Chapter II: Part 2

Near the edge of the Falls a rickety bridge leads to a small island on which stands Terrapin Tower, which yields a fine outlook upon the Horseshoe Fall, with its mists and rainbows. From the opposite side of Goat Island we pass to the charming little Luna Island, from whose brink one may lave his hand in the edge of the American Fall. From the upper end of Goat Island bridges lead to the Three Sisters. These are small, thickly-timbered islands, standing in the stream far back from the edge of the precipice, but in the very foam and fume of the rapids, the contracted stream dashing under their graceful suspension bridges with frightful speed and roar.

From the bridge joining the two outer islands one may see the rapids in their wildest aspect. Here the river, dashing fiercely onward, plunges over a shelf of rock six or eight feet deep, and is tossed upward in so tumultuous a turmoil of foam that the heart involuntarily stops beating and the teeth set hard, as if one were preparing for a desperate conflict with the fierce power beneath him. From every point on the shore of the outer island the rapids are seen heaving and tossing as far as the sight can reach, like the waves of a sea fretted by contrary winds, here tossed many feet into the air, there sweeping fiercely over a long ledge of rocks, and ever hurrying forward with eager speed to where in the distance we see a long, curved, liquid edge, with a light mist floating upward and hovering in the air beyond it. Here one hears only the roar of the rapids. Indeed, anywhere in the nearer vicinity, the sound of the rapids is chiefly heard, the voice of the cataract itself predominating only on the Canadian side near the Horseshoe Fall.

Here, on this outreaching island, I sat for hours on the gnarled trunk of a fallen tree that overhung the water, drinking in the grandeur and glory of Niagara with a mental thirst that seemed unquenchable, and feeling in my soul that I could willingly stretch the hours into days and the days into weeks, and still descend with regret from the poetry of life into its prose.

Leaving Niagara, I took car for Lewistown, the railroad running for its whole length in full view of the river, whose lofty and rigidly-erect walls, stretching in unbroken lines for miles below the cataract, give striking evidence of the vast work performed by the stream in cutting its way, century after century, through the ridge of solid limestone that separates the lakes. Far down below the level of the railroad the water is seen, placidly winding through the deep gorge, or speeding onward in rapids, its hue intensely green, its banks as lofty and precipitous as the Palisades of the Hudson.

Before Lewistown is reached the ridge sinks to the river level. At this point the cataract began its long career, inch by inch eating its way backward through the former rapids, until they were converted into one mighty vertical downfall. At Lewistown boat is taken for Toronto,--of which city only a lake view of warehouses and church steeples is seen as we change boats for the lake journey.

For the rest of the day and evening we steamed along in full view of the Canadian shore, an ever-changing panorama of farm lands, sandy bluffs, occasional hamlets, and several towns of some pretensions to size and beauty. Kingston, a city at the head of the lake, is reached at four o'clock in the morning. Immediately after leaving this thriving town the state-rooms begin to disgorge their occupants, for we now enter the broad throat of the St. Lawrence River, and here the Thousand Islands begin. Who that has a soul beyond cakes and ale would let the desire to indulge in his own dreams cheat him from enjoying one of nature's loveliest visions?

For some four hours thereafter the boat runs through an uninterrupted succession of the most beautiful island scenery. These islands number, in fact, more than eighteen hundred, and are of every conceivable size and shape; some so minute that they seem but rock pediments to the single tree that is rooted upon their surface, while the rocky shores of others stretch for a mile or more along the channel. They are all heavily wooded, with here and there a light-house, or a rude hovel, as the only indication of man's contest with primitive nature.

[This description, it may be said, does not apply to the
present time, when mansions and hotels have taken possession
of many of these islands, and evidences of man's occupancy
are somewhat too numerous.]

Every few turns of the wheel reveal some new feature of the scene, unexpected channels cutting through the centre of a long, wooded reach, broad open spaces studded with islets, narrow creek-like channels between rocky island shores, in which the whole river seems contracted to a slender stream, while farther on the channel expands to a mile in width, and glimpses of other channels open behind distant islands. Quick turns in our course plunge us into archipelagoes, through which a dozen channels run and wind in every direction. Sudden openings in the wooded shore along which we are swiftly gliding yield glimpses of charming islands, here closing the view, there cut by narrow channels which reveal more distant wooded shores, and lead the imagination suggestively onward till we fancy that scenes of fairy-like beauty lie hidden beyond those leafy coverts, enviously torn from our sight by the remorseless onward flight of the boat. For hours we sit in rapt delight, drinking in new beauty at every turn, and heedless of the fact that the breakfast gong has long since sounded, and the more prosaic of the passengers have allowed their physical to overcome their mental hunger.

One tall, long-whiskered old devotee of "cakes and ale," hailing from somewhere in Ohio, shaped somewhat like a note of interrogation, and sustaining his character by asking everybody all sorts of questions, did not, I am positive, digest his breakfast well, for I took a wicked pleasure in assuring him that we had passed far the most beautiful portions of the scenery while he was engaged in absorbing creature comforts, and that the world beside had nothing to compare with the fairy visions he had lost. Old Buckeye, as I had irreverently christened him, wished his breakfast was in Hades, and at once set out on a tour of interrogation to learn if he could not return by the same route and pick up the lost threads of beauty he had so idly dropped.

