sweet
To linger here, and be thy worshipper,
Until death's footstep broke this dream of life.

Supremely devout in tone, her Niagara poems are commonplace in imagination. Her fancy rarely reaches higher than the perfectly obvious. I confess that I cannot read her lines without a vision of the lady herself standing in rapt attitude on the edge of Table Rock, with note-book in hand and pencil uplifted to catch the purest inspiration from the scene before her. She is the type of a considerable train of writers whose Niagara effusions leave on the reader's mind little impression beyond an iterated "Oh, thou great Niagara, Oh!" Such a one was Richard Kelsey, whose "Niagara and Other Poems," printed in London in 1848, is likely to be encountered in old London bookshops. I have read Mr. Kelsey's "Niagara" several times. Once when I first secured the handsome gilt-edged volume; again, later on, to discover why I failed to remember any word or thought of it; and again, in the preparation of this paper, that I might justly characterize it. But I am free to confess that beyond a general impression of Parnassian attitudinizing and extravagant apostrophe I get nothing out of its pages. Decidedly better are the lines "On Visiting the Falls of Niagara," by Lord Morpeth, the Earl of Carlisle, who visited Niagara in 1841.[84] He, too, begins with the inevitable apostrophe:

There's nothing great or bright, thou glorious fall!
Thou mayst not to the fancy's sense recall--

but he saves himself with a fairly creditable sentiment:

Oh! may the wars that madden in thy deeps
There spend their rage nor climb the encircling steeps,
And till the conflict of thy surges cease
The nations on thy bank repose in peace.

A British poet who should perhaps have mention in this connection is Thomas Campbell, whose poem, "The Emigrant," contains an allusion to Niagara. It was published anonymously in 1823 in the _New Monthly Magazine_, which Campbell then edited.[85]

No poem on Niagara that I know of is more entitled to our respectful consideration than the elaborate work which was published in 1848 by the Rev. C. H. A. Bulkley of Mt. Morris, N. Y. It is a serious attempt to produce a great poem with Niagara Falls as its theme. Its length--about 3,600 lines--secures to Western New York the palm for elaborate treatment of the cataract in verse. "Much," says the author, "has been written hitherto upon Niagara in fugitive verse, but no attempt like this has been made to present its united wonders as the theme of a single poem. It seems a bold adventure and one too hazardous, because of the greatness of the subject and the obscurity of the bard; but his countrymen are called upon to judge it with impartiality, and pronounce its life or its death. The author would not shrink from criticism.... His object has been, not so much to describe at length the scenery of Niagara in order to excite emotions in the reader similar to those of the beholder, for this would be a vain endeavor, as to give a transcript of what passes through the mind of one who is supposed to witness so grand an achievement of nature. The difficulty," he adds, "with those who visit this wonderful cataract is to give utterance to those feelings and thoughts that crowd within and often, because thus pent up, produce what may be termed the pain of delight."

Of a poem which fills 132 duodecimo pages it is difficult to give a fair idea in a few words. There is an introductory apostrophe, followed by a specific apostrophe to the falls as a vast form of life. Farther on the cataract is apostrophized as a destroyer, as an historian, a warning prophet, an oracle of truth, a tireless laborer. There are many passages descriptive of the islands, the gorge, the whirlpool, etc. Then come more apostrophes to the fall respecting its origin and early life. It is viewed as the presence-chamber of God, and as a proof of Deity. Finally, we have the cataract's hymn to the Creator, and the flood's death-dirge.

No long poem is without its commonplace intervals. Mr. Bulkley's "Niagara" has them to excess, yet as a whole it is the work of a refined and scholarly mind, its imagination hampered by its religious habit, but now and than quickened to lofty flights, and strikingly sustained and noble in its diction. Only a true poet takes such cognizance of initial impulses and relations in nature as this:

In thy hoarse strains is heard the desolate wail
Of streams unnumbered wandering far away,
From mountain homes where, 'neath the shady rocks
Their parent springs gave them a peaceful birth.

It presents many of the elements of a great poem, reaching the climax in the cataract's hymn to the Creator, beginning

Oh mighty Architect of Nature's home!

At about this period--to be exact, in 1848--there was published in New York City, as a pamphlet or thin booklet, a poem entitled "Niagara," by "A Member of the Ohio Bar," of whose identity I know nothing. It is a composition of some merit, chiefly interesting by reason of its concluding lines:

... Then so live,
That when in the last fearful mortal hour,
Thy wave, borne on at unexpected speed,
O'erhangs the yawning chasm, soon to fall,
Thou start not back affrighted, like a youth
That wakes from sleep to find his feeble bark
Suspended o'er Niagara, and with shrieks
And unavailing cries alarms the air,
Tossing his hands in frenzied fear a moment,
Then borne away forever! But with gaze
Calm and serene look through the eddying mists,
On Faith's unclouded bow, and take thy plunge
As one whose Father's arms are stretched beneath,
Who falls into the bosom of his God!

The close parallelism of these lines with the exalted conclusion of "Thanatopsis" is of course obvious; but they embody a symbolism which is one of the best that has been suggested by Niagara.

