Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats and all,
  From the rude wigwam to the Congress Hall,
  From man the savage, whether slaved or free,
  To man the civilized, less tame than he,
  'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife
  Betwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life;
  Where every ill the ancient world could brew
  Is mixed with every grossness of the new;
  Where all corrupts, though little can entice,
  And naught is known of luxury, but its vice!
  Is this the region then, is this the clime
  For soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime,
  Which all their miracles of light reveal
  To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?
  Alas! not so!

And after much more of proud protest against Columbia and "the mob mania
that imbrutes her now," our disapproving poet turned in to make the
best, let us hope, of Landlord Crow's poor quarters, and to prepare for
Niagara. Years afterwards he admitted that there was some soul for song
among the men of the Far West of that day. Very complacently he tells us
that "Even then, on the shores of those far lakes, the title of
'Poet'--however in that instance unworthily bestowed--bespoke a kind and
distinguished welcome for its wearer. The captain who commanded the
packet in which I crossed Lake Ontario, in addition to other marks of
courtesy, begged, on parting with me, to be allowed to decline payment
for my passage." I cannot do better than to quote further from his
account of the visit to the falls:

     When we arrived at length at the inn, in the neighborhood of the
     Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening; and
     I lay awake almost the whole night with the sound of the cataract
     in my ears. The day following I consider as a sort of era in my
     life; and the first glimpse I caught of that wonderful cataract
     gave me a feeling which nothing in this world can ever awaken
     again. It was through an opening among the trees, as we approached
     the spot where the full view of the Falls was to burst upon us,
     that I caught this glimpse of the mighty mass of waters falling
     smoothly over the edge of the precipice; and so overwhelming was
     the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching,
     that during the short interval that followed, imagination had far
     outrun the reality--and vast and wonderful as was the scene that
     then opened upon me, my first feeling was that of disappointment.
     It would have been impossible, indeed, for anything real to come up
     to the vision I had, in these few seconds, formed of it, and those
     awful scriptural words, 'The fountains of the great deep were
     broken up,' can alone give any notion of the vague wonders for
     which I was prepared.

     But, in spite of the start thus got by imagination, the triumph of
     reality was, in the end, but the greater; for the gradual glory of
     the scene that opened upon me soon took possession of my whole
     mind; presenting from day to day, some new beauty or wonder, and
     like all that is most sublime in nature or art, awakening sad as
     well as elevating thoughts. I retain in my memory but one other
     dream--for such do events so long past appear--which can by any
     respect be associated with the grand vision I have just been
     describing; and however different the nature of their appeals to
     the imagination, I should find it difficult to say on which
     occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking at the Falls
     of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the
     Coliseum.

It was the tranquillity and unapproachableness of the great fall, in the
midst of so much turmoil, which most impressed him. He tried to express
this in a Song of the Spirit of the region:

  There amid the island sedge,
  Just upon the cataract's edge,
  Where the foot of living man
  Never trod since time began,
  Lone I sit at close of day,[78] ...

The poem as a whole, however, is not a strong one, even for Tom Moore.

As the Irish bard sailed back to England, another pedestrian poet was
making ready for a tour to Niagara. This was the Paisley weaver,
rhymster and roamer, Alexander Wilson, whose fame as an ornithologist
outshines his reputation as a poet. Yet in him America has--by
adoption--her Oliver Goldsmith. In 1794, being then twenty-eight years
old, he arrived in Philadelphia. For eight years he taught school, or
botanized, roamed the woods with his gun, worked at the loom, and
peddled his verses among the inhabitants of New Jersey. In October,
1804, accompanied by his nephew and another friend, he set out on a
walking expedition to Niagara, which he satisfactorily accomplished. His
companions left him, but he persevered, and reached home after an
absence of fifty-nine days and a walk of 1,260 miles. It is very
pleasant, especially for one who has himself toured afoot over a
considerable part of this same route, to follow our naturalist poet and
his friends on their long walk through the wilderness, in the pages of
Wilson's descriptive poem, "The Foresters." Its first edition, it is
believed, is a quaint little volume of 106 pages, published at Newtown,
Penn., in 1818.[79] The route led through Bucks and Northumberland
counties, over the mountains and up the valley of the Susquehanna; past
Newtown, N. Y., now Elmira, and so on to the Indian village of
Catherine, near the head of Seneca Lake. Here, a quarter of a century
before, Sullivan and his raiders had brought desolation, traces of which
stirred our singer to some of his loftiest flights. In that romantic
wilderness of rocky glen and marsh and lake, the region where Montour
Falls and Watkins now are, Wilson lingered to shoot wild fowl. Thence
the route lay through that interval of long ascents--so long that the
trudging poet thought

  To Heaven's own gates the mountain seemed to rise

--and equally long descents, from Seneca Lake to Cayuga. Here, after a
night's rest, under a pioneer's roof:

  Our boat now ready and our baggage stored,
  Provisions, mast and oars and sails aboard,
  With three loud cheers that echoed from the steep,
  We launched our skiff "Niagara" to the deep.

Down to old Cayuga bridge they sailed and through the outlet, passed the
salt marshes and so on to Fort Oswego. That post had been abandoned on
the 28th of October, about a week before Wilson arrived there. A
desolate, woebegone place he found it:

  Those struggling huts that on the left appear,
  Where fence, or field, or cultured garden green,
  Or blessed plough, or spade were never seen,
  Is old Oswego; once renowned in trade,
  Where numerous tribes their annual visits paid.
  From distant wilds, the beaver's rich retreat,
  For one whole moon they trudged with weary feet;
  Piled their rich furs within the crowded store,
  Replaced their packs and plodded back for more.
  But time and war have banished all their trains
  And naught but potash, salt and rum remains.
  The boisterous boatman, drunk but twice a day,
  Begs of the landlord; but forgets to pay;
  Pledges his salt, a cask for every quart,
  Pleased thus for poison with his pay to part.
  From morn to night here noise and riot reign;
  From night to morn 'tis noise and roar again.

Not a flattering picture, truly, and yet no doubt a trustworthy one, of
this period in Oswego's history.

But we must hurry along with the poet to his destination, although the
temptation to linger with him in this part of the journey is great.
Indeed, "The Foresters" is a historic chronicle of no slight value.
There is no doubting the fidelity of its pictures of the state of nature
and of man along this storied route as seen by its author at the
beginning of the century; while his poetic philosophizing is now shrewd,
now absurd, but always ardently American in tone.

Our foresters undertook to coast along the Ontario shore in their frail
"Niagara"; narrowly escaped swamping, and were picked up by

  A friendly sloop for Queenstown Harbor bound,

where they arrived safely, after being gloriously seasick. It was the
season of autumn gales. A few days before a British packet called the
Speedy, with some twenty or thirty persons on board, including a judge
advocate, other judges, witnesses and an Indian prisoner, had foundered
and every soul perished. No part of the Speedy was afterwards found but
the pump, which Wilson says his captain picked up and carried to
Queenston.