Another of our fellow-passengers was an English gentleman of perfect Lord Dundreary pattern, his every movement being so suggestive of those of his stage counterpart as to furnish us an unfailing source of amusement. At Prescott, Canada, a New England college boat-club came on board with their boat, and highly amused the passengers during the remainder of the journey with a long succession of comical songs. Three of them were sons of one of our venerable New England professors, one an unvenerable professor himself, yet their tanned faces, worn habiliments, and wild songs bore so strong a flavor of the backwoods that it was hard mentally to locate them within college walls.

We were roused from dinner by the announcement that the Long Sault Rapid was at hand, and gladly deserted one of the meanest tables we had ever encountered to partake of one of nature's rarest banquets.

The boat was entering what seemed a heaving sea, the waters lifting into dangerous billows, and tossing our craft with unmitigated rudeness, until it became almost impossible to retain a level footing. But the appearance of these rapids was different from what we had been led to expect. The frightful aspect of danger, the rapid down-hill plunge of the boat, and all the fear-inspiring adornments of the guide-books, while they might be visible from the shore, did not appear to those on the deck. Apparently the boat was fixed in the heart of a watery turmoil, her onward motion lost in her various upward and sidelong movements, while as for fear, its only evidence lay in little shrieks full of laughter, as the equilibrium of the craft was suddenly destroyed.

Five minutes or so of this experience carried us through the perilous portion of the great rapid, and brought us into safe waters again. The St. Lawrence has various other rapids between the Long Sault and Montreal, differing in appearance, some of them being, as far as the eye can reach, a succession of crossing and tumbling waves, which give the boat unexpected little heaves, and appear like the waves of a tossing sea. Here the water plunges rapidly down a narrow throat between two islands, there it curves round a rocky shore, on which it breaks in ocean-like billows. But the only point where danger becomes apparent to untrained eyes is at the La Chine Rapids, near Montreal, where the river runs through a narrow foaming channel between two long ridges of rock, over which the water tumbles with a terrible suggestion of peril.

The peak of Montreal mountain has been long visible, and now we rapidly approach the long line of Victoria bridge, the great pride of Canadian engineering. Under this we glide with a gymnast at the mast-head, whose erected feet seem nearly to touch the bridge; and in a short time we round in to the wharf and are ashore in the largest city of Canada.

FROM NEW YORK TO WASHINGTON IN 1866.

HENRY LATHAM.

[It is not our purpose to enter into descriptions of the cities
of the United States. They are sufficiently familiar already to
our readers. But Mr. Latham has given so graphic a picture of
the outward aspect of the two leading coast cities and the
capital of this country during a past generation that we have
been tempted to quote it. It need scarcely be said that this
account represents only in embryo these cities as they appear
to-day.]

Safe arrived last night, after spending twelve days of my life at sea. I say last night, as it took us so long to land and get through the custom-house that it was dark before we reached the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But it was bright daylight and sunshine as we steamed up the splendid harbor of New York, a view which I should have been sorry to have missed. As far as our personal experiences go, the custom-house officers of New York are not half so troublesome as they are said to be. We had nothing to smuggle, but there was a vast amount of smuggling done by some of our fellow-passengers. One man landed with his pocket full of French watches, and another with a splendid Cashmere shawl round his neck. The custom-house officer, searching the next luggage to mine, unearthed two boxes of cigars; of course these were contraband. He spoke as follows: "Which are the best?" Opens box. "Have you a light? I forgot; we must not smoke here. Well, I will take a few to smoke after my supper." Takes twenty cigars, and passes the rest.

_December 14, 1866._--I have been on my feet all day, delivering letters of introduction. These are plants that require to be put in early, or they are apt to flower after the sower has quitted the country. The stores of the Broadway are the most wonderfully glorified shops ever seen. Something between a Manchester warehouse and a London club-house.

I have spent all my day in going to and fro in Broadway, the wonderful street of New York; in ten years' time the finest street in the world. At present there are still so many small old houses standing in line with the enormous stores, that the effect is somewhat spoiled, by reason of the ranks not being well dressed. Broadway is now much in the condition of a child's mouth when cutting its second set of teeth,--slightly gappy. The enormous stores look even larger now than they will do when the intervals are filled up. The external splendor of the shops is chiefly architectural; they make no great display of goods in the windows; but the large size of the rooms within enables them to set out and exhibit many times the amount of goods that an English shop-keeper shows.

The city of New York is on the southern point of Manhattan Island, having the East River running along one side, and the North River or Hudson along the other. Some day far in the future, when the present municipality is purged or swept away, and the splendor of the Thames Embankment scheme has been realized, New York will probably have two lines of quays, planted with trees and edged with warehouses, which will make it one of the finest cities in the world. The business quarter is at the point of the peninsula. The fashionable quarter is to the north, reaching every year farther inland. As the city increases, the stores keep moving northward, taking possession of the houses, and driving the residents farther back. The land is not yet built over up to Central Park, said to be called so because it will be the future centre of the city that is to be.