* * * * *

From the sublime to the ridiculous was never a shorter descent than in this matter of Niagara poetry. At about the time Mr. Bulkley wrote, and for some years after, it was the pernicious custom to keep public albums at the Table Rock and other points at the falls, for the record of "impressions." Needless to say, these albums filled up with rubbish. To bad taste was added the iniquity of publication, so that future generations may be acquainted with one of the least creditable of native American literary whims. The editor of one of these albums, issued in 1856, lamented that "the innumerable host of visitors who have perpetrated composition in the volumes of manuscript now before us, should have added so little to the general stock of legitimate and permanent literature"; and he adds--by way seemingly of adequate excuse--that "the actual amount of frivolous nonsense which constitutes so large a portion of the contents ... is not all to be calculated by the specimens now and then exhibited. We have given the best," he says, "always taking care that decency shall not be outraged, nor delicacy shocked; and in this respect, however improbable it may seem, precaution has been by no means unnecessary." What a commentary on the sublime in nature, as reflected on man in the mass!

These Table-Rock Albums contain some true poetry; much would-be fine verse which falls below mediocre; much of horse-play or puerility; and now and then a gleam of wit. Here first appeared the lines which I remember to have conned years ago in a school-rhetoric, and for which, I believe, N. P. Willis was responsible:

To view Niagara Falls one day,
A parson and a tailor took their way;
The parson cried, whilst wrapped in wonder,
And listening to the cataract's thunder,
"Lord! how thy works amaze our eyes,
And fill our hearts with vast surprise";--
The tailor merely made his note:
"Lord! what a place to sponge a coat!"

There has been many a visitor at Niagara Falls who shares the sentiments of one disciple of the realistic school:

Loud roars the waters, O,
Loud roars the waters, O,
When I come to the Falls again
I hope they will not spatter so.

Another writes:

My thoughts are strange, sublime and deep,
As I look up to thee--
What a glorious place for washing sheep,
Niagara would be!

Examples of such doggerel could be multiplied by scores, but without profit. There was sense if not poetry in the wight who wrote:

I have been to "Termination Rock"
Where many have been before;
But as I can't describe the scene
I wont say any more.

Infinitely better than this are the light but pleasing verses written in a child's album, years ago, by the late Col. Peter A. Porter of Niagara Falls. He pictured the discovery of the falls by La Salle and Hennepin and ponders upon the changes that have followed:

What troops of tourists have encamped upon the river's brink;
What poets shed from countless quills Niagaras of ink;
What artist armies tried to fix the evanescent bow
Of the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
. . . . . . . . .
And stately inns feed scores of guests from well-replenished larder,
And hackmen drive their horses hard, but drive a bargain harder,
And screaming locomotives rush in anger to and fro;
But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.

And brides of every age and clime frequent the islands' bower,
And gaze from off the stone-built perch--hence called the Bridal
Tower--
And many a lunar belle goes forth to meet a lunar beau,
By the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.

Towards the close of the long poem the author takes a more serious tone, but throughout he keeps up a happy cleverness, agreeably in contrast to the prevailing high gush on one hand and balderdash on the other.

Among the writers of serious and sometimes creditable verse whose names appear in the Table-Rock Albums were Henry D. O'Reilly, C. R. Rowland, Sarah Pratt, Maria del Occidente, George Menzies, Henry Lindsay, the Rev. John Dowling, J. S. Buckingham, the Hon. C. N. Vivian, Douglas Stuart, A. S. Ridgely of Baltimore, H. W. Parker, and Josef Leopold Stiger. Several of these names are not unknown in literature. Prof. Buckingham is remembered as an earlier Bryce, whose elaborate three-volume work on America is still of value. Vivian was a distinguished traveler who wrote books; and Josef Leopold Stiger's stanzas beginning

Sei mir gegruesst, des jungen Weltreichs Stolz und Zierde!

are by no means the worst of Niagara poems.

I cannot conceive of Niagara Falls as a scene promotive of humor, or suggestive of wit. Others may see both in John G. Saxe's verses, of which the first stanza will suffice to quote:

See Niagara's torrent pour over the height,
How rapid the stream! how majestic the flood
Rolls on, and descends in the strength of his might,
As a monstrous great frog leaps into the mud!

The "poem" contains six more stanzas of the same stamp.

The writing of jingles and doggerel having Niagara as a theme did not cease when the Albums were no longer kept up. If there is no humor or grotesqueness in Niagara, there is much of both in the human accessories with which the spot is constantly supplied, and these will never cease to stimulate the wits. I believe that a study of this field--not in a restricted, but a general survey--would discover a decided improvement, in taste if not in native wit, as compared with the compositions which found favor half a century ago. Without entering that field, however, it will suffice to submit in evidence one "poem" from a recent publication, which shows that the making of these American _genre_ sketches, with Niagara in the background, is not yet a lost art:

Before Niagara Falls they stood,
He raised aloft his head,
For he was in poetic mood,
And this is what he said:

"Oh, work sublime! Oh, wondrous law
That rules thy presence here!
How filled I am with boundless awe
To view thy waters clear!

"What myriad rainbow colors float
About thee like a veil,
And in what countless streams remote
Thy life has left its trail!"

"Yes, George," the maiden cried in haste,
"Such shades I've never seen,
I'm going to have my next new waist
The color of that green."