Wilson had moralized, philosophized and rhapsodized all the way from the
Schuylkill. His verse, as he approaches the Mecca of his wanderings,
fairly palpitates with expectation and excitement. He was not a bard to
sing in a majestic strain, but his description of the falls and their
environment is vivid and of historic value. As they tramped through the
forest,--

  Heavy and slow, increasing on the ear,
  Deep through the woods a rising storm we hear.
  Th' approaching gust still loud and louder grows,
  As when the strong northeast resistless blows,
  Or black tornado, rushing through the wood,
  Alarms th' affrighted swains with uproar rude.
  Yet the blue heavens displayed their clearest sky,
  And dead below the silent forests lie;
  And not a breath the lightest leaf assailed;
  But all around tranquillity prevailed.
  "What noise is that?" we ask with anxious mien,
  A dull salt-driver passing with his team.
  "Noise? noise?--why, nothing that I hear or see
  But Nagra Falls--Pray, whereabouts live ye?"

This touch of realism ushers in a long and over-wrought description of
the whole scene. The "crashing roar," he says,

  ---- bade us kneel and Time's great God adore.

Whatever may have been his emotions, his adjectives are sadly
inadequate, and his verse devoid of true poetic fervor. More than one of
his descriptive passages, however, give us those glimpses of conditions
past and gone, which the historian values. For instance, this:

  High o'er the wat'ry uproar, silent seen,
  Sailing sedate, in majesty serene,
  Now midst the pillared spray sublimely lost,
  Swept the gray eagles, gazing calm and slow,
  On all the horrors of the gulf below;
  Intent, alone, to sate themselves with blood,
  From the torn victims of the raging flood.

Wilson was not the man to mistake a bird; and many other early travelers
have testified to the former presence of eagles in considerable numbers,
haunting the gorge below the falls in quest of the remains of animals
that had been carried down stream.

Moore, as we have seen, denounced the country for its lack of

  That lingering radiance of immortal mind

which so inspires the poet in older lands. He was right in his fact, but
absurd in his fault-finding. It has somewhere been said of him, that
Niagara Falls was the only thing he found in America which overcame his
self-importance; but we must remember his youth, the flatteries on which
he had fed at home and the crudities of American life at that time. For
a quarter of a century after Tom Moore's visit there was much in the
crass assertiveness of American democracy which was as ridiculous in its
way as the Old-World ideas of class and social distinctions were in
their way--and vastly more vulgar and offensive. Read, in evidence, Mrs.
Trollope and Capt. Basil Hall, two of America's severest and sincerest
critics. It should be put down to Tom Moore's credit, too, that before
he died he admitted to Washington Irving and to others that his writings
on America were the greatest sin of his early life.[80]

Like Moore, Alexander Wilson felt America's lack of a poet; and, like
Barlow and Humphreys and Freneau and others of forgotten fame, he
undertook--like them again, unsuccessfully--to supply the lack. There is
something pathetic--or grotesque, as we look at it--in the patriotic
efforts of these commonplace men to be great for their country's sake.

  To Europe's shores renowned in deathless song,

asks Wilson,

  Must all the honors of the bard belong?
  And rural Poetry's enchanting strain
  Be only heard beyond th' Atlantic main?
  Yet Nature's charms that bloom so lovely here,
  Unhailed arrive, unheeded disappear;
  While bare black heaths and brooks of half a mile
  Can rouse the thousand bards of Britain's Isle.
  There, scarce a stream creeps down its narrow bed,
  There scarce a hillock lifts its little head,
  Or humble hamlet peeps their glades among
  But lives and murmurs in immortal song.
  Our Western world, with all its matchless floods,
  Our vast transparent lakes and boundless woods,
  Stamped with the traits of majesty sublime,
  Unhonored weep the silent lapse of time,
  Spread their wild grandeur to the unconscious sky,
  In sweetest seasons pass unheeded by;
  While scarce one Muse returns the songs they gave,
  Or seeks to snatch their glories from the grave.

This solicitude by the early American writers, lest the poetic themes of
their country should go unsung, contrasts amusingly, as does Moore's
ill-natured complaining, with the prophetic assurance of Bishop
Berkeley's famous lines, written half a century or so before, in
allusion to America:

  The muse, disgusted at an age and clime
    Barren of every glorious theme,
  In distant lands now waits a better time,
    Producing subjects worthy fame.
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
    Westward the course of empire takes its way, ...

I have found no other pilgrim poets making Niagara their theme, until
the War of 1812 came to create heroes and leave ruin along the frontier,
and stir a few patriotic singers to hurl back defiance to the British
hordes. Iambic defiance, unless kindled by a grand genius, is a poor
sort of fireworks, even when it undertakes to combine patriotism and
natural grandeur. Certainly something might be expected of a poet who
sandwiches Niagara Falls in between bloody battles, and gives us the
magnificent in nature, the gallant in warfare and the loftiest
patriotism in purpose, the three strains woven in a triple pæan of
passion, ninety-four duodecimo pages in length. Such a work was offered
to the world at Baltimore in 1818, with this title-page: "Battle of
Niagara, a Poem Without Notes, and Goldau, or the Maniac Harper. Eagles
and Stars and Rainbows. By Jehu O' Cataract, author of 'Keep Cool.'" I
have never seen "Keep Cool," but it must be very different from the
"Battle of Niagara," or it belies its name. The fiery Jehu O' Cataract
was John Neal.[81]

The "Battle of Niagara," he informs the reader, was written when he was
a prisoner; when he "felt the victories of his countrymen." "I have
attempted," he says, "to do justice to American scenery and American
character, not to versify minutiæ of battles." The poem has a metrical
introduction and four cantos, in which is told, none too lucidly, the
story of the battle of Niagara; with such flights of eagles,
scintillation of stars and breaking of rainbows, that no brief quotation
can do it justice. In style it is now Miltonic, now reminiscent of
Walter Scott. The opening canto is mainly an apostrophe to the Bird, and
a vision of glittering horsemen. Canto two is a dissertation on Lake
Ontario, with word-pictures of the primitive Indian. The rest of the
poem is devoted to the battle near the great cataract--and throughout
all are sprinkled the eagles, stars and rainbows. Do not infer from this
characterization that the production is wholly bad; it is merely a good
specimen of that early American poetry which was just bad enough to
escape being good.

A brief passage or two will sufficiently illustrate the author's trait
of painting in high colors. He is a word-impressionist whose brush, with
indiscreet dashes, mars the composition. I select two passages
descriptive of the battle:

  The drum is rolled again. The bugle sings
  And far upon the wind the cross flag flings
  A radiant challenge to its starry foe,
  That floats--a sheet of light!--away below,
  Where troops are forming--slowly in the night
  Of mighty waters; where an angry light
  Bounds from the cataract, and fills the skies
  With visions--rainbows--and the foamy dyes
  That one may see at morn in youthful poets' eyes.