The concentrated crowd that passes along Broadway in the morning "down-town" to its business, and back in the evening "up-town" to its homes, is enormous; but the pavements are bad for men and abominable for horses: to-day I saw five horses down, and two lying dead. At the same time, allowance must be made for the fact that it has been snowing and thawing and freezing again; but as this is no uncommon state of things in this climate, why pave the streets with flat stones that give no foothold? The "street-cars" are the universal means of conveyance. These are omnibuses running on tramways, but the name of omnibus is unknown: if you speak of a "bus" you are stared at. A young New Yorker, recently returned from London, was escorting his cousin home one evening; as the way was long, he stopped and said, "Hold on, Mary, and let's take a bus." "No, George, not here in the street," the coy damsel replied....

We went to-day to the top of Trinity Church tower; a beautiful panorama, with the bay of New York to the south, the city stretching away northward, and a great river on either side. But it was bitterly cold at the top, as we had heavy snow yesterday, and the wind was blowing keenly. We went also to the Gold Exchange, and gold happened to be "very sensitive" this morning, in consequence of some rumors from Mexico which made it possible that the time for United States interference was nearer than had been supposed. The noise was deafening; neither the Stock Exchange nor the ring at Epsom at all approach it. All the men engaged in a business which one would suppose required more experience than any other, the buying and selling of gold, seemed to be under twenty-five years of age; most of them much younger, some quite boys. The reason given me was that older heads could not stand the tumult, all gesticulating, all vociferating, every man with a note-book and pencil, crowded round a ring in the centre of the hall like a little cock-pit, to which you descend by steps. Every now and then a man rushes out of the telegraph corner with some news, which oozes out and makes the crowd howl and seethe again. The hands of a big dial on the wall are moved on from time to time, marking the hour of the day and the price of gold. This is the dial of the barometer of national prosperity, marked by gold instead of mercury....

A huge sum of money has been laid out on Central Park, the Bois de Boulogne of New York. When the timber has grown larger it will be very pretty. The ground is rocky, with little depth of soil in it; this makes it difficult to get the trees to grow, but, on the other hand, gives the place a feature not to be found in our parks or at the Bois, in the large masses of brown sandstone cropping up through the turf here and there, and in the rocky shores of the little lakes.

In the evening we went, by invitation of our courteous banker, to the Assembly at Delmonico's rooms. In this we consider ourselves highly honored and introduced to the best society of New York. The toilets and the diamonds were resplendent, and one figure of the "German" (cotillon), in which the ladies formed two groups in the centre, facing inward with their bright trains spread out behind them, was a splendid piece of color and costume. Prince Doria was there, and most of the magnates of the city looked in. Some of the wealthiest people in the room were pointed out to me as the present representatives of the families of the old Dutch settlers; those are the pedigrees respected here.

_December 20, 1866._--We left New York, having stayed exactly a week, and meaning to return again. By rail to Philadelphia, ninety-two miles, through a flat, snow-covered country, which, under the circumstances, looked as dismal as might be. The latter part of our journey lay along the left bank of the Delaware, which we crossed by a long wooden bridge, and arrived at the Continental Hotel just at dusk. It is evident we are moving South. The waiters at this hotel are all darkies.

_December 21, 1866._--Philadelphia is a most difficult town just now for pedestrians, the door-steps being all of white marble glazed with ice, and sliding on the pavement may be had in perfection. Spent the best part of the day in slipping about, trying to deliver letters of introduction. The system of naming the streets of Philadelphia and of numbering the houses is extremely ingenious, and answers perfectly when you have made yourself acquainted with it; but as it takes an ordinary mind a week to find it out, the stranger who stops four or five days is apt to execrate it. All the streets run at right angles to one another, so that a short cut, the joy of the accomplished Londoner, is impossible. It is a chess-board on which the bishop's move is unknown. Nothing diagonal can be done. The city is ruled like the page of a ledger, from top to bottom with streets, from side to side with avenues. It is all divided into squares. When you are first told this, a vision arises of the possibility of cutting across these squares from corner to corner. Not a bit of it: a square at Philadelphia means a solid block of houses, not an open space enclosed by buildings. When you have wandered about for some time, the idea suggests itself that every house is exactly like the house next to it; although the inhabitants have given up the old uniformity of costume, the houses have not; and without this elaborate system of numbering, the inhabitants of Philadelphia would never be able to find their way home.

Nevertheless, if that is the finest town in which its inhabitants are best lodged, Philadelphia is the finest town in the world. It lodges a much smaller population than that of New York in more houses. In no other large town are rents comparatively so cheap. Every decent workingman can afford to have his separate house, with gas and water laid on, and fitted with a bath.

