Connecticut western news., 1879-06-04
An Awful Scene at Niagara.

If the EallS or Niagara were III tHe Bois de Boulogne they would have to be caged ill iron like the top of the column in the Place Vendome. Otherwise we may be sure daily fotilla manned by suicides would rush to avail of so TO- mantle and exciting an end as that of going over the cataract.
 The unhappy man who met his fate lately did not, however, seek it. He was drunk, and tried, at the cost of his life, to do feat he had performed when sober. To row to Goat Island in the way he sought to do one has to cross at an angle a portion of the rapids. This delicate piece of work means suc- cess or death. To "Pie Walker" 8 guide and boatman on the Niagara River, it had often meant success and some dollars of reward from pleasure seekers, who enjoyed seeing fellow creature risk his life for their amusement. On this occasion the poor fellow being con- fused by drink was caught at disanvan- tage by the rushing waters, and his frail boat was tossed toward the crest of the Falls. At this critical moment large excursion party from Buffalo arrived at the brink of the river and saw the whole spectacle. There was yet, it seems, 8 chance for the man. Could he have summoned the strength and the nerve to pull into the sluiceway which runs near the Cataract House he might have been saved. Some one shouted to Walker to do this and he made the effort. While hundreds of eyes were strained upon him, and hundreds of breaths were held the while he made his supreme effort. But Tn doing so he
 "caught crab" and fell backward. In a moment his oar was whirled away by the current, and the boat was at the
 mercy at the rapids.
 Even now Walker might, if sober,
 have saved his life. Halfway between
 the Cataract House and the head o1
 Goat Island there peers above the boil.
 ing flood some fragments of broken
 rock. Here, as if by some special in
 tervention, the frail skif lodged anG
 remained for some moments. It is said that the water for some distance around
 where Walker now found himself is bu
 few inches deep. He might easily, i
 is confidently asserted, have abandoned
 the boat and clung to the rocks unti succor, in some shape, could have reach .. him. But dazed by the stimulant h had taken, and probably confused b. , the roar of the water and the danger 0 his situation, the doomed man lay help less and inert. A few moments of sus
 pense and the skiff swung from the rock f and aga1n plunged forward. Present. n it struck another rock and this tim broke in two. Its miserable occupa1 7 was tossed like feather up the gres
 green bulge which forms the last ede of the mass of water before it dror :, was seen, and has been seen, no nor, o This dismal catastrophe has often bee ,- repeated before. No season passes, , fact, without one or more examples ( s, it. Sometimes by accident, sometime :, by design, this terrific leap into futuriI I is often taken, and, as 8 rule, the vi h tims are never heard of again. But u a impressiveness of the sight loses not 9 ing by it's frequency. There is no for r of swift death which seems to convey ,+ profound lesson of the frailty of o1 v- tenure upon hfe, or of the infinite littl ,a ness of man in presence of the gigant
 forces of nature.