  Niagara! Niagara! I hear
  Thy tumbling waters. And I see thee rear
  Thy thundering sceptre to the clouded skies:
  I see it wave--I hear the ocean rise,
  And roll obedient to thy call. I hear
  The tempest-hymning of thy floods in fear;
  The quaking mountains and the nodding trees--
  The reeling birds and the careering breeze--
  The tottering hills, unsteadied in thy roar;
  Niagara! as thy dark waters pour
  One everlasting earthquake rocks thy lofty shore!
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  The cavalcade went by. The day hath gone;
  And yet the soldier lives; his cheerful tone
  Rises in boisterous song; while slowly calls
  The monarch spirit of the mighty falls:
  Soldier, be firm! and mind your watchfires well;
  Sleep not to-night!

The following picture of the camp at sunset, as the reveille rings over
the field, and Niagara's muffled drums vibrate through the dusk,
presents many of the elements of true poetry:

  Low stooping from his arch, the glorious sun
  Hath left the storm with which his course begun;
  And now in rolling clouds goes calmly home
  In heavenly pomp adown the far blue dome.
  In sweet-toned minstrelsy is heard the cry,
  All clear and smooth, along the echoing sky,
  Of many a fresh-blown bugle full and strong,
  The soldier's instrument! the soldier's song!
  Niagara, too, is heard; his thunder comes
  Like far-off battle--hosts of rolling drums.
  All o'er the western heaven the flaming clouds
  Detach themselves and float like hovering shrouds.
  Loosely unwoven, and afar unfurled,
  A sunset canopy enwraps the world.
  The Vesper hymn grows soft. In parting day
  Wings flit about. The warblings die away,
  The shores are dizzy and the hills look dim,
  The cataract falls deeper and the landscapes swim.

Jehu O' Cataract does not always hold his fancy with so steady a rein as
this. He is prone to eccentric flights, to bathos and absurdities. His
apostrophe to Lake Ontario, several hundred lines in length, has many
fine fancies, but his luxuriant imagination continually wrecks itself on
extravagancies which break down the effect. This I think the following
lines illustrate:

  ... He had fought with savages, whose breath
  He felt upon his cheek like mildew till his death.
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  So stood the battle. Bravely it was fought,
  Lions and Eagles met. That hill was bought
  And sold in desperate combat. Wrapped in flame,
  Died these idolaters of bannered fame.
  Three times that meteor hill was bravely lost--
  Three times 'twas bravely won, while madly tost,
  Encountering red plumes in the dusky air;
  While Slaughter shouted in her bloody lair,
  And spectres blew their horns and shook their whistling hair.
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

There are allusions to Niagara in some of the ballads of the War of
1812, one of the finest of which, "Sea and Land Victories," beginning

  With half the western world at stake
  See Perry on the midland lake,--

appeared in the Naval Songster of 1815, and was a great favorite half a
century or more ago. So far, however, as the last War with Great Britain
has added to our store of poetry by turning the attention of the poets
to the Niagara region as a strikingly picturesque scene of war, there is
little worthy of attention. One ambitious work is remembered, when
remembered at all, as a curio of literature. This is "The Fredoniad, or
Independence Preserved," an epic poem by Richard Emmons, a Kentuckian,
afterwards a physician of Philadelphia. He worked on it for ten years,
finally printed it in 1826, and in 1830 got it through a second edition,
ostentatiously dedicated to Lafayette. "The Fredoniad" is a history in
verse of the War of 1812; it was published in four volumes; it has forty
cantos, filling 1,404 duodecimo pages, or a total length of about 42,000
lines. The first and second cantos are devoted to Hell, the third to
Heaven, and the fourth to Detroit. About one-third of the whole work is
occupied with military operations on the Niagara frontier. Nothing from
Fort Erie to Fort Niagara escapes this meter-machine. The Doctor's
poetic feet stretch out to miles and leagues, but not a single verse do
I find that prompts to quotation; though, I am free to confess, I have
not read them all, and much doubt if any one save the infatuated author,
and perhaps his proof-reader, ever did read the whole of "The
Fredoniad."

No sooner was the frontier at peace, and the pathways of travel
multiplied and smoothed, than there set in the first great era of
tourist travel to Niagara. From 1825, when the opening of the Erie Canal
first made the falls easily accessible to the East, the tide of visitors
steadily swelled. In that year came one other poetizing pilgrim, from
York, now Toronto, who, returning home, published in his own city a
duodecimo of forty-six pages, entitled "Wonders of the West, or a Day at
the Falls of Niagara in 1825. A Poem. By a Canadian." The author was J.
S. Alexander, said to have been a Toronto school-teacher. It is a great
curio, though of not the least value as poetry; in fact, as verse it is
ridiculously bad. The author does not narrate his own adventures at
Niagara, but makes his descriptive and historical passages incidental to
the story of a hero named _St. Julian_. Never was the name of this
beloved patron saint of travelers more unhappily bestowed, for this _St.
Julian_ is a lugubrious, crack-brained individual who mourns the
supposed death of a lady-love, _Eleanor St. Fleur_. Other characters are
introduced; all French except a remarkable driver named _Wogee_, who
tells legends and historic incidents in as good verse, apparently, as
the author was able to produce. _St. Julian_ is twice on the point of
committing suicide; once on Queenston Heights, and again at the falls.
Just as he is about to throw himself into the river he hears his
_Ellen's_ voice--the lady, it seems, had come from France by a different
route--all the mysteries are cleared up, and the reunited lovers and
their friends decide to "hasten hence,"

  Again to our dear native France,
  Where we shall talk of all we saw,
  At thy dread falls, Niagara.[82]

From about this date the personal adventures of individuals bound for
Niagara cease to be told in verse, and if they were they would cease to
be of much historic interest. The relation of the poets to Niagara no
longer concerns us because of its historic aspect.

There remains, however, an even more important division of the subject.
The review must be less narrative than critical, to satisfy the natural
inquiry, What impress upon the poetry of our literature has this
greatest of cataracts made during the three-quarters of a century that
it has been easily accessible to the world? What of the supreme in
poetry has been prompted by this mighty example of the supreme in
nature? The proposition at once suggests subtleties of analysis which
must not be entered upon in this brief survey. The answer to the
question is attempted chiefly by the historical method. A few selected
examples of the verse which relates to Niagara will, by their very
nature, indicate the logical answer to the fundamental inquiry.

There is much significance in the fact, that what has been called the
best poem on Niagara was written by one who never saw the falls.
Chronologically, so far as I have ascertained, it is the work which
should next be considered, for it appeared in the columns of a
New-England newspaper, about the time when the newly-opened highway to
the West robbed Niagara forever of her majestic solitude, and filled the
world with her praise. They may have been travelers' tales that
prompted, but it was the spiritual vision of the true poet that inspired
the lines printed in the _Connecticut Mirror_ at Hartford, about 1825,
by the delicate, gentle youth, John G. C. Brainard. It is a poem much
quoted, of a character fairly indicated by these lines:

                              It would seem
  As if God formed thee from his "hollow hand"
  And hung his bow upon thine awful front;
  And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him
  Who dwelt in Patmos for his Savior's sake,
  "The sound of many waters"; and bade
  Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,
  And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.

