The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1878-12-11
SNATCHED FROM NIAGARA.

o1P VI WateE DetteF MoItu eyClhS wv
all your jaunts anywhere. Well, you
see, it's just an ocean, as it were, rolling
over that limestone ledge. Foam, spray
and thunder-one dull, eternal, awful
roar, spanned by shifting rainbows-
that's it.
"It's like an entertainment provided
for those who house at our hotels; some
thing to draw customer and tot up q
Jolly return for the capital invested.
That's it, isn't it? It gives you a pleas.
ure to talk about and pay for, and brings
dollars to those that let you lodgings.
Come, it is up to your notions, lie II not,
stranger ?" .
"Can't you see something beyond
dollars and cents in this wonder of
wonders p. / said. "I know familiarity
breeds contempt toward most things,
but I rather expected to find Niagara
beyond this customary result"
"Well, to say the plain truth, l don't
go in for outlandish howlings about this
foarer; but when you talk of my having
any sort OF contempt for it, I tell you my
fancies about Old Thunderer are some
thing particularly different to that.
Shall I tell you why Are you in a
listening fit? Yes? Then fG- once Ill
let out a story I have in my memory,
and no living man, native or foreign,
has anything to pair OF with it a. re-
spects this tumbler below u.s." So. with
the dread music in my ears of this mighty
mass of fashing-down waters, I listened
to a tale hat has ever since formed part
Of my reeollections of Niagara.
"I'm todghisa still, you see. Oldish
rather, for sixty odd years I've lived
hereabout; for here I was born. know
this place pretty we'll, I guess; every
foot of every rock, of every track fol
long miles away-up to Erie and down
to Ontario. Fisd and forest know my
shoe leather all through these parts.
"When I was thirty, or thereabout,
I hutted up this river some four miles
or so away. You've tracked it down
maybe to here. You'd hardly think we
were coming upon this. The country
up river is fattish, The river slides
along quiet enough, too. No crags, no
precipices, no darksome forests; all
is fertile and good to the eye OF man
just peace and plenty. It is different,
though as the sound of thunder ahead
grows upon you-dull, awful, everlast-
ing, that has sounded on from creation,
and will outlast you and me, stranger,
and thousands of generations yet to
come.
Chow does it strike you? You see
it, I dare say, as T saw it two score years
ago. To you it is terrible, but not NIL
terror. It's lovely, too. And to me ?
we'll, to me it is horror only; it has
been so since that day when 1 hung on
its very brink for hours, and thought OF
it as one might think in O nightmare
dream of some hideous thing, incon.
ceivable, unutterable, that held one in
.1nSgful grasp. But mine was no
vision Of the night; to laugh at when
awakened. Those hours grizzled the
then brown of my young head into the
iron gray you see it now. Their iron
entered into my soul, as they say. 1t
has lived there yer since, night and
day, season and season. There it will
stay till the death-rattle kills the mem
DRY OF all this side of my coffin.
81 hunted and ished then. That's
how I lived. Visitors then came pretty
plentiful to see this wonder. I could
get a ready sale for what I caught,
whether it was fur or fin. I had canoed
it from when I could recollect anything,
and was pretty spry, I tell you, with the
paddles, and pretty venturesome, too, I
became, till I thought I was strong
enough and skilled enough to run risks
hereaboub that others would have shud-
dered from.
ST thought 1 knew Niagara too well
to be in any danger from it. l was 50
familiar with it, I thought of it with
lone of the scare newcomers found in
1T. used to laugh at their genuine
fears at the very sight and sound of it.
knew it by night when the calm moon
light poured down light through the
silvered spray clouds that hung over it !;
by day, when the glad danced rain
bows above its flashing foods. Then it
was too old a friend of mine to be
dreaded by me.
Zone day changed all this, AMI I
knew it for the hungry monster that it
is-pitiless, craving for its human prey.
"It was one Wednesday in August.
The hotels were full. Fish was in re.
quest, as much as I could bring. Price
didn't matter. Pleasure seekers bleed
freely. I was paid well for what could
be charged for as they liked. + had
found that nearer the rapids I got the
finer seemed what / caught, and the
more freely the bait was taken. I had
&c often gone where most were too
timid to venture that I had come to be-
lieye I could skim anywhere.
"Even now I think had my paddle
been sound, I should have come off safe.
swell, that morning I was out at
sunrise, and pretty successful I was. 1
steadied my course, letting the canoe
drift little by little toward the rapids
that frothed and raved some miles be-
low. I felt at any moment I could shoot
it out of the strength of the current into
the smoother waters by the shore.
81 got fully employed withsmy lines,
for, as I glided down stream, my take
was rapid, and that of the finest. So
eager was I that T failed to pay that at
tention to the drift of my canoe which
was so needful.
SIT was with a start Mt last I felt I
was far too much in the deep current OF
the river, and that it's strength would
need my utmost efforts to escape from
its grasp. For the first time 7 felt real
dread, for tho boiling and hiss of the
seething waters could almost be heard
below me. piled the paddles strongly,
and for 6 while I had hopes of safety,
though I had never known the need of
the exertions I wa now using to draw
myself out of the mighty force OF the
food that sped onward to It fearful
fall.
"Inch by inch I fought my way up
stream and toward the shore where +
IA to sell my morning. takings. Every
inch was won by a strain that made the
.perspiration start from every pore. It
was for life I fought, for dear life, 1t
was death that I pulled ~against-and
such a death for it was as if a curtain
WA suddenly withdrawn to show me all
the danger had so long been running
unconsciously. It flashed into nv
thoughts how I had played in the very
Jaws OF destruction that now seemed to
hunger for me.
Gas I toiled frantically against the
rushing waters, they were living things
whose clutch sought to drag me with
them to share their awful doom. I had
grown so used to the roar of the cataract
re- T nou raao1loofo1 ~ ,,,.N LL.-