We have been making a study of the negro waiters. Perhaps cold weather affects them; but the first thing about them that strikes you is the apathetic infantine feeble-mindedness of the "colored persons" lately called niggers. I say nothing of the seven colored persons, of various shades, who always sit in a row on a bench in the hall, each with a little clothes-brush in his hand, and never attempt to do anything; I allude to those who minister to my wants in the coffee-room with utterly unknown dishes. I breakfasted yesterday off dun-fish and cream, Indian pudding, and dipped toast; for dinner I had a baked black-fish with soho sauce, and stewed venison with port wine; for vegetables, marrow, squash, and stewed tomatoes; and for pudding, "floating island."

You see there is something exciting about dinner. After you have ordered four courses of the unknown, and your colored person has gone in the direction of the kitchen, you sit with the mouth of expectation wide open. Sometimes you get grossly deceived. Yesterday F---- ordered "jole," and was sitting in a state of placid doubt, when his colored person returned with a plate of pickled pork. At present I am quite of the opinion of the wise man who discovered that colored persons are born and grow in exactly the same way as uncolored persons up to the age of thirteen, and that they then cease to develop their skulls and their intelligence. All the waiters in this hotel appear to be just about the age of thirteen. There are two who in wisdom are nearly twelve, and one gray-headed old fellow who is just over fourteen.

[Our traveller contented himself in the way of sight-seeing
by following Charles Dickens's path to the Penitentiary, and
afterwards visited Girard College. He concludes as follows:]

Even in this city of Penn the distinctive marks of Quakerism are dying out. The Quaker dress does not seem much more common in Philadelphia than in any other city, nor do they use the "thee" and "thou" in the streets; but at their own firesides, where the old people sit, they still speak the old language. A Quaker in the streets is not to be distinguished from other Philadelphians. I was talking to Mr. C---- about this, and he said, "Let me introduce you to a Quaker; I am a member of the church myself." L---- was not quite clear whether he was a Quaker or not. His parents had been; his sons certainly were not. Some of the best of the Southern soldiers came from the city of the Quakers. There is a story of a Quaker girl, who was exchanging rings with her lover as he set off to join the army; when they parted she said, "Thee must not wear it on thy trigger-finger, George."

Dined with Mr. L----, the publisher. He showed us over his enormous store, which seemed to be a model of discipline and organization, and described the book-market of America as being, like the Union, one and indivisible, and opened his ledger, in which were the names of customers in every State in the Union. He told us that he had about five thousand open accounts with different American booksellers. His policy is to keep in stock everything that a country bookseller requires, from a Bible to a stick of sealing-wax, so that when their stores get low they are able to write to him for everything they want. He contends, as other Philadelphians do, that New York is not the capital of America, but only its chief port of import, and that Philadelphia is the chief centre for distribution. Mr. Hepworth Dixon had been here not long before, and, as was right and fitting in the city of Quakers, a high banquet had been held in honor of the vindicator of William Penn.

[Thence Mr. Latham went to Baltimore, of which he describes the
following old-time experience: "When an American train reaches
a town it does not dream of pulling up short in a suburb, but
advances slowly through the streets; the driver on the engine
rings a large bell, and a man on horseback rides in front to
clear the way. Thus we entered Baltimore, arrived at the
terminus and uncoupled the engine; and then, still sitting in
the railway-car, were drawn by a team of horses along the
street-rails to the terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway
on the other side of the town." He is talking of antediluvian
days. We have reformed all that. After some experience in duck
and partridge shooting, and a taste of terrapin soup, he
proceeded to Washington. Of his varied experience there we can
give but a single out-door example.]

We went this morning over the Capitol, an enormous edifice still in progress; parts of it are continually built on to, and rebuilt, to meet the wants of the legislature. The two new white marble wings are very beautiful and nearly complete, and the dome is on the same scale with them, and of the same material. The centre is now out of proportion since the wings were built, and is of stone, painted white to match the rest in color and preserve it from the frost. If the South had succeeded in seceding it might have sufficed; but now it is bound to grow, and Congress are going to vote the amount of dollars necessary to make the Capitol complete. When completed it will be magnificent.

We are very unlucky in seeing these great marble palaces (for several of the public buildings of Washington are of this material) with the snow upon the ground. Against the pure white snow they appear dingy; under a summer sun they must show to far greater advantage. What ancient Athens appeared like, surrounding its marble temples, I can hardly realize; but the effect of the splendid public buildings in Washington is very much detracted from by the sheds and shanties which are near them. The builders of Washington determined that it should be a great city, and staked out its streets accordingly twice the width and length of any other streets: rightly is it named the city of magnificent distances. But although the Potomac is certainly wide enough, and apparently deep enough, to justify a certain amount of trade, and its situation is more central than that of Philadelphia, the town has never grown to fill the outlines traced for it.

To make a Washington street, take one marble temple or public office, a dozen good houses of brick, and a dozen of wood, and fill in with sheds and fields. Some blight seems to have fallen upon the city. It is the only place we have seen which is not full of growth and vitality. I have even heard its inhabitants tell stories of nightly pig-hunts in the streets, and of the danger of tumbling over a cow on the pavement on a dark night; but this must refer to by-gone times.