Measured by the strength of an Emerson or a Lowell, this is but feeble
blank verse, approaching the bombastic; but as compared with what had
gone before, and much that was to follow, on the Niagara theme, it is a
not unwelcome variation.

The soul's vision, through imagination's magic glass, receives more of
Poesy's divine light than is shed upon all the rapt gazers at the
veritable cliff and falling flood.

During the formative years of what we now regard as an established
literary taste, but which later generations will modify in turn, most
American poetry was imitative of English models. Later, as has been
shown, there was an assertively patriotic era; and later still, one of
great laudation of America's newly-discovered wonders, which in the case
of Niagara took the form of apostrophe and devotion. To the patriotic
literature of Niagara, besides examples already cited, belongs Joseph
Rodman Drake's "Niagara," printed with "The Culprit Fay, and Other
Poems" in 1835.[83] It is a poem which would strike the critical ear of
today, I think, as artificial; its sentiment, however, is not to be
impeached. The poet sings of the love of freedom which distinguishes the
Swiss mountaineer; of the sailor's daring and bravery; of the soldier's
heroism, even to death. Niagara, like the alp, the sea, and the battle,
symbolizes freedom, triumph and glory:

  Then pour thy broad wave like a flood from the heavens,
    Each son that thou rearest, in the battle's wild shock,
  When the death-speaking note of the trumpet is given,
    Will charge like thy torrent or stand like thy rock.

  Let his roof be the cloud and the rock be his pillow,
    Let him stride the rough mountain or toss on the foam,
  Let him strike fast and well on the field or the billow,
    In triumph and glory for God and his home!

Nine years after Drake came Mrs. Sigourney, who, notwithstanding her
genuine love of nature and of mankind, her sincerity and occasional
genius, was hopelessly of the sentimental school. Like Frances S.
Osgood, N. P. Willis and others now lost in even deeper oblivion, she
found great favor with her day and generation. Few things from her
ever-productive pen had a warmer welcome than the lines beginning:

  Up to the table-rock, where the great flood
  Reveals its fullest glory,

and her "Farewell to Niagara," concluding

            ... it were sweet
  To linger here, and be thy worshipper,
  Until death's footstep broke this dream of life.

Supremely devout in tone, her Niagara poems are commonplace in
imagination. Her fancy rarely reaches higher than the perfectly obvious.
I confess that I cannot read her lines without a vision of the lady
herself standing in rapt attitude on the edge of Table Rock, with
note-book in hand and pencil uplifted to catch the purest inspiration
from the scene before her. She is the type of a considerable train of
writers whose Niagara effusions leave on the reader's mind little
impression beyond an iterated "Oh, thou great Niagara, Oh!" Such a one
was Richard Kelsey, whose "Niagara and Other Poems," printed in London
in 1848, is likely to be encountered in old London bookshops. I have
read Mr. Kelsey's "Niagara" several times. Once when I first secured the
handsome gilt-edged volume; again, later on, to discover why I failed to
remember any word or thought of it; and again, in the preparation of
this paper, that I might justly characterize it. But I am free to
confess that beyond a general impression of Parnassian attitudinizing
and extravagant apostrophe I get nothing out of its pages. Decidedly
better are the lines "On Visiting the Falls of Niagara," by Lord
Morpeth, the Earl of Carlisle, who visited Niagara in 1841.[84] He, too,
begins with the inevitable apostrophe:

  There's nothing great or bright, thou glorious fall!
  Thou mayst not to the fancy's sense recall--

but he saves himself with a fairly creditable sentiment:

  Oh! may the wars that madden in thy deeps
  There spend their rage nor climb the encircling steeps,
  And till the conflict of thy surges cease
  The nations on thy bank repose in peace.

A British poet who should perhaps have mention in this connection is
Thomas Campbell, whose poem, "The Emigrant," contains an allusion to
Niagara. It was published anonymously in 1823 in the _New Monthly
Magazine_, which Campbell then edited.[85]

No poem on Niagara that I know of is more entitled to our respectful
consideration than the elaborate work which was published in 1848 by the
Rev. C. H. A. Bulkley of Mt. Morris, N. Y. It is a serious attempt to
produce a great poem with Niagara Falls as its theme. Its length--about
3,600 lines--secures to Western New York the palm for elaborate
treatment of the cataract in verse. "Much," says the author, "has been
written hitherto upon Niagara in fugitive verse, but no attempt like
this has been made to present its united wonders as the theme of a
single poem. It seems a bold adventure and one too hazardous, because of
the greatness of the subject and the obscurity of the bard; but his
countrymen are called upon to judge it with impartiality, and pronounce
its life or its death. The author would not shrink from criticism....
His object has been, not so much to describe at length the scenery of
Niagara in order to excite emotions in the reader similar to those of
the beholder, for this would be a vain endeavor, as to give a transcript
of what passes through the mind of one who is supposed to witness so
grand an achievement of nature. The difficulty," he adds, "with those
who visit this wonderful cataract is to give utterance to those feelings
and thoughts that crowd within and often, because thus pent up, produce
what may be termed the pain of delight."

Of a poem which fills 132 duodecimo pages it is difficult to give a fair
idea in a few words. There is an introductory apostrophe, followed by a
specific apostrophe to the falls as a vast form of life. Farther on the
cataract is apostrophized as a destroyer, as an historian, a warning
prophet, an oracle of truth, a tireless laborer. There are many passages
descriptive of the islands, the gorge, the whirlpool, etc. Then come
more apostrophes to the fall respecting its origin and early life. It is
viewed as the presence-chamber of God, and as a proof of Deity. Finally,
we have the cataract's hymn to the Creator, and the flood's death-dirge.

No long poem is without its commonplace intervals. Mr. Bulkley's
"Niagara" has them to excess, yet as a whole it is the work of a refined
and scholarly mind, its imagination hampered by its religious habit, but
now and than quickened to lofty flights, and strikingly sustained and
noble in its diction. Only a true poet takes such cognizance of initial
impulses and relations in nature as this:

  In thy hoarse strains is heard the desolate wail
  Of streams unnumbered wandering far away,
  From mountain homes where, 'neath the shady rocks
  Their parent springs gave them a peaceful birth.

It presents many of the elements of a great poem, reaching the climax in
the cataract's hymn to the Creator, beginning

  Oh mighty Architect of Nature's home!

At about this period--to be exact, in 1848--there was published in New
York City, as a pamphlet or thin booklet, a poem entitled "Niagara," by
"A Member of the Ohio Bar," of whose identity I know nothing. It is a
composition of some merit, chiefly interesting by reason of its
concluding lines:

                          ... Then so live,
  That when in the last fearful mortal hour,
  Thy wave, borne on at unexpected speed,
  O'erhangs the yawning chasm, soon to fall,
  Thou start not back affrighted, like a youth
  That wakes from sleep to find his feeble bark
  Suspended o'er Niagara, and with shrieks
  And unavailing cries alarms the air,
  Tossing his hands in frenzied fear a moment,
  Then borne away forever! But with gaze
  Calm and serene look through the eddying mists,
  On Faith's unclouded bow, and take thy plunge
  As one whose Father's arms are stretched beneath,
  Who falls into the bosom of his God!