* * * * *

From about 1850 down to the present hour there is a striking dearth of verse, worthy to be called poetry, with Niagara for its theme. Newspapers and magazines would no doubt yield a store if they could be gleaned; perchance the one Niagara pearl of poetry is thus overlooked; but it is reasonably safe to assume that few really great poems sink utterly from sight. There is, or was, a self-styled Bard of Niagara, whose verses, printed at Montreal in 1872, need not detain us. The only long work on the subject of real merit that I know of, which has appeared in recent years, is George Houghton's "Niagara," published in 1882. Like Mr. Bulkley, he has a true poet's grasp of the material aspect of his subject:

Formed when the oceans were fashioned, when all the world was
a workshop;
Loud roared the furnace fires and tall leapt the smoke from
volcanoes,
Scooped were round bowls for lakes and grooves for the sliding
of rivers,
Whilst with a cunning hand, the mountains were linked together.
Then through the day-dawn, lurid with cloud, and rent by forked
lightning,
Stricken by earthquake beneath, above by the rattle of thunder,
Sudden the clamor was pierced by a voice, deep-lunged and
portentous--
Thine, O Niagara, crying, "Now is creation completed!"

He sees in imagination the million sources of the streams in forest and prairie, which ultimately pour their gathered "tribute of silver" from the rich Western land into the lap of Niagara. He makes skillful use of the Indian legendry associated with the river; he listens to Niagara's "dolorous fugue," and resolves it into many contributory cries. In exquisite fancy he listens to the incantation of the siren rapids:

Thus, in some midnight obscure, bent down by the storm of temptation
(So hath the wind, in the beechen wood, confided the story),
Pine trees, thrusting their way and trampling down one another,
Curious, lean and listen, replying in sobs and in whispers;
Till of the secret possessed, which brings sure blight to the hearer
(So hath the wind, in the beechen wood, confided the story),
Faltering, they stagger brinkward--clutch at the roots of the grasses,
Cry--a pitiful cry of remorse--and plunge down in the darkness.

The cataract in its varied aspects is considered with a thought for those who

Sin, and with wine-cup deadened, scoff at the dread of hereafter,--
And, because all seems lost, besiege Death's door-way with gladness.

The master-stroke of the poem is in two lines:

That alone is august which is gazed upon by the noble,
That alone is gladsome which eyes full of gladness discover.

Herein lies the rebuking judgment upon Niagara's detractors, not all of whom have perpetrated album rhymes.

Mr. Houghton, as the reader will note, recognizes the tragic aspect of Niagara. Considering the insistence with which accident and suicide attend, making here an unappeased altar to the weaknesses and woes of mankind, this aspect of Niagara has been singularly neglected by the poets. We have it, however, exquisitely expressed, in the best of all recent Niagara verse--a sonnet entitled "At Niagara," by Richard Watson Gilder.[86] The following lines illustrate our point:

There at the chasm's edge behold her lean
Trembling, as, 'neath the charm,
A wild bird lifts no wing to 'scape from harm;
Her very soul drawn to the glittering, green,
Smooth, lustrous, awful, lovely curve of peril;
While far below the bending sea of beryl
Thunder and tumult--whence a billowy spray
Enclouds the day.
. . . . . . . . .

* * * * *

There is a considerable amount of recent verse commonly called "fugitive" that has Niagara for its theme, but I find little that calls for special attention. A few Buffalo writers, the Rev. John C. Lord, Judge Jesse Walker, David Gray, Jas. W. Ward, Henry Chandler, and the Rev. Benjamin Copeland among them, have found inspiration in the lake and river for some of the best lines that adorn the purely local literature of the Niagara region. Indeed, I know of no allusion to Niagara more exquisitely poetical than the lines in David Gray's historical poem, "The Last of the Kah-Kwahs," in which he compares the Indian villages sleeping in ever-threatened peace to

... the isle
That, locked in wild Niagara's fierce embrace,
Still wears a smile of summer on its face--
Love in the clasp of Madness.

With this beautiful imagery in mind, recall the lines of Byron:

On the verge
. . . . . . . . .
An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge
. . . . . . . . .
Resembling, 'mid the tortures of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

Byron did not write of Niagara, but these stanzas beginning

The roar of waters ...

often have been applied to our cataract. Mr. Gray may or may not have been familiar with them. In any event he improved on the earlier poet's figure.

Merely as a matter of chronicle, it is well to record here the names of several writers, some of them of considerable reputation, who have contributed to the poetry of Niagara. Alfred B. Street's well-known narrative poem, "Frontenac," contains Niagara passages. So does Levi Bishop's metrical volume "Teuchsa Grondie" ("Whip-poor-will"), the Niagara portion dedicated to the Hon. Augustus S. Porter. Ever since Chateaubriand wrote "Atala," authors have been prompted to associate Indian legends with Niagara, but none has done this more happily than William Trumbull, whose poem, "The Legend of the White Canoe," illustrated by F. V. Du Mond, is one of the most artistic works in all the literature of Niagara.

