The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-08 00:00:00

THE FALLS OF NIAGARA.

You must descend to the very edge of the trembling
rocky brink of the cauldron on the British side, imme-
diately under the stairs, and 60 or 70 feet below the
narrow platform of the rock on which you have stood
when you have reached the last of these stairs. This
is not to be effected without some trouble, risk, and
fatigue ; but it repays all your exertion, for when you
have reached the edge, close to the Rainbow or Split
Rock, }ou are, as it were, at once in a new world—
chaos seems there to have never been disturbed
by the regularity of nature, hut reigns solemn and
supreme. Place your back against the projecting,
blackened, and slime-covered rocks, and look towards
the mighty mass of vapour and water before you, around
you, beneath you, and above you, Hearing, sight,
feeling, becomes as it were blended and confounded.
You are sensible that you exist, perhaps, but in what
state of existence has, for a few minutes, vanished from
your imagination. The rocks vibrate under your feet;
the mie-white boiling aod mountain surge advances,
swells up, subsides, recoils, lashes, and mingles with
the thick vapour. An indescribable and terrific, dull,
yet deafening sound, shakes the air ; your nerves feel
the concussion, and the words of surprise which
at length escape from your lips are inaudible oven to
yourself, so aft fully stern is the uproar of the contend-
ing air and water in their conflict for mastery. The
ideas which first struck me when I had recovered from
this stupor of astonishment, were those of being swept
away by the foaming mountains, bubbling, seething in
the huge cauldron at my feet ; of being on the point
of losing the sense of hearing, for my temerity in
venturing to pry so nearly into the unattainah:e mysteries
of nature ; and of instant annihilation from the mass
'of overbariging black and beetling rock above my
head, at an absolute height of nearly 200 feet. la fact,
I experienced the some sensations so le .utifully de-
scribed by Stakspeare in Lear, but from a reverse
cause ; so true is it ti4t extremes meat, I became giddy
and confottoded by looking at and up to the dizzy scene,
instead of
,glancing from the eye down towards an un-
fathomable abyss of air and water below, There are
few visitor A who venture to the " imminent deadly
breach" of the edge of the cauldron, and of the Split
Rainbow Rock. These form a huge mats, buried
cables.deep in the: gulf, fallen headlong from above,
teat by: tEte fall 'in twain nearly to its base, wedged
into the lip of the cauldron, and towering '2O or 30
feet above the mountain surge. How it became so
transfixed baffles conjecture, for it was evidently hurled
from the table-rock above. This Rainbow Rock, as it
is called, or Iris's Throne, from the extremity of the aro
appearing to rest upon it whoa you view the great fall
from tbe rocky table above, cannot now be approached
so easily, The ladder by which, at much personal
hazard, its flat and slippery surface was gained, has
been swept away by the raging flood ; and it is, per-
haps, fortunate that it is so, for the experiment of
gaining and standing on the surface was attended
with great risk. I saw one person, whilst I was
sketching the scene, actually lying down at full length
upon the edge of. it, with his head projected over, to
look into the very cauldron. I .shuddered at the bardi-
hoad displayed, for a false movement would be inevitable
and instant destruction on that slippery pl itform. When
he descended the ladder I told him what I bad felt,
~nd he was fully aware of his danger, but fraH, that
from his childhnod he had been a ranger in the Alps.
To add to the difficulties of your situation on the edge
of the cauldron the descending and ascending spray is
so great that you are wet through very soon ; whilst
the clouds of arrowy sleet driving in your eyes render
sketching not very pleasant ; whilst, to add ta your
stock of ideas you behold a truly Freischutz display,
(or, crawling at your feet, amidst a mass of ground and
splintered timber, bones, and shivered r,,ek, are the
loathsome and large block toad, the hideously-Lie formed
black lizard, eels of a most equivocal appecrance, and
even that prototype of the eel, the fierce black water
serpent.—Bonnyeasik's Caaadas.

Mon-
day week, in the ninety-sixth
LONGEVITY.--Died,at Killamarsh, on
year of his age, Mr. John
Malleuder. He was a cordwainer by trade, and was
generally respected for his sober and industrious habits,
and brought up a large family by his own exerticns. He
has, left behind -him ten children—eight sans and two
fifty-six gram!-chki,.,-,!, one. hundred and live
greut-graod-aildivn, and two in her aillety-
first and the other in the ninety-third year of her age—
to lament the loss of an affectionate relative. He lived
and died in peace.—Derby Mercury. • -• • •