The close parallelism of these lines with the exalted conclusion of
"Thanatopsis" is of course obvious; but they embody a symbolism which is
one of the best that has been suggested by Niagara.

From the sublime to the ridiculous was never a shorter descent than in
this matter of Niagara poetry. At about the time Mr. Bulkley wrote, and
for some years after, it was the pernicious custom to keep public albums
at the Table Rock and other points at the falls, for the record of
"impressions." Needless to say, these albums filled up with rubbish. To
bad taste was added the iniquity of publication, so that future
generations may be acquainted with one of the least creditable of native
American literary whims. The editor of one of these albums, issued in
1856, lamented that "the innumerable host of visitors who have
perpetrated composition in the volumes of manuscript now before us,
should have added so little to the general stock of legitimate and
permanent literature"; and he adds--by way seemingly of adequate
excuse--that "the actual amount of frivolous nonsense which constitutes
so large a portion of the contents ... is not all to be calculated by
the specimens now and then exhibited. We have given the best," he says,
"always taking care that decency shall not be outraged, nor delicacy
shocked; and in this respect, however improbable it may seem, precaution
has been by no means unnecessary." What a commentary on the sublime in
nature, as reflected on man in the mass!

These Table-Rock Albums contain some true poetry; much would-be fine
verse which falls below mediocre; much of horse-play or puerility; and
now and then a gleam of wit. Here first appeared the lines which I
remember to have conned years ago in a school-rhetoric, and for which, I
believe, N. P. Willis was responsible:

  To view Niagara Falls one day,
  A parson and a tailor took their way;
  The parson cried, whilst wrapped in wonder,
  And listening to the cataract's thunder,
  "Lord! how thy works amaze our eyes,
  And fill our hearts with vast surprise";--
  The tailor merely made his note:
  "Lord! what a place to sponge a coat!"

There has been many a visitor at Niagara Falls who shares the sentiments
of one disciple of the realistic school:

  Loud roars the waters, O,
  Loud roars the waters, O,
  When I come to the Falls again
  I hope they will not spatter so.

Another writes:

  My thoughts are strange, sublime and deep,
  As I look up to thee--
  What a glorious place for washing sheep,
  Niagara would be!

Examples of such doggerel could be multiplied by scores, but without
profit. There was sense if not poetry in the wight who wrote:

  I have been to "Termination Rock"
  Where many have been before;
  But as I can't describe the scene
  I wont say any more.

Infinitely better than this are the light but pleasing verses written in
a child's album, years ago, by the late Col. Peter A. Porter of Niagara
Falls. He pictured the discovery of the falls by La Salle and Hennepin
and ponders upon the changes that have followed:

  What troops of tourists have encamped upon the river's brink;
  What poets shed from countless quills Niagaras of ink;
  What artist armies tried to fix the evanescent bow
  Of the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  And stately inns feed scores of guests from well-replenished larder,
  And hackmen drive their horses hard, but drive a bargain harder,
  And screaming locomotives rush in anger to and fro;
  But the waters fall as once they fell two hundred years ago.

  And brides of every age and clime frequent the islands' bower,
  And gaze from off the stone-built perch--hence called the Bridal
        Tower--
  And many a lunar belle goes forth to meet a lunar beau,
  By the waters falling as they fell two hundred years ago.

Towards the close of the long poem the author takes a more serious tone,
but throughout he keeps up a happy cleverness, agreeably in contrast to
the prevailing high gush on one hand and balderdash on the other.

Among the writers of serious and sometimes creditable verse whose names
appear in the Table-Rock Albums were Henry D. O'Reilly, C. R. Rowland,
Sarah Pratt, Maria del Occidente, George Menzies, Henry Lindsay, the
Rev. John Dowling, J. S. Buckingham, the Hon. C. N. Vivian, Douglas
Stuart, A. S. Ridgely of Baltimore, H. W. Parker, and Josef Leopold
Stiger. Several of these names are not unknown in literature. Prof.
Buckingham is remembered as an earlier Bryce, whose elaborate
three-volume work on America is still of value. Vivian was a
distinguished traveler who wrote books; and Josef Leopold Stiger's
stanzas beginning

  Sei mir gegrüsst, des jungen Weltreichs Stolz und Zierde!

are by no means the worst of Niagara poems.

I cannot conceive of Niagara Falls as a scene promotive of humor, or
suggestive of wit. Others may see both in John G. Saxe's verses, of
which the first stanza will suffice to quote:

  See Niagara's torrent pour over the height,
    How rapid the stream! how majestic the flood
  Rolls on, and descends in the strength of his might,
    As a monstrous great frog leaps into the mud!

The "poem" contains six more stanzas of the same stamp.

The writing of jingles and doggerel having Niagara as a theme did not
cease when the Albums were no longer kept up. If there is no humor or
grotesqueness in Niagara, there is much of both in the human accessories
with which the spot is constantly supplied, and these will never cease
to stimulate the wits. I believe that a study of this field--not in a
restricted, but a general survey--would discover a decided improvement,
in taste if not in native wit, as compared with the compositions which
found favor half a century ago. Without entering that field, however, it
will suffice to submit in evidence one "poem" from a recent publication,
which shows that the making of these American _genre_ sketches, with
Niagara in the background, is not yet a lost art:

  Before Niagara Falls they stood,
    He raised aloft his head,
  For he was in poetic mood,
    And this is what he said:

  "Oh, work sublime! Oh, wondrous law
    That rules thy presence here!
  How filled I am with boundless awe
    To view thy waters clear!

  "What myriad rainbow colors float
    About thee like a veil,
  And in what countless streams remote
    Thy life has left its trail!"

  "Yes, George," the maiden cried in haste,
    "Such shades I've never seen,
  I'm going to have my next new waist
    The color of that green."

From about 1850 down to the present hour there is a striking dearth
of verse, worthy to be called poetry, with Niagara for its theme.
Newspapers and magazines would no doubt yield a store if they could be
gleaned; perchance the one Niagara pearl of poetry is thus overlooked;
but it is reasonably safe to assume that few really great poems sink
utterly from sight. There is, or was, a self-styled Bard of Niagara,
whose verses, printed at Montreal in 1872, need not detain us. The only
long work on the subject of real merit that I know of, which has
appeared in recent years, is George Houghton's "Niagara," published in
1882. Like Mr. Bulkley, he has a true poet's grasp of the material
aspect of his subject:

  Formed when the oceans were fashioned, when all the world was
        a workshop;
  Loud roared the furnace fires and tall leapt the smoke from
        volcanoes,
  Scooped were round bowls for lakes and grooves for the sliding
        of rivers,
  Whilst with a cunning hand, the mountains were linked together.
  Then through the day-dawn, lurid with cloud, and rent by forked
        lightning,
  Stricken by earthquake beneath, above by the rattle of thunder,
  Sudden the clamor was pierced by a voice, deep-lunged and
        portentous--
  Thine, O Niagara, crying, "Now is creation completed!"