One of the most curious and characteristic of the great public buildings of Washington is the Patent Office, in which a working model is deposited of every patent taken out in the United States for the improvement of machinery.

This assemblage of specimens is an exhibition of which all Americans are proud, as a proof of the activity of American ingenuity working in every direction. Capacity to take out a patent is a quality necessary to make up the character of the perfect citizen. Labor is honorable, but the man who can invent a labor-saving machine is more honorable; he has gained a step in the great struggle with the powers of nature. An American who has utilized a water-power feels, I take it, two distinct and separate pleasures: first, in that dollars and cents drip off his water-wheel, and, secondly, in that he has inveigled the water-sprites into doing his work. If you tell an American that you are going to Washington, his first remark is not, "Then you will see Congress sitting," but, "Mind you go and see the Patent Office."

THE NATURAL BRIDGE AND TUNNEL OF VIRGINIA.

EDWARD A. POLLARD.

[The Old Dominion--to give Virginia its home title--is full
of natural wonders, some of them unsurpassed in beauty and
attractiveness elsewhere in the world. In number and variety of
mineral springs it stands unequalled; its caverns, Luray and
Weyer's, are rich in charms of subterranean scenery; and its
two remarkable examples of nature's grandeur, the Natural
Bridge and Natural Tunnel, are unique in their peculiar
characteristics. Edward A. Pollard, in his "Virginia Tourist,"
has ably described the various attractions of the Old Dominion,
and we select from this work his word picture of the Natural
Bridge. He made his way thither from Lynchburg, _via_ the James
River Canal.]

As the traveller enters the gap of the Blue Ridge from the east, the winding courses of the stage-coach carry him up the mountain's side until he has gained an elevation of hundreds of feet above the James River, over the waters of which the zigzag and rotten road hangs fearfully. On every side are gigantic mountains hemming him in; there are black ravines in the great prison-house; and the lengthened arms of the winds smite the strained ear with the sounds of the rapids below. While he looks at the distance, a mountain rivulet, slight and glittering from amid the primeval forest, dashes across his path, and, leaping from rock to rock, goes joyously on its way.

On the North River the scenes are quieter. Emerging here, the traveller sees a beautiful and fertile country opening before him, while still westward the blue outlines of distant mountains in Rockbridge bound his vision. The water landscape is beautiful. Lovely valleys debouch upon the stream; there are peaceful shadows in the steel-blue waters, and on the broad shoulders of the cattle on the banks we see the drapery of the shadows of the trees beneath which they rest. The fisherman standing leg-deep in the water can see his face as in a mirror.

But at present our way does not lie through these scenes. The canal-boat is taking us along the James in the moonlit night, and by the time the day has broken we are within two miles of the Natural Bridge. A rickety team awaits us at the lock-house where we disembark. Through an air filled with golden vapor, and with the mists of the morning yet hanging in the trees by the wayside, we proceed on our journey. The old stage-coach lumbers along under the thick, overhanging boughs of the forest pines, which ever and anon scrape its top or strike in through the windows, scattering the dew-drops in the very faces of the passengers, or perhaps smiting their cheeks with their sharp-pointed leaves.

The first view of the bridge is obtained half a mile from it at a turn on the stage-road. It is revealed with the suddenness of an apparition. Raised a hundred feet above the highest trees of the forest, and relieved against the purple side of a distant mountain, a whitish-gray arch is seen, in the effect of distance as perfect and clean-cut an arch as its Egyptian inventor could have defined. The tops of trees are waving in the interval, the upper half of which we only see, and the stupendous arch that spans the upper air is relieved from the first impression that it is man's masonry, the work of art, by the fifteen or twenty feet of soil that it supports, in which trees and shrubbery are firmly embedded,--the verdant crown and testimony of nature's great work. And here we are divested of an imagination which we believe is popular, that the bridge is merely a huge slab of rock thrown across a chasm, or some such hasty and violent arrangement. It is no such thing. The arch and whole interval are contained in one solid rock; the average width of that which makes the bridge is eighty feet, and beyond this the rock extends for a hundred feet or so in mural precipices, divided by only a single fissure, that makes a natural pier on the upper side of the bridge, and up which climb the hardy firs, ascending step by step on the noble rock-work till they overshadow you.

This mighty rock, a single mass sunk in the earth's side, of which even what appears is stupendous, is of the same geological character,--of limestone covered to the depth of from four to six feet with alluvial and clayey earth. The span of the arch runs from forty-five to sixty feet wide, and its height to the under line is one hundred and ninety-six feet, and to the head two hundred and fifteen feet. The form of the arch approaches to the elliptical; the stage-road which passes over the bridge runs from north to south, with an acclivity of thirty-five degrees, and the arch is carried over on a diagonal line,--the very line of all others the most difficult for the architect to realize, and the one best calculated for picturesque effects. It is the proportions of art in this wild, strange work of nature, its adjustment in the very perfection of mechanical skill, its apparently deliberate purpose, that create an interest the most curious and thoughtful. The deep ravine over which it sweeps, and through which traverses the beautiful Cedar Creek, is not otherwise easily passed for several miles, either above or below the bridge. It is needful to the spot, and yet so little likely to have survived the great fracture, the evidences of which are visible around, and which has made a fissure of about ninety feet through the breadth of a rock-ribbed hill, that we are at first disposed to reflect upon it as the work of man. It is only when we contemplate its full measure of grandeur that we are assured it is the work of God. We have the pier, the arch, the studied angle of ascent; and that nothing might be wanted in the evidences of design, the bridge is guarded by a parapet of rocks, so covered with fine shrubs and trees that a person travelling the stage-road running over it would, if not informed of the curiosity, pass it unnoticed.