The Rev. William Ellery Channing, the Rev. Joseph H. Clinch, the Rev. Joseph Cook, Christopher P. Cranch, Oliver I. Taylor, Grenville Mellen, Prof. Moffat, John Savage, Augustus N. Lowry, Claude James Baxley of Virginia, Abraham Coles, M. D., Henry Howard Brownell, the Rev. Roswell Park, Willis Gaylord Clark, Mary J. Wines, M. E. Wood, E. H. Dewart, G. W. Cutter, J. N. McJilton, and the Chicago writer, Harriet Monroe, are, most of them, minor poets (some, perhaps, but poets by courtesy), whose tributes to our cataract are contained in their collected volumes of verse. In E. G. Holland's "Niagara and Other Poems" (1861), is a poem on Niagara thirty-one pages long, with several pages of notes, "composed for the most part by the Drachenfels, one of the Seven Mountains of the Rhine, in the vicinity of Bonn, September, 1856, and delivered as a part of an address on American Scenery the day following." Among the Canadian poets who have attempted the theme, besides several already named, may be recorded John Breakenridge, a volume of whose verse was printed at Kingston in 1846; Charles Sangster, James Breckenridge, John Imrie, and William Rice, the last three of Toronto. The French-Canadian poet, Louis Frechette, has written an excellent poem, "Le Niagara." Wm. Sharpe, M. D., "of Ireland," wrote at length in verse on "Niagara and Nature Worship." Charles Pelham Mulvaney touches the region in his poem, "South Africa Remembered at Niagara." One of the most striking effusions on the subject comes from the successful Australian writer, Douglas Sladen. It is entitled "To the American Fall at Niagara," and is dated "Niagara, Oct. 18, 1899":

Niagara, national emblem! Cataract
Born of the maddened rapids, sweeping down
Direct, resistless from the abyss's crown
Into the deep, fierce pool with vast impact
Scarce broken by the giant boulders, stacked
To meet thine onslaught, threatening to drown
Each tillaged plain, each level-loving town
'Twixt thee and ocean. Lo! the type exact!

America Niagarized the world.
Europe, a hundred years agone, beheld
An avalanche, like pent-up Erie, hurled
Through barriers, to which the rocks of eld
Seemed toy things--leaping into godlike space
A sign and wonder to the human race.[87]

Friedrich Bodenstedt and Wilhelm Meister of Germany, J. B. Scandella and the Rev. Santo Santelli of Italy ("Cascada di Niagara," 1841), have place among our Niagara poets. So, conspicuously, has Juan Antonio Perez Bonalde, whose illustrated volume, "El Poema del Niagara," dedicated to Emilio Castelar, with a prose introduction of twenty-five pages by the Cuban martyr Jose Marti, was published in New York, reaching at least a second edition, in 1883. Several Mexican poets have addressed themselves to Niagara. "A la Catarata del Niagara" is a sonnet by Don Manuel Carpio, whose collected works have been issued at Vera Cruz, Paris, and perhaps elsewhere. In the dramatic works of Don Vincente Riva Palacio and Don Juan A. Mateos is found "La Catarata del Niagara," a three-act drama in verse; the first two acts occur in Mexico, in the house of _Dona Rosa_, the third act is at Niagara Falls, the time being 1847.[88] The Spanish poet Antonio Vinageras, nearly fifty years ago, wrote a long ode on Niagara, dedicating it to "la celebre poetisa, Dona Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda." In no language is there a nobler poem on Niagara than the familiar work by Maria Jose Heredosia, translated from the Spanish by William Cullen Bryant. The Comte de Fleury, who visited Niagara a few years ago, left a somewhat poetical souvenir in French verse. Fredrika Bremer, whose prose is often unmetered poetry even after translation, wrote of Niagara in a brief poem. The following is a close paraphrase of the Swedish original:

Niagara is the betrothal of Earth's life
With the Heavenly life.
That has Niagara told me to-day.
And now can I leave Niagara. She has
Told me her word of primeval being.

Another Scandinavian poet, John Nyborn, has written a meritorious poem on Niagara Falls, an adaptation of which, in English, was published some years since by Dr. Albin Bernays.

* * * * *

It is a striking fact that Niagara's stimulus to the poetic mind has been quite as often through the ear as through the eye. The best passages of the best poems are prompted by the sound of the falling waters, rather than by the expanse of the flood, the height of cliffs, or the play of light. In Mr. Bulkley's work, which indeed exhausts the whole store of simile and comparison, we perpetually hear the voice of the falls, the myriad voices of nature, the awful voice of God.

"Minstrel of the Floods,"

he cries:

What paeans full of triumph dost thou hymn!
. . . . . . . . .
However varied is the rhythm sweet
Of thine unceasing song! The ripple oft
Astray along thy banks a lyric is
Of love; the cool drops trickling down thy sides
Are gentle sonnets; and thy lesser falls
Are strains elegiac, that sadly sound
A monody of grief; thy whirlpool fierce,
A shrill-toned battle-song; thy river's rush
A strain heroic with its couplet rhymes;
. . . . . . . . .
While the full sweep of thy close-crowded tide
Resounds supreme o'er all, an epic grand.

Of this class, too, is the "Apostrophe to Niagara," by one B. Frank Palmer, in 1855. It is said to have been "written with the pencil in a few minutes, the author seated on the bank, drenched, from the mighty bath at Termination Rock, and still listening to the roar and feeling the eternal jar of the cataract." The Rev. T. Starr King, upon reading it in 1855, said: "The apostrophe has the music of Niagara in it." As a typical example of the devotional apostrophe it is perhaps well to give it in full:

This is Jehovah's fullest organ strain!
I hear the liquid music rolling, breaking.
From the gigantic pipes the great refrain
Bursts on my ravished ear, high thoughts awaking!

The low sub-bass, uprising from the deep,
Swells the great paean as it rolls supernal--
Anon, I hear, at one majestic sweep
The diapason of the keys eternal!