He sees in imagination the million sources of the streams in forest and
prairie, which ultimately pour their gathered "tribute of silver" from
the rich Western land into the lap of Niagara. He makes skillful use of
the Indian legendry associated with the river; he listens to Niagara's
"dolorous fugue," and resolves it into many contributory cries. In
exquisite fancy he listens to the incantation of the siren rapids:

  Thus, in some midnight obscure, bent down by the storm of temptation
  (So hath the wind, in the beechen wood, confided the story),
  Pine trees, thrusting their way and trampling down one another,
  Curious, lean and listen, replying in sobs and in whispers;
  Till of the secret possessed, which brings sure blight to the hearer
  (So hath the wind, in the beechen wood, confided the story),
  Faltering, they stagger brinkward--clutch at the roots of the grasses,
  Cry--a pitiful cry of remorse--and plunge down in the darkness.

The cataract in its varied aspects is considered with a thought for
those who

  Sin, and with wine-cup deadened, scoff at the dread of hereafter,--
  And, because all seems lost, besiege Death's door-way with gladness.

The master-stroke of the poem is in two lines:

  That alone is august which is gazed upon by the noble,
  That alone is gladsome which eyes full of gladness discover.

Herein lies the rebuking judgment upon Niagara's detractors, not all of
whom have perpetrated album rhymes.

Mr. Houghton, as the reader will note, recognizes the tragic aspect of
Niagara. Considering the insistence with which accident and suicide
attend, making here an unappeased altar to the weaknesses and woes of
mankind, this aspect of Niagara has been singularly neglected by the
poets. We have it, however, exquisitely expressed, in the best of all
recent Niagara verse--a sonnet entitled "At Niagara," by Richard Watson
Gilder.[86] The following lines illustrate our point:

  There at the chasm's edge behold her lean
  Trembling, as, 'neath the charm,
  A wild bird lifts no wing to 'scape from harm;
  Her very soul drawn to the glittering, green,
  Smooth, lustrous, awful, lovely curve of peril;
  While far below the bending sea of beryl
  Thunder and tumult--whence a billowy spray
  Enclouds the day.
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

There is a considerable amount of recent verse commonly called
"fugitive" that has Niagara for its theme, but I find little that calls
for special attention. A few Buffalo writers, the Rev. John C. Lord,
Judge Jesse Walker, David Gray, Jas. W. Ward, Henry Chandler, and the
Rev. Benjamin Copeland among them, have found inspiration in the lake
and river for some of the best lines that adorn the purely local
literature of the Niagara region. Indeed, I know of no allusion to
Niagara more exquisitely poetical than the lines in David Gray's
historical poem, "The Last of the Kah-Kwahs," in which he compares the
Indian villages sleeping in ever-threatened peace to

                ... the isle
  That, locked in wild Niagara's fierce embrace,
  Still wears a smile of summer on its face--
  Love in the clasp of Madness.

With this beautiful imagery in mind, recall the lines of Byron:

                      On the verge
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  Resembling, 'mid the tortures of the scene,
  Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

Byron did not write of Niagara, but these stanzas beginning

  The roar of waters ...

often have been applied to our cataract. Mr. Gray may or may not have
been familiar with them. In any event he improved on the earlier poet's
figure.

Merely as a matter of chronicle, it is well to record here the names of
several writers, some of them of considerable reputation, who have
contributed to the poetry of Niagara. Alfred B. Street's well-known
narrative poem, "Frontenac," contains Niagara passages. So does Levi
Bishop's metrical volume "Teuchsa Grondie" ("Whip-poor-will"), the
Niagara portion dedicated to the Hon. Augustus S. Porter. Ever since
Chateaubriand wrote "Atala," authors have been prompted to associate
Indian legends with Niagara, but none has done this more happily than
William Trumbull, whose poem, "The Legend of the White Canoe,"
illustrated by F. V. Du Mond, is one of the most artistic works in all
the literature of Niagara.

The Rev. William Ellery Channing, the Rev. Joseph H. Clinch, the Rev.
Joseph Cook, Christopher P. Cranch, Oliver I. Taylor, Grenville Mellen,
Prof. Moffat, John Savage, Augustus N. Lowry, Claude James Baxley of
Virginia, Abraham Coles, M. D., Henry Howard Brownell, the Rev. Roswell
Park, Willis Gaylord Clark, Mary J. Wines, M. E. Wood, E. H. Dewart, G.
W. Cutter, J. N. McJilton, and the Chicago writer, Harriet Monroe, are,
most of them, minor poets (some, perhaps, but poets by courtesy), whose
tributes to our cataract are contained in their collected volumes of
verse. In E. G. Holland's "Niagara and Other Poems" (1861), is a poem on
Niagara thirty-one pages long, with several pages of notes, "composed
for the most part by the Drachenfels, one of the Seven Mountains of the
Rhine, in the vicinity of Bonn, September, 1856, and delivered as a part
of an address on American Scenery the day following." Among the Canadian
poets who have attempted the theme, besides several already named, may
be recorded John Breakenridge, a volume of whose verse was printed at
Kingston in 1846; Charles Sangster, James Breckenridge, John Imrie, and
William Rice, the last three of Toronto. The French-Canadian poet, Louis
Fréchette, has written an excellent poem, "Le Niagara." Wm. Sharpe, M.
D., "of Ireland," wrote at length in verse on "Niagara and Nature
Worship." Charles Pelham Mulvaney touches the region in his poem, "South
Africa Remembered at Niagara." One of the most striking effusions on the
subject comes from the successful Australian writer, Douglas Sladen. It
is entitled "To the American Fall at Niagara," and is dated "Niagara,
Oct. 18, 1899":

  Niagara, national emblem! Cataract
    Born of the maddened rapids, sweeping down
    Direct, resistless from the abyss's crown
  Into the deep, fierce pool with vast impact
  Scarce broken by the giant boulders, stacked
    To meet thine onslaught, threatening to drown
    Each tillaged plain, each level-loving town
  'Twixt thee and ocean. Lo! the type exact!