But let him approach through the foliage to the side. More than two hundred feet below is the creek, apparently motionless, except where it flashes with light as it breaks on an obstruction in the channel; there are trees, attaining to grander heights as they ascend the face of the pier; and far below this bed of verdure the majestic rock rises with the decision of a wall, and the spectator shrinks from contemplating the grand but cruel depths, and turns away with dizzy sensations. But the most effective view is from the base of the bridge, where you descend by a circuitous and romantic path. Even to escape from the hot sun into these verdant and cool bottoms is of itself a luxury, and it prepares you for the deliberate enjoyment of the scene. Everything reposes in the most delightful shade, set off by the streaming rays of the sun, which shoot across the head of the picture far above you, and sweeten with softer touches the solitude below.

Standing by the rippling, gushing waters of the creek, and raising your eyes to the arch, massive and yet light and beautiful from its height, its elevation apparently increased by the narrowness of its piers and by its projection on the blue sky, you gaze on the great work of nature in wonder and astonishment. Yet a hundred beauties beckon you from the severe emotion of the sublime. When you have sustained this view of the arch raised against the sky, its black patches here and there shaped by imagination into grand and weird figures,--among them the eagle, the lion's head, and the heroic countenance of Washington; when you have taken in the proportions and circumstances of this elevated and wide span of rock,--so wide that the skies seem to slope from it to the horizon,--you are called to investigate other parts of the scene which strain the emotions less, and are distributed around in almost endless variety.

Looking through the arch, the eye is engaged with a various vista. Just beyond rises the frayed, unseamed wall of rock; the purple mountains stand out in the background; beneath them is a rank of hills and matted woods enclosing the dell below, while the creek coursing away from them appears to have been fed in their recesses. A few feet above the bridge the stream deflects, and invites to a point of view of the most curious effect. Taking a few steps backward, moving diagonally on the course of the stream, we see the interval of sky between the great abutments gradually shut out; thus apparently joined or lapped over, they give the effect of the face of a rock, with a straight seam running down it, and the imagination seizes the picture as of mighty gates closed upon us. We are shut in a wild and perturbed scene by these gates of hell; behind and around us is the contracted and high boundary of mountains and hills, and in this close and vexed scene we are for a moment prisoners.

Now let us move across, step by step, to a position fronting where these gates apparently close. Slowly they seem to swing open on unseen and noiseless hinges; wider and wider grows the happy interval of sky, until at last wide open stands the gate-way raised above the forest, resting as it were on the brow of heaven,--a world lying beyond it, its rivers and its hills expanding themselves to the light and splendor of the unshadowed day.

To an observer of both places a comparison is naturally suggested between the Natural Bridge and Niagara Falls in respect of the sublime and the beautiful; and, indeed, as in this respect the two greatest works of nature on this continent, they may well be used as illustrations in our American schools of aesthetics. The first is unique in its aspects of nature like art; it is nature with the proportions of art. In its expressions of power, in its concentration of emotion, as when we look at it distinct or complete, it is truly sublime; and its effect is alleviated (for it is a maxim in aesthetics that the sublime cannot be long sustained) by the picturesque scenery which surrounds it. It is a greater natural curiosity and more wonderful than Niagara, although it lacks the elements of sublimity which the other has in sound, and of the visible, actual struggle in which it displays the powers of nature. Niagara is a living thing, while the Natural Bridge is _monumental_. The first represents the sublime as allied to the terrific,--in contemplating it we are overwhelmed with a sense of our insignificance; while the Natural Bridge associates the sublime with the pleasing and curious, and, not transporting us as violently as Niagara, entertains us more equably, and dismisses us, we think, with more distinct and fruitful perceptions of the grandeur and beneficence and variety of nature which have been distributed in the picture.

[Washington, a century and a half ago, carved his name at a
high elevation on the rock walls of the abyss. In 1818 these
walls were climbed to the top by James H. Piper, a student
of Washington College, Virginia. The narrative here given of
this daring feat is from the pen of William A. Caruthers.]

Mr. Piper, the hero of the occasion, commenced climbing on the opposite side of the creek from the one by which the pathway ascends the ravine. He began down on the banks of the brook so far that we did not know where he had gone, and were only apprised of his whereabouts by his shouting above our heads. When we looked up, he was standing apparently right under the arch, I suppose a hundred feet from the bottom, and that on the smooth side, which is generally considered inaccessible without a ladder. He was standing far above the spot where General Washington is said to have inscribed his name when a youth. The ledge of the rock by which he ascended to this perilous height does not appear from below to be three inches wide, and runs almost at right angles to the abutment of the bridge....

