Year: 1879

An. Entire leo Bridge Spanning ,he Width ef tho River Just Below the Cataract.

 The Buffalo (N. Y.) Courier of a re- cent date says:

 For some days large amount eff snow-covered ice from Lake Erie has been passing over the falls. At eight o'clock on Sunday morning the accumu- lated mass of ice came to a standstill beneath the Suspension bridge, and the watchers began to hope that there would be bridge with smooth surface. But the huge dam of ice suddenly began to heave, grind, and break up into frag- ments with a loud noise. At ten o'clock there was second standstilI, and it seemed certain that the bridge had been formed, but at two in the afternoon there was third and more severe dis turbance,

 Great hummocks, weighing hundreds of tons, were pushed into the air and remained there as monuments of the fearful battle. Large powders were torn from the shore and swept into the stream, and the solitary fir which was wont to mark the landing place of the ferry became victim to the warning clements, though ordinarily it stands three feet above high water. The slow, awful strength of the infuriated waters was so apparent that it seemed as if they must rend the great gorge in twain and escape from their thralldom by some new road; but there was only one gateway for them, and, as they could not break the mile-wide dam in two, they lifted it up bodily and swept away beneath. Having thus succumbed, tue water allowed the ice to rest above it. accepting the yoke which it could not break, despite it's boasted strength. And now the victor rests quietly, torn and ragged it is true, but invincible: and so it will remain until the beams of the spring sun deprive it of it's strength, and once more restore Niagara to its accustomed freedom. The bridge is nearly mile in length, extending from line drawn perpendicularly to Point Lookout, in the American park, half way to the railroad bridge, and filling the gorge from shore to shore.

 The first view of the falls brings the heart up into the mouth with shock that is almost painful in it's suddenness and force. Everything is so changed, so trans6gured. Ice everywhere Ice upon the rocks, upon the trees, en- croaching upon the cataract itself and

 

 large portion of it's power, to all seem- ing. As the spectator stands upon this point the wind blows the spray into his face. ana soon covers him all over with jewels; but what cares he for the spray in the enthusiasm of the glorious view In the park the ice has been as destruc- tive as it is beautiful, and though it has robed the trees and buildings in snowy beauty, it has torn down huge limbs by it's overpowering weight. Looking over to the Canadian shore, the observer can see huge icicles of many tons weight hanging like the ropey locks on the foreheads of giants in the story books. But these sights are nothing when com pared to the broad sheet of wrinkled snow-ice which lies at his feet. There it is-the conqueror of Niagara-spark- ling in the sunlight calmly and peace fully.

 Beside the rotunda which stands at the base of the American fall moun- tain of snowy spray ice towers up eighty feet high, and is each day climbing higher and higher toward the summit. The dome of the rotunda bears an ice crown of exceeding beauty, and along the roof of the dressing shed are curious ice formations which nothing less than photographic camera can adequately picture. Giant icicles hang from the cliffs, and every once in a while huge fragment comes tumbling down. The ice is perfectly white, and seemingly quite porous, but excessively hard frozen. It's appearance is exactly that of spun glass. It is said that the spray which formed this ice was perfectly pure, and that if ton of it were melted ILL tity of sediment. The ice mountain is still in comparative infancy, but if the wind and the mercury are favorable it will soon be in a condition to form a coasting hill for the people as it did during the winter of 1875.

 The great ice bridge itself is coun- terpart in miniature of an Alpine glacier. You have the rough broken surface, the hummocks reaching ten, fifteen, twenty feet into the air, the startling Assures gaping perhaps with depth of thirty feet in the solid ice; and you have the pure snow ice itself in a million strange and inexplicable shapes; but there is an association of terror in this place which does not belong to the genuine glacier, and which may come from the muffied roar of the waterfall; perchapce the thought of POO feet of water seething and boiling beneath your feet. Many of our readers have stood on theshank beside tie whirlpool rapids and seen fhs wrsthful waters mound upward toward tEe sky in thousand contending cur rents as they battle to escape from their prisoning walls. Imagine this agitated surface suddenly becoming petrified, and every broken wave halting just where it was, and this will give you an idea of the magnitude of this structure. In thickness it is probably about sixty feet, while the surface of the ice is at least half that distance from the surface of the water. There are crevasses twen- ty-tive or thirty feet in depth, and yet they show no signs of water.