  America Niagarized the world.
    Europe, a hundred years agone, beheld
  An avalanche, like pent-up Erie, hurled
    Through barriers, to which the rocks of eld
  Seemed toy things--leaping into godlike space
  A sign and wonder to the human race.[87]

Friedrich Bodenstedt and Wilhelm Meister of Germany, J. B. Scandella and
the Rev. Santo Santelli of Italy ("Cascada di Niagara," 1841), have
place among our Niagara poets. So, conspicuously, has Juan Antonio
Perez Bonalde, whose illustrated volume, "El Poema del Niagara,"
dedicated to Emilio Castelar, with a prose introduction of twenty-five
pages by the Cuban martyr José Martí, was published in New York,
reaching at least a second edition, in 1883. Several Mexican poets have
addressed themselves to Niagara. "Á la Catarata del Niágara" is a sonnet
by Don Manuel Carpio, whose collected works have been issued at Vera
Cruz, Paris, and perhaps elsewhere. In the dramatic works of Don
Vincente Riva Palacio and Don Juan A. Mateos is found "La Catarata del
Niágara," a three-act drama in verse; the first two acts occur in
Mexico, in the house of _Dona Rosa_, the third act is at Niagara Falls,
the time being 1847.[88] The Spanish poet Antonio Vinageras, nearly
fifty years ago, wrote a long ode on Niagara, dedicating it to "la
célebre poetisa, Doña Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda." In no language is
there a nobler poem on Niagara than the familiar work by Maria José
Heredosia, translated from the Spanish by William Cullen Bryant. The
Comte de Fleury, who visited Niagara a few years ago, left a somewhat
poetical souvenir in French verse. Fredrika Bremer, whose prose is often
unmetered poetry even after translation, wrote of Niagara in a brief
poem. The following is a close paraphrase of the Swedish original:

  Niagara is the betrothal of Earth's life
  With the Heavenly life.
  That has Niagara told me to-day.
  And now can I leave Niagara. She has
  Told me her word of primeval being.

Another Scandinavian poet, John Nyborn, has written a meritorious poem
on Niagara Falls, an adaptation of which, in English, was published some
years since by Dr. Albin Bernays.

It is a striking fact that Niagara's stimulus to the poetic mind has
been quite as often through the ear as through the eye. The best
passages of the best poems are prompted by the sound of the falling
waters, rather than by the expanse of the flood, the height of cliffs,
or the play of light. In Mr. Bulkley's work, which indeed exhausts the
whole store of simile and comparison, we perpetually hear the voice of
the falls, the myriad voices of nature, the awful voice of God.

  "Minstrel of the Floods,"

he cries:

  What pæans full of triumph dost thou hymn!
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  However varied is the rhythm sweet
  Of thine unceasing song! The ripple oft
  Astray along thy banks a lyric is
  Of love; the cool drops trickling down thy sides
  Are gentle sonnets; and thy lesser falls
  Are strains elegiac, that sadly sound
  A monody of grief; thy whirlpool fierce,
  A shrill-toned battle-song; thy river's rush
  A strain heroic with its couplet rhymes;
  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
  While the full sweep of thy close-crowded tide
  Resounds supreme o'er all, an epic grand.

Of this class, too, is the "Apostrophe to Niagara," by one B. Frank
Palmer, in 1855. It is said to have been "written with the pencil in a
few minutes, the author seated on the bank, drenched, from the mighty
bath at Termination Rock, and still listening to the roar and feeling
the eternal jar of the cataract." The Rev. T. Starr King, upon reading
it in 1855, said: "The apostrophe has the music of Niagara in it." As a
typical example of the devotional apostrophe it is perhaps well to give
it in full:

  This is Jehovah's fullest organ strain!
    I hear the liquid music rolling, breaking.
  From the gigantic pipes the great refrain
    Bursts on my ravished ear, high thoughts awaking!

  The low sub-bass, uprising from the deep,
    Swells the great pæan as it rolls supernal--
  Anon, I hear, at one majestic sweep
    The diapason of the keys eternal!

  Standing beneath Niagara's angry flood--
    The thundering cataract above me bounding--
  I hear the echo: "Man, there is a God!"
    From the great arches of the gorge resounding!

  Behold, O man! nor shrink aghast in fear!
    Survey the vortex boiling deep before thee!
  The Hand that ope'd the liquid gateway here
    Hath set the beauteous bow of promise o'er thee!

  Here, in the hollow of that Mighty Hand,
    Which holds the basin of the tidal ocean,
  Let not the jarring of the spray-washed strand
    Disturb the orisons of pure devotion.

  Roll on, Niagara! great River King!
    Beneath thy sceptre all earth's rulers, mortal,
  Bow reverently; and bards shall ever sing
    The matchless grandeur of thy peerless portal!

  I hear, Niagara, in this grand strain,
    His voice, who speaks in flood, in flame and thunder--
  Forever mayst thou, singing, roll and reign--
    Earth's grand, sublime, supreme, supernal wonder.

Such lines as these--which might be many times multiplied--recall Eugene
Thayer's ingenious and highly poetic paper on "The Music of
Niagara."[89] Indeed, many of the prose writers, as well as the
versifiers, have found their best tribute to Niagara inspired by the
mere sound of falling waters.

That Niagara's supreme appeal to the emotions is not through the eye but
through the ear, finds a striking illustration in "Thoughts on Niagara,"
a poem of about eighty lines written prior to 1854 by Michael McGuire, a
blind man.[90] Here was one whose only impressions of the cataract came
through senses other than that of sight. As is usual with the blind, he
uses phrases that imply consciousness of light; yet to him, as to other
poets whose devotional natures respond to this exhibition of natural
laws, all the phenomena merge in "the voice of God":

  I stood where swift Niagara pours its flood
  Into the darksome caverns where it falls,
  And heard its voice, as voice of God, proclaim
  The power of Him, who let it on its course
  Commence, with the green earth's first creation;

  And I was where the atmosphere shed tears,
  As giving back the drops the waters wept,
  On reaching that great sepulchre of floods,--
  Or bringing from above the bow of God,
  To plant its beauties in the pearly spray.

  And as I stood and heard, _though seeing nought_,
  Sad thoughts took deep possession of my mind,
  And rude imagination venturing forth,
  Did toil to pencil, though in vain, that scene,
  Which, in its every feature, spoke of God.

The poem, which as a whole is far above commonplace, develops a pathetic
prayer for sight; and employs much exalted imagery attuned to the
central idea that here Omnipotence speaks without ceasing; here is

  A temple, where Jehovah is felt most.

But for the most part, the world's strong singers have passed Niagara
by; nor has Niagara's newest aspect, that of a vast engine of energy to
be used for the good of man, yet found worthy recognition by any poet of
potentials.

This survey, though incomplete, is yet sufficiently comprehensive to
warrant a few conclusions. More than half of all the verse on the
subject which I have examined was written during the second quarter of
this century. The first quarter, as has been shown, was the age of
Niagara's literary discovery, and produced a few chronicles of curious
interest. During the last half of the century--the time in which
practically the whole brilliant and substantial fabric of American
literature has been created--Niagara well-nigh has been ignored by the
poets. In all our list, Goldsmith and Moore are the British writers of
chief eminence who have touched the subject in verse, though many
British poets, from Edwin Arnold to Oscar Wilde, have written poetic
prose about Niagara. Of native Americans, I have found no names in the
list of Niagara singers greater than those of Drake and Mrs. Sigourney.
Emerson nor Lowell, Whittier nor Longfellow, Holmes nor Stedman, has
given our Niagara wonder the dowry of a single line. Whitman, indeed,
alludes to Niagara in his poem "By Blue Ontario's Shore," but his poetic
vision makes no pause at the falls; nor does that of Joseph O'Connor,
who in his stirring and exalted Columbian poem, "The Philosophy of
America," finds a touch of color for his continental cosmorama by
letting his sweeping glance fall for a moment,

  To where, 'twixt Erie and Ontario,
  Leaps green Niagara with a giant roar.