The ledge of rock on which he was standing appeared so narrow to us below as to make us believe his position a very perilous one, and we earnestly entreated him to come down. He answered us with loud shouts of derision....

He soon after descended from that side, crossed the brook, and commenced climbing on the side by which all visitors ascend the ravine. He first mounted the rocks on this side, as he had done on the other, far down the abutment, but not so far as on the opposite side. The projecting ledge may be distinctly seen by any visitor. It commences four or five feet from the pathway on the lower side, and winds round, gradually ascending, until it meets the cleft of rock over which the celebrated cedar stump hangs. Following this ledge to its termination, it brought him thirty or forty feet from the ground, and placed him between two deep fissures, one on each side of the gigantic column of rock on which the aforementioned cedar stump stands.

This column stands out from the bridge, as separate and distinct as if placed there by nature on purpose for an observatory to the wonderful arch and ravine which it overlooks. A huge crack or fissure extends from its base to the summit; indeed, it is cracked on both sides, but much more perceptibly on one side than the other. Both of these fissures are thickly overgrown with bushes, and numerous roots project into them from trees growing on the precipice. It was between these that the aforementioned ledge conducted him. Here he stopped, pulled off his coat and shoes and threw them down to me. And this, in my opinion, is a sufficient refutation of the story so often told, that he went up to inscribe his name, and ascended so high that he found it more difficult to return than to go forward. He could have returned easily from the point where he disencumbered himself, but the fact that he did thus prepare so early, and so near the ground, and after he had ascended more than double that height on the other side, is clear proof that to inscribe his name was not, and to climb the bridge was, his object. He had already inscribed his name above Washington himself more than fifty feet.

Around the face of this huge column, and between the clefts, he now moved backward and forward, still ascending as he found convenient foothold. When he had ascended about one hundred and seventy feet from the earth, and had reached the point where the pillar overhangs the ravine, his heart seemed to fail him. He stopped, and seemed to us to be balancing midway between heaven and earth. We were in dread suspense, expecting every moment to see him dashed in atoms at our feet. We had already exhausted our powers of entreaty in persuading him to return, but all to no purpose. Now it was perilous even to speak to him, and very difficult to carry on conversation at all, from the immense height to which he had ascended, and the noise made by the bubbling of the little brook as it tumbled in tiny cascades over its rocky bed at our feet. At length he seemed to discover that one of the clefts before mentioned retreated backward from the overhanging position of the pillar. Into this he sprang at once, and was soon out of sight and out of danger.

There is not a word of truth in all that story about our hauling him up with ropes, and his fainting away so soon as he landed on the summit. Those acquainted with the localities will at once perceive its absurdity; for we were beneath the arch, and it is half a mile round to the top, and for the most part up a rugged mountain. Instead of fainting away, Mr. Piper proceeded down the hill to meet us and obtain his hat and shoes. We met about half-way, and then he lay down for a few moments to recover himself of his fatigue.

[Virginia possesses another marvel of nature's handiwork of
the same general character as the Natural Bridge, and of
which Mr. Pollard's description may here fitly be given.]

After progressing about three miles from the ford of the Clinch River, and after having repeatedly crossed its crooked tributary, Stock Creek, we come to a small mountain or globular hill which is our wondrous destination, for here is the Natural Tunnel. There is nothing which advertises in advance this great wonder, or in any way excites the expectations of the traveller. There is a common road, from which we depart a few hundred yards to make a half circuit of the base of the mountain, that goes clean over the ridge, leading to a settlement some miles farther, called Rye Cove, and which was once the abode of a fierce Indian tribe. This main road goes over the arch of the tunnel, furnishing a curious convenience to the traveller, of which he would be unaware, seeing nothing through the foliage but glimpses of the mural rocks that guard and sustain the termination of the secret passage-way many hundred feet below him. It is from this convenience that the neighboring people name the gigantic work of nature we are proceeding to explore a natural bridge. But this name is certainly insufficient and paltry for a rock-work that on one flank at least extends some eight hundred feet, and which, if regarded with reference to the breadth of the interval it spans, is, in fact, a complication of bridges, arranged, as we shall presently see, in one single massive spectacle.

The western face of the tunnel, near which we dismount, continues partly concealed from view, or is imperfectly exposed, until we nearly approach it, the immense rock which is perforated being here dressed with the thick foliage of the spruce-pine, and the harsh surface adorned with a beautiful tracery of vines and creepers. At last is seen the entrance of what appears to be a huge subterraneous cavern or grotto, into which the stream disappears; a towering rock rising here about two hundred feet above the surface of the stream, and a rude entrance gouged into it, varying in width, as far as the eye can reach, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet, and rising in a clear vault from seventy to eighty feet above the floor. The view here terminates in the very blackness of darkness; it is broken on the first curve of the tunnel. The bed of the stream, from which the water has disappeared on account of the drouth, the reduced currents sinking to lower subterranean channels, is piled with great irregular rocks, on the sharp points of which we stumble and cut our hands: there is no foothold but on rocks, and it is only when we have struggled through the awful, cruel darkness, holding up some feeble lights in it, and issued into the broad sunshine, that we find we have travelled nearly two hundred yards (or say, more exactly, five hundred feet) through one solid rock, in which there is not an inch of soil, not a seam, not a cleft, and which, even beyond the debouchure of the tunnel, yet runs away a hundred yards in a wall five hundred feet high, as clean and whetted as the work of the mason.