Standing beneath Niagara's angry flood--
The thundering cataract above me bounding--
I hear the echo: "Man, there is a God!"
From the great arches of the gorge resounding!

Behold, O man! nor shrink aghast in fear!
Survey the vortex boiling deep before thee!
The Hand that ope'd the liquid gateway here
Hath set the beauteous bow of promise o'er thee!

Here, in the hollow of that Mighty Hand,
Which holds the basin of the tidal ocean,
Let not the jarring of the spray-washed strand
Disturb the orisons of pure devotion.

Roll on, Niagara! great River King!
Beneath thy sceptre all earth's rulers, mortal,
Bow reverently; and bards shall ever sing
The matchless grandeur of thy peerless portal!

I hear, Niagara, in this grand strain,
His voice, who speaks in flood, in flame and thunder--
Forever mayst thou, singing, roll and reign--
Earth's grand, sublime, supreme, supernal wonder.

Such lines as these--which might be many times multiplied--recall Eugene Thayer's ingenious and highly poetic paper on "The Music of Niagara."[89] Indeed, many of the prose writers, as well as the versifiers, have found their best tribute to Niagara inspired by the mere sound of falling waters.

That Niagara's supreme appeal to the emotions is not through the eye but through the ear, finds a striking illustration in "Thoughts on Niagara," a poem of about eighty lines written prior to 1854 by Michael McGuire, a blind man.[90] Here was one whose only impressions of the cataract came through senses other than that of sight. As is usual with the blind, he uses phrases that imply consciousness of light; yet to him, as to other poets whose devotional natures respond to this exhibition of natural laws, all the phenomena merge in "the voice of God":

I stood where swift Niagara pours its flood
Into the darksome caverns where it falls,
And heard its voice, as voice of God, proclaim
The power of Him, who let it on its course
Commence, with the green earth's first creation;

And I was where the atmosphere shed tears,
As giving back the drops the waters wept,
On reaching that great sepulchre of floods,--
Or bringing from above the bow of God,
To plant its beauties in the pearly spray.

And as I stood and heard, _though seeing nought_,
Sad thoughts took deep possession of my mind,
And rude imagination venturing forth,
Did toil to pencil, though in vain, that scene,
Which, in its every feature, spoke of God.

The poem, which as a whole is far above commonplace, develops a pathetic prayer for sight; and employs much exalted imagery attuned to the central idea that here Omnipotence speaks without ceasing; here is

A temple, where Jehovah is felt most.

But for the most part, the world's strong singers have passed Niagara by; nor has Niagara's newest aspect, that of a vast engine of energy to be used for the good of man, yet found worthy recognition by any poet of potentials.

* * * * *

This survey, though incomplete, is yet sufficiently comprehensive to warrant a few conclusions. More than half of all the verse on the subject which I have examined was written during the second quarter of this century. The first quarter, as has been shown, was the age of Niagara's literary discovery, and produced a few chronicles of curious interest. During the last half of the century--the time in which practically the whole brilliant and substantial fabric of American literature has been created--Niagara well-nigh has been ignored by the poets. In all our list, Goldsmith and Moore are the British writers of chief eminence who have touched the subject in verse, though many British poets, from Edwin Arnold to Oscar Wilde, have written poetic prose about Niagara. Of native Americans, I have found no names in the list of Niagara singers greater than those of Drake and Mrs. Sigourney. Emerson nor Lowell, Whittier nor Longfellow, Holmes nor Stedman, has given our Niagara wonder the dowry of a single line. Whitman, indeed, alludes to Niagara in his poem "By Blue Ontario's Shore," but his poetic vision makes no pause at the falls; nor does that of Joseph O'Connor, who in his stirring and exalted Columbian poem, "The Philosophy of America," finds a touch of color for his continental cosmorama by letting his sweeping glance fall for a moment,

To where, 'twixt Erie and Ontario,
Leaps green Niagara with a giant roar.

But in such a symphony as his, Niagara is a subservient element, not the dominating theme. Most of the Niagara poets have been of local repute, unknown to fame.

What, then, must we conclude? Shall we say with Martin Farquhar Tupper--who has contributed to the alleged poetry of the place--that there is nothing sublime about Niagara? The many poetic and impassioned passages in prose descriptions are against such a view. If dimensions, volume, exhibition of power, are elements of sublimity, Niagara Falls are sublime. But it cannot be said that superlative exhibitions of nature, some essentially universal phenomena, like those of the sea and sky, excepted, have been made the specific subject of verse, with a high degree of success. The reason is not far to seek, and lies in the inherent nature of poetry. It is a chief essential of poetry that it express, in imaginative form, the insight of the human soul. The feeble poets who have addressed themselves to Niagara have stopped, for the most part, with purely objective utterance. In some few instances, as we have seen, a truly subjective regard has given us noble lines.

The poetic in nature is essentially independent of the detail of natural phenomena. A waterfall 150 feet high is not intrinsically any more poetic than one but half that height; or a thunder-peal than the tinkle of a rill. True poetry must be self-expression, as well as interpretive of truths which are manifested through physical phenomena. Hence it is in the nature of things that a nameless brook shall have its Tennyson, or a Niagara flow unsung.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Often spelled "Daillon" or "d'Allion," the latter form suggesting origin from the name of a place, as is common in the French. Charlevoix sometimes wrongly has it "de Dallion." I follow the spelling as given in the priest's own signature to a letter to a friend in Paris, dated at "Tonachain [Toanchain], Huron village, this 18th July, 1627," and signed "Joseph De La Roche Dallion." The student of seventeenth-century history need not be reminded that little uniformity in the spelling of proper names can be looked for, either in printed books or manuscripts. In French, as in English, men spelled their names in different ways--Shakespeare, it is said, achieving thirty-nine variations. The matter bears on our present study because the diversity of spelling may involve the young student in perplexity. Thus, the name of the priests Lalemant (there were three of them) is given by Le Clercq as "Lallemant," by Charlevoix (a much later historian) as "Lallemant" or "Lalemant," but in the contemporary "Relations" of 1641-'42 as "Lallemant," "Lalemant" or "L'allemant." Many other names are equally variable, changes due to elision being sometimes, but not always, indicated by accents, as "Brusle," "Brule." Thus we have "Jolliet" or "Joliet," "De Gallinee" or "De Galinee," "Du Lu," "Du Luth," "Duluth," etc. When we turn to modern English, the confusion is much--and needlessly--increased. Dr. Shea, the learned translator and editor of Le Clercq, apparently aimed to put all the names into English, without accents. Parkman, or his publishers, have been guilty of many inconsistencies, now speaking of "Brebeuf," now of "Brebeuf," and changing "Le Clercq" to "Le Clerc." The "Historical Writings" of Buffalo's pre-eminent student in this field, Orsamus H. Marshall, share with many less valuable works--the present, no doubt, among them--these inconsistencies of style in the use of proper names.

[2] Mr. Consul W. Butterfield, whose "History of Brule's Discoveries and Explorations, 1610-1626," has appeared since the above was written, is of opinion that Brule did not visit the falls, nor gain any particular knowledge of Lake Erie, as that lake is not shown on Champlain's map of 1632; but that he and his Indian escort crossed the Niagara near Lake Ontario, "into what is now Western New York, in the present county of Niagara," and that "the journey was doubtless pursued through what are now the counties of Erie, Genesee, Wyoming, Livingston, Steuben and Chemung into Tioga," and thence down the Susquehanna. It is probable that Brule's party would follow existing trails, and one of the best defined trails, at a later period when the Senecas occupied the country as far west as the Niagara, followed this easterly course; but there were other trails, one of which lay along the east bank of the Niagara. So long as we have no other original source of information except Champlain, Sagard and Le Caron, none of whom has left any explicit record of Brule's journeyings hereabouts, so long must his exact path in the Niagara region remain untraced.

[3] "Brehan de Gallinee," in Margry. Shea has it "Brehaut de Galinee."

[4] Why Joliet left the Lake Erie route on his way east, for one much more difficult, has been a matter of some discussion. According to the Abbe Galinee, he was induced to turn aside by an Iroquois Indian who had been a prisoner among the Ottawas. Joliet persuaded the Ottawas to let this prisoner return with him. As they drew near the Niagara the Iroquois became afraid lest he should fall into the hands of the ancient enemies of the Iroquois, the Andastes, although the habitat of that people is usually given as from about the site of Buffalo to the west and southwest. At any rate it was the representations of this Iroquois prisoner and guide which apparently turned Joliet into the Grand River and kept him away from the Niagara. The paragraph in de Galinee bearing on the matter is as follows:

"Ce fut cet Iroquois qui montra a M. Jolliet un nouveau chemin que les Francois n'avoient point sceu jusques alors pour revenir des Outaouacs dans le pays des Iroquois. Cependant la crainte que ce sauvage eut de retomber entre les mains des Antastoes luy fit dire a M. Jolliet qu'il falloit qu'il quittast son canot et marchast par terre plustost qu'il n'eust fallu, et mesme sans cette terreur du sauvage, M. Jolliet eust pu venir par eau jusques dans le lac Ontario, en faisant un portage de demi-lieue pour eviter le grand sault dont j'ay deja parle, mais entin il fut oblige par son guide de faire cinquante lieues par terre, et abandonner son canot sur lebord du lac Erie."

It is singular that so important a relation in the history of our region has never been published in English. De Galinee's original MS. Journal is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale, in Paris. It was first printed in French by M. Pierre Margry in 1879; but five years prior to that date Mr. O. H. Marshall of Buffalo, having been granted access to M. Margry's MS. copy, made extracts, which were printed in English in 1874. These were only a small portion of the Abbe's valuable record. The Ontario Historical Society has for some time contemplated the translation and publication of the complete Journal--a work which students of the early history of the lake region will hope soon to see accomplished.

[5] Probably that now known as Patterson's Creek.

[6] A minot is an old French measure; about three bushels.

[7] Evidently at Four or Six Mile Creek.

[8] Probably what the English call scurvy-grass.

[9] Otherwise Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, Ont.

[10] Sullivan to Jay, Teaogo (Tioga), Sept. 30, 1779.

[11] I first struck the trail in London, among the Colonial Papers preserved in the Public Records Office. Subsequently, in the Archives Department at Ottawa, I found that trail broaden into a fair highway. Something has been gleaned at Albany; more, no doubt, is to be looked for at Washington; but it is an amazing fact that our Government is far less liberal in granting access for students to its official records than is either England or Canada. But the Niagara region was British during the Revolution, and its history is chiefly to be sought in British archives. Especially in the Haldimand Papers, preserved in the British Museum, but of which verified copies are readily accessible in the Archives at Ottawa, is the Revolutionary history of the Niagara to be found. Besides the 232 great volumes in which these papers are gathered, there are thousands of other MSS. of value to an inquirer seeking the history of this region; especially the correspondence, during all that term of years, between the commandants at Fort Niagara and other upper lake posts, and the Commander in Chief of the British forces in America; between that general and the Ministry in London, and between the commandants at the posts and the Indian agents, fur traders and many classes and conditions of men. For the incidents here recorded I have drawn, almost exclusively, on these unpublished sources.