But in such a symphony as his, Niagara is a subservient element, not the
dominating theme. Most of the Niagara poets have been of local repute,
unknown to fame.

What, then, must we conclude? Shall we say with Martin Farquhar
Tupper--who has contributed to the alleged poetry of the place--that
there is nothing sublime about Niagara? The many poetic and impassioned
passages in prose descriptions are against such a view. If dimensions,
volume, exhibition of power, are elements of sublimity, Niagara Falls
are sublime. But it cannot be said that superlative exhibitions of
nature, some essentially universal phenomena, like those of the sea and
sky, excepted, have been made the specific subject of verse, with a high
degree of success. The reason is not far to seek, and lies in the
inherent nature of poetry. It is a chief essential of poetry that it
express, in imaginative form, the insight of the human soul. The feeble
poets who have addressed themselves to Niagara have stopped, for the
most part, with purely objective utterance. In some few instances, as we
have seen, a truly subjective regard has given us noble lines.

The poetic in nature is essentially independent of the detail of natural
phenomena. A waterfall 150 feet high is not intrinsically any more
poetic than one but half that height; or a thunder-peal than the tinkle
of a rill. True poetry must be self-expression, as well as interpretive
of truths which are manifested through physical phenomena. Hence it is
in the nature of things that a nameless brook shall have its Tennyson,
or a Niagara flow unsung.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Often spelled "Daillon" or "d'Allion," the latter form suggesting
origin from the name of a place, as is common in the French. Charlevoix
sometimes wrongly has it "de Dallion." I follow the spelling as given in
the priest's own signature to a letter to a friend in Paris, dated at
"Tonachain [Toanchain], Huron village, this 18th July, 1627," and signed
"Joseph De La Roche Dallion." The student of seventeenth-century history
need not be reminded that little uniformity in the spelling of proper
names can be looked for, either in printed books or manuscripts. In
French, as in English, men spelled their names in different
ways--Shakespeare, it is said, achieving thirty-nine variations. The
matter bears on our present study because the diversity of spelling may
involve the young student in perplexity. Thus, the name of the priests
Lalemant (there were three of them) is given by Le Clercq as
"Lallemant," by Charlevoix (a much later historian) as "Lallemant" or
"Lalemant," but in the contemporary "Relations" of 1641-'42 as
"Lallemant," "Lalemant" or "L'allemant." Many other names are equally
variable, changes due to elision being sometimes, but not always,
indicated by accents, as "Bruslé," "Brûlé." Thus we have "Jolliet" or
"Joliet," "De Gallinée" or "De Galinée," "Du Lu," "Du Luth," "Duluth,"
etc. When we turn to modern English, the confusion is much--and
needlessly--increased. Dr. Shea, the learned translator and editor of Le
Clercq, apparently aimed to put all the names into English, without
accents. Parkman, or his publishers, have been guilty of many
inconsistencies, now speaking of "Brébeuf," now of "Brebeuf," and
changing "Le Clercq" to "Le Clerc." The "Historical Writings" of
Buffalo's pre-eminent student in this field, Orsamus H. Marshall, share
with many less valuable works--the present, no doubt, among them--these
inconsistencies of style in the use of proper names.

[2] Mr. Consul W. Butterfield, whose "History of Brûlé's Discoveries and
Explorations, 1610-1626," has appeared since the above was written, is
of opinion that Brûlé did not visit the falls, nor gain any particular
knowledge of Lake Erie, as that lake is not shown on Champlain's map of
1632; but that he and his Indian escort crossed the Niagara near Lake
Ontario, "into what is now Western New York, in the present county of
Niagara," and that "the journey was doubtless pursued through what are
now the counties of Erie, Genesee, Wyoming, Livingston, Steuben and
Chemung into Tioga," and thence down the Susquehanna. It is probable
that Brûlé's party would follow existing trails, and one of the best
defined trails, at a later period when the Senecas occupied the country
as far west as the Niagara, followed this easterly course; but there
were other trails, one of which lay along the east bank of the Niagara.
So long as we have no other original source of information except
Champlain, Sagard and Le Caron, none of whom has left any explicit
record of Brûlé's journeyings hereabouts, so long must his exact path in
the Niagara region remain untraced.

[3] "Brehan de Gallinée," in Margry. Shea has it "Brehaut de Galinée."

[4] Why Joliet left the Lake Erie route on his way east, for one much
more difficult, has been a matter of some discussion. According to the
Abbé Galinée, he was induced to turn aside by an Iroquois Indian who had
been a prisoner among the Ottawas. Joliet persuaded the Ottawas to let
this prisoner return with him. As they drew near the Niagara the
Iroquois became afraid lest he should fall into the hands of the ancient
enemies of the Iroquois, the Andastes, although the habitat of that
people is usually given as from about the site of Buffalo to the west
and southwest. At any rate it was the representations of this Iroquois
prisoner and guide which apparently turned Joliet into the Grand River
and kept him away from the Niagara. The paragraph in de Galinée bearing
on the matter is as follows:

"Ce fut cet Iroquois qui montra à M. Jolliet un nouveau chemin que les
François n'avoient point sceu jusques alors pour revenir des Outaouacs
dans le pays des Iroquois. Cependant la crainte que ce sauvage eut de
retomber entre les mains des Antastoes luy fit dire à M. Jolliet qu'il
falloit qu'il quittast son canot et marchast par terre plustost qu'il
n'eust fallu, et mesme sans cette terreur du sauvage, M. Jolliet eust pu
venir par eau jusques dans le lac Ontario, en faisant un portage de
demi-lieue pour éviter le grand sault dont j'ay déjà parlé, mais entin
il fut obligé par son guide de faire cinquante lieues par terre, et
abandonner son canot sur lebord du lac Erié."

It is singular that so important a relation in the history of our region
has never been published in English. De Galinée's original MS. Journal
is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris. It was first
printed in French by M. Pierre Margry in 1879; but five years prior to
that date Mr. O. H. Marshall of Buffalo, having been granted access to
M. Margry's MS. copy, made extracts, which were printed in English in
1874. These were only a small portion of the Abbé's valuable record. The
Ontario Historical Society has for some time contemplated the
translation and publication of the complete Journal--a work which
students of the early history of the lake region will hope soon to see
accomplished.

[5] Probably that now known as Patterson's Creek.

[6] A minot is an old French measure; about three bushels.

[7] Evidently at Four or Six Mile Creek.

[8] Probably what the English call scurvy-grass.

[9] Otherwise Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, Ont.

[10] Sullivan to Jay, