New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1878-12-04

stream and towards The shore where /
was to sell my morning takings. Every.
inch was won by a strain that made the
preparation start from every PORE It
was for life I fought, for dear life. It.
was death that I pulled against and
such a death! for it was as If curtain
was suddenly withdrawn to show me
all the danger had so long been run
nlng unconsciously. It flashed into my
thoughts how I had played in the very
hunger for me.
'.As 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
Gas now recollected, so nearD that my
thoughts had ceased to be cognizant of
it; now it almost stunned me.
II talk stagily, don't /? I tell you,
stranger, if you want to wake up your
fancy really well, just try an hours pull
against Niagara, with the feeling that
perhaps fate is against you. You'll be
far from cool and commonplace in
thought or speech, if you think or ut
ter any thing
minutes that had seemed hours had
passed, and still l was struggling fyanti-
cally, steaming with my frenzied exer-
lions. I had won some way. 1 had
edged some distance from the central
rush Of the river, and safety would be
found in the slower waters that skirted
the bank, could but reach them.
II bent still more madly to the effort.
| In moment had lost my hold on ex-
istence, and was rushing, helpless and
hopeless, to the dreadful fate had been
fighting against One of my paddles,
overstrained, had broken, and, at the
mercy of the mighty flood, I was speed
(! ing every minute more swiftly to what I
knew SO well-what I saw as plainly
with my mind s eye as I had thousands
OF times seen it with my living sight.
Show | saw all we are looking
down on here! Not sight, not sound,
we are seeing and hearing, but was in
that moment heard and seen by me more
| wildly than now. I was literally be
wildered with the roar I now hear so
| calmly.
II shrieked aloud In my agony as I
clasped my useless hands over my sight,
vainly, to shut out the smooth slide of the
inland sea, as I saw it flashing back the
morning sun as it leap5 into the misty
gulf into whose thunder it shot.
"a few moments bore me down to the
rapids. A few minutes, and I was
through them safely. How I escaped
wreck among them puzzles me. I was
too paralyzed with horror to use my one
paddle, to in any way steer my light
craft through the foaming currents on
which it tossed. It's lightness must have
saved it.. Had it been a heavier built
boat it would have been dashed to shreds
a score of times before we reached smooth
water. AS it was, it danced along. frolick-
ing is it seemed to me, with CHASTITY de-
tiance Of the destiny to which it so sure
" hurried.
"Out of the Kissing! out of the frothing
foam! We were Oh the calm, majestic
mass Of watcrs-the sea tide, you might
surely call it, that was to hurl itself and
me to atoms.
Show oddly the mind acts in such
moments OF horror! Would you believe
it? a tradition Of Niagara actually oc-
Cured to me as flashed along. It was
an Indian legend. I remembered how
an Indian squaw, long the favorite of
famous Chief, found a young maiden was
to supplant her in her wigwam. recol-
lect--I swear saw it as plainly as if
Imagination and reality were one--she
bore the bestowed child she had borne
to its father from her forest home till
she reached canoe. Then she padded
herself and her boy into the full stream
and cast the paddles from her, and with
heavy heart, nerved by hate and revenge
and misery unendurable, stood up
chanting her death song that recounted
her wrong and her misery, and welcomed
her coming escape from it, till they shot
into eternity amid the hell of waters below
Given while this was for an instant
| flashing through my bewildered brain
was entering the very heart of the thun-
der of the fail. Moments only seperated
me from my release from agony. But
the Indian stoicism was foreign to me; I
could have yelled aloud in the terror that
| possessed me
II dared not await seated the awful
last moment that was SO near. / faced
my fate; Il turned; stood up: 1 looked
stralght aneau 70 Wnefe the curvlnS Wa
tiers were to launch me to peace eternal.
"The FLOOD had scarcely 8 ripple on its
surface.
"Was It real? Within few yards of
the awful brink the canoe had shot by
fiat speck of rock that off the shores of
Goat Island lay stirless on the very edge
of the abyss.
"With a hardly conscious effort in pass
ing had sprang to its slippery surface.