[12] A snow is a three-masted craft, the smallest mast abaft the mainmast being rigged with a try-sail. Possibly, on the lakes where shipyards were primitive, this type was not always adhered to; but the correspondence and orders of the period under notice carefully discriminate between snows and schooners.

[13] See "What Befel David Ogden," in this volume.

[14] "A Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings of Benjamin Gilbert and his Family; Who were surprised by the Indians, and taken from their Farms, on the Frontiers of Pennsylvania, in the Spring, 1780. Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Joseph Crukshank, in Market-street, between Second and Third-streets. M DCC LXXXIV." 12mo, pp. iv-96. It was reprinted in London (12mo, pp. 123) in 1785, and again (12mo, pp. 124, "Reprinted and sold by James Phillips, George-Yard, Lombard street") in 1790. A "third edition, revised and enlarged," 16mo, pp. 240, bears date Philadelphia, 1848. Of a later edition (8vo, pp. 38, Lancaster, Pa., 1890) privately printed, only 150 copies were issued. The work was written by William Walton, to whom the facts were told by the Gilberts after their return. (Field.) Ketchum made some use of the "Narrative" in his "Buffalo and the Senecas," as has Wm. Clement Bryant and perhaps other local writers. See also "Account of Benjamin Gilbert," Vol. III., Register of Pennsylvania. A reissue of the original work, carefully edited, would not only be a useful book for students of the history of Buffalo and the Niagara region, but would offer much in the way of extraordinary adventure for the edification of "the general reader."

[15] Ketchum says he could not have done so. ("History of Buffalo," Vol. I., p. 328.) But Ketchum was misled, as many writers have been in ascribing the leadership to Brant. My assertion rests on the evidence of contemporary documents in the Archives at Ottawa, especially the MS. "Anecdotes of Capt. Joseph Brant, Niagara, 1778," in the handwriting of Col. Daniel Claus. Wm. Clement Bryant published a part of it in his "Captain Brant and the Old King," _q. v._

[16] What became of all the scalps brought in to Fort Niagara during these years, and delivered up to the British officers, if not for pay, certainly for presents? The human scalp, properly dried, is not readily perishable, if cared for. Very many of them--from youthful heads or those white with age, the long tresses of women and the soft ringlets of children--became the property of officers at this post. Little is said on this subject in the correspondence; we do not see them with flags and other trophies in the cathedrals and museums of England. What became of them?

[17] In another letter to Lord George Germaine, dated Nov. 20, 1780, we have a few additional particulars. It is probably the fullest account of this calamity in existence. "It is with great concern," wrote Haldimand, "I acquaint your Lordship of a most unfortunate event which is just reported to me to have happened upon Lake Ontario about the 1st. [Nov., 1780.] A very fine snow [schooner] carrying 16 guns, which was built last winter, sailed the 31st ultimo from Niagara and was seen several times the same day near the north shore. The next day it blew very hard, and the vessel's boats, binnacle, gratings, some hats, etc., were found upon the opposite shore, the wind having changed suddenly, by Lt. Col. Butler about forty miles from Niagara, on his way from Oswego, so there cannot be a doubt that she is totally lost and her crew, consisting of forty seamen, perished, together with Lt. Col. Bolton of the King's Regiment, whom I had permitted to leave Niagara on account of his bad state of health, Lt. Colleton of the Royal Artillery, Lt. Royce and thirty men of the 34th Regiment, who were crossing the lake to reinforce Carleton Island. Capt. Andrews who commanded the vessel and the naval armament upon that lake was a most zealous, active, intelligent officer. The loss of so many good officers and men is much aggravated by the consequences that will follow this misfortune in the disappointment of conveying provisions across the lake for the garrison of Niagara and Detroit, which are not near completed for the winter consumption, and there is not a possibility of affording them much assistance with the vessels that remain, it being dangerous to navigate the lake later than the 20th inst., particularly as the large vessels are almost worn out. The master builder and carpenters are sent off to repair this evil."

[18] "The Falls of Niagara, or Tourist's Guide," etc., by S. De Veaux. Buffalo, 1839.

[19] Capt. Parrish became Indian agent, but Capt. Jones held the office of interpreter for many years. "Their councils [with the Indians] were held at a council house belonging to the Senecas situated a few rods east of the bend in the road just this side of the red bridge across Buffalo Creek on the Aurora Plank Road, then little more than an Indian trail; but much of their business was transacted at the store of Hart & Lay, situated on the west side of Main Street, midway between Swan and Erie streets, and on the common opposite, then known as Ellicott Square."--MS. narrative of Capt. Jones's captivity, by Orlando Allen, in possession of William L. Bryant of Buffalo. Horatio Jones was captured about 1777 near Bedford, Pa., being aged 14; was taken to a town on the Genesee River, where he ran the gauntlet, was adopted, and lived with the Indians until liberated by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784. The MS. narrative above quoted is Orlando Allen's chronicle of facts given to him by Capts. Jones and Parrish, and is of exceptional value.

