New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1878-12-04
tario. Field and forest know nv shoe
leather all through these parts.

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when I was thirty, or whereabouts, |
hutted up this river some four miles or
SO away. You've tracked it down may
be to here. You'd hardly think we were
coming upon this. The country up river
is fattish:s s The river slides along quiet
enough. tooa 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 the thunder ahead grows upon
you, dull, awful, everlasting, that has
sounded on from creation, and will out
last you and me, stranger, and thousands
of genations yet to come.
"Where i lived was, as said, buta few
miles above this. Further down the calm
flow Of the river swirls into ripples, and
Whirls and grows scared like OF what's be-
fore it, Then it exercises itself for the
hell it is to pass through. 1t tastes pur-
gatory. It's all foam and dash, and
splutter and growl, through the frothy
rapids that roughen it for awhile. Then
it settles for steady work. Il braces it
self for endurance, and then pluckily
smooths itself 10 face its fate.
sHow grand that calm deep flood is
that pours along without stay or hurry
that you can see, to its awful plunge
But, stranger, smooth and peaceable as it
looks, it's deep enough and strong enough
to astonish weak nerves. or iron ones, as I
know we'll, and you'll know before I've
done if my tongue does its duty.
"Just look across the fall. You see it
best from the British side. Run your
eye round the great horseshoe near you,
That curve is some tvs Thousand feet
broad, and some hundred and fifty feet
deep. Then there's Goat Island, snug in
the midst Of the mighty plunge.
Can you see small, fist speck Of rock
not SO many yards offEits shores? No? I
know it, as you'll hear. Our American
fall beyond knuckles under little TO this
nearer to us. But it's mighty respect
able watershed, too. Twelve hundred
feet in the breadth, hundred and fifty
feet high. Your knowalls guess that
every passage minute some seven hum
dred thousand tons of good fresh river
roll over that rock into sprays and foam
in the dim gulf below.
GAS boy, used to see beauty as we'll
as wonder in all this. Where it's not hid
white with foam see what clear sea-
green the flood is as it shoots over You
can measure the force Of the rush of wa
tiers, for the curve of the shining sheet is
fifty feet from the wall of rock it slips
down.
"How does it strike you? You see it,
dare say, as I saw it two score years ago.
To you it is terrible, but not all terror,
It's lovely too. And to me? well, to me
it is horror only; it has been so since that
day when I hung on its very brink for
hours, and thought CT it as one might
think in q nightmare dream of some
hideous thing, uncomfortable, unutterable
that held one in its awful 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 ever since, night and day,
season and season. There it will stay till
the death rattle kills the memory of all
this side Of NY coffin.
81 hunted and fshed then. That's how
I lived. Visitors then came pretty plen-
l.
ready sale for what | caught, whether it
was fur or I'm. I had canoed it from
when I could recollect any thing, and
was pretty spry, tell you, with the pad
dies, and pretty venturesome, too, be-
came, till I thought was strong enough
and skilled enough to run risks here
abouts that others would have shuddered
from. i% zS ts#9f5 &
u thought knew Niagara too we'll to
be in any danger from it, I was so famil-
lar with it, thought of it with none of
the scare. new-come rs found in it. l used
to laugh at their genuine fears at the very
sight and sound oft, I know 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
sun danced rainbows above its flashing
foods. Then it was too old friend of
mine to be dreaded by me.
t.one DAY changed all this, and knew
it for the hungry monster that it is
pitlless, craving for it's human prey.
sit was one Wednesday IN August. The
hotels were full. Fish was in request, as
much as I could bring. Price didn't
matter. Pleasure seekers bleed freely. I
was paid we'll for what could be charged
for as they liked. I had found that the
nearer the rapids got the finer seemed
what I caught, and the more freely the
bait was taken. l had SO often gone
where most were too timid to venture
that I had come to believe I could skim
any yyhere. -
Even now / think, had my paddle
been sound, I should have come off safe.
swell, that morning was out at sun