But we must not anticipate this majestical scene, "wonderful beyond all wondrous measure." Happily, in entering the tunnel from the western side we have adopted the course of exploration which affords a gradual ascent of the emotions, until at last they tower to the standard of a perfect sublimity. The course of the tunnel may be described as a continuous curve: it resembles, indeed, a prostrate S. For a distance of twenty yards midway of this course we are excluded from a view of either entrance, and the darkness is about that of a night with one quarter of the moon. The vault becomes lower here--in some places scarcely more than thirty feet high--and springs immediately from the floor. The situation is awful and oppressive: the voice sounds unnatural, and rumbles strangely and fearfully along the arch of stone. We are encoffined in the solid rock: there is a strange pang in the beating heart in its imprisonment, so _impenetrable_, black, hopeless, and we hurry to meet the light of day. In that light we are disentombed: we cast off the confinements of the black space through which we have passed, and we are instantly introduced to a scene so luminous and majestic that in a moment our trembling eyes are captivated and our hearts lifted in unutterable worship of the Creator's works.

It is that sheer wall of rock which we have already mentioned, where the arch and other side of the tunnel break away into the mountain slope; a high wall, slightly impending; an amphitheatre, extending one hundred yards, of awful precipices; a clean battlement, without a joint in it, five hundred feet high. And this splendid height and breadth of stone, that a thousand storms have polished, leaving not a cleft of soil in it,--this huge, unjointed masonry raised against the sky, gray and weather-stained, with glittering patches of light on it,--is yet part of the same huge rock which towered at the farther end of the tunnel, and through whose seamless cavity we have travelled two hundred yards. It is in this view that the mystery of the scene seizes the mind, and the last element of sublimity is added to it. It is in this view that the Natural Tunnel we had come to see as a mere "curiosity" takes rank among the greatest wonders of the world. What power, what possible imaginable agency of nature, could have worked out this stupendous scene?...

Turning our eyes away from the battlement of rock to the opposite side of the ravine, a new revelation of the grand and picturesque awaits us. Here a gigantic cliff, but one broken with rock and soil, and threaded to its summit by a sapling growth of the buckeye, the linden, and the pine, rises almost perpendicularly from the water's edge to a height almost equal to that of the opposite wall of rock. A natural platform is seen to project over it, and yet a few yards farther there is an insulated cliff, a cyclopean _chimney_, so to speak, scarcely more than a foot square at its top, rising in the form of a turret at least sixty feet above its basement, which is a portion of the imposing cliff we have mentioned. It is at once perceived that here are two points of view that will give us new and perhaps the most imposing aspects of the scene. To attain these points, however, it is necessary to make a circuit of half a mile; and the sinking sun admonishes us to defer this new interest of the scene until to-morrow....

We remounted for the tunnel in the early morning, and were soon to find that the rising sun was to give a new and unexpected glory to the scene. This time we ascend the mountain instead of deflecting as before. The road is easy; there are no difficulties of access to the points of view from the top of the tunnel, and they are undoubtedly the grandest. We pass to the platform before described by a few steps from the main road. It is a slab of rock projecting from an open patch of ground; a dead cedar-tree is standing at its edge, throwing its gnarled and twisted arms, as in wild and widowed sorrow, over the awful scene below. We now see the great opposite amphitheatre of rock in added grandeur, for we see it from above,--we see it across a chasm nine hundred feet wide and five hundred feet deep, and the exposure being almost exactly eastern, the long spears of the rising sun are being shattered on it. The effect is inexpressibly grand. But there is one more circumstance to be added to the scene; we do not see from this observatory the arch, the entrance of the tunnel. A few yards farther the fearful chimney-shaped rock invites to a more commanding view, but the ascent is dangerous; the stone on top is loose, and so narrow that two persons can scarcely stand on it. A single misstep, a moment's loss of balance, and we would fall into eternity. But now the sense of peril is lost, or is rather mingled, in the grandeur of the scene. It is a panoramic view. We have now the whole sweep of the mural precipice opposite; the sun's glitter is incessant on the polished stone; the trees which fringe the bottom appear now scarcely more than shrubs; the entrance of the tunnel has now come into view, and that which yesterday we thought so high and wide, now appears, from our amazing height, as a stooped door-way. We imagine the gloomy entrance into a cave of Erebus and Death, the broken rocks lying within which look like black and mangled entrails. It is a fearful picture,--it is that of a supernatural abode.