[20] Brig. Powell to Col. van Schaick, Feb. 13, 1780; Haldimand Papers, "Correspondence relating to exchange of prisoners," etc., B. 175.

[21] I cannot better show the real state of affairs at Fort Niagara, towards the close of the Revolutionary War, than by submitting the following "Review of Col. Johnson's Transactions," which I copy from the Canadian Archives. [Series B, Vol. 106, p. 123, _et seq._] I do not know that it has ever been printed. Obviously written at the instigation of Col. Johnson, it is perhaps colored to justify his administrative conduct; but in any event it is a most useful picture of conditions at the time. Except for some slight changes in punctuation in order to make the meaning more readily apparent, the statement is given verbatim:

MONTREAL, 24th March, 1782.

Before Colonel Johnson arrived at Niagara in 1779 the Six Nations lived in their original possession the nearest of which was about 100 and the farthest about 300 miles from that post. Their warriors were called upon as the service required parties, which in 1776 amounted to about 70 men, and the expenses attending them and a few occasional meetings ought to have been and he presumes were a mere Trifle when compared with what must attend their situation when all [were] driven to Niagara, exposed to every want, to every temptation and with every claim which their distinguished sacrifices and the tenor of Soloman [solemn] Treaties had entitled them to from Government. The years 1777 & 1778 exhibited only a larger number occasionally employed and for their fidelity and attachment to Government they were invaded in 1779 by a rebel army reported to be from 5 to 600 men with a train of Artillery who forced them to retire to Niagara leaving behind them very fine plantations of corn and vegetables, with their cloathing, arms, silver works, Wampum Kettles and Implements of Husbandry, the collection of ages of which were distroyed in a deliberate manner and march of the rebels. Two villages only escaped that were out of their route.

The Indians having always apprehended that their distinguished Loyalty might draw some such calamity towards them had stipulated that under such circumstances they effected [expected] to have their losses made up as well as a liberal continuation of favors and to be supported at the expence of Government till they could be reinstated in their former possessions. They were accordingly advised to form camps around Niagara which they were beginning to do at the time of Colonel Johnson's arrival who found them much chagrined and prepared to reconcile them to their disaster which he foresaw would be a work of time requiring great judgement and address in effecting which he was afterwards successful beyond his most sanguine expectations, and this was the state of the Indians at Colonel Johnson's arrival. As to the state and regulation of Colonel Johnson's offices and department at that period he found the duties performed by 2 or three persons the rest little acquainted with them and considered as less capable of learning them, and the whole number inadequate to that of the Indians, and the then requisite calls of the service, and that it was necessary after refusing the present wants of the Indians to keep their minds occupied by constant military employment, all which he laid before the Commander in Chief who frequently honoured his conduct with particular approbation.

By His Instructions he was to apply to Lieut. Colonel Bolton, more especially regarding the modes of this place and the public accounts &c from whom he received no further information, than that they were kept, and made up by the established house at that post, and consider of goods, orders and all contingencies and disbursements for Indians, ranging parties, Prisoners, &c. That they were generally arranged half yearly as well as the nature of them and of the changeable people they had to deal with would permit; that he believed many demands were therefore outstanding and that he was glad to have done with passing [i. e., granting of passes] as it was impossible for him or any person that had other duties to discharge to give them much attention. At which Colonel Johnson expressed his concern but was told that the house was established in the business and thro' the impossibility of having proper circulating cash in another channell they advanced all monies and settled all accounts and that that mode had been found most eligable. Colonel Johnson thereupon issued the best orders he could devise for the preventing abuses and the better regulation of matters relating to goods payment of expenses, and proceeding to the discharge of the principal objects of his duty, he, accordingly to a plan long since proposed, formed the Indians into Companies and by degrees taught them to feel the convenience of having officers set apart to each, which they were soon not only reconciled to but highly pleased with, by which means he gave some degree of method and form to the most Independent race of the Indians, greatly facilitated all business with them and by a prudent arrangement of his officers those who were before uninformed became in a little time some of the most approved and usefull persons in his department, being constantly quartered at such places or sent on some services as tended most to their improvement and the public advantage, whilst by spiriting up and employing the Indians with constant party's along the frontiers from Fort Stanwix to Fort Pitt he so harrassed the back settlements, as finally to drive numbers of them from their plantation destroying their houses, mills, graneries, &c, frequently defeating their scouting parties killing and captivating many of their people amounting in the whole to near 900 and all this with few or no instances of savage cruelty exclusive of what they performed when assisted by His Majesty's Troops as will appear from his returns. By these means he presented [? preserved] the spirit of the Indians and kept their minds so occupied as to prevent their being disgusted at the want of Military aid, which had been long their Topic and which could then be afforded according to their requisitions; neither did he admit any point of negociation during this period of peculiar hurry, for knowing the importance the Oneidas &c., were off [of] to the rebels and the obstruction they gave to all means of intelligence from that quarter, he sent a private Belt and message on pretence of former Friendship for them, in consequence of which he was shortly joined by 430 of them of [whom] 130 were men who have since on all occasions peculiarly distinguished themselves, and after defeating the rebel Invitation to the Indians he by the renewal of the great covenant chain and war Belt which he sent thro' all the nations animation to the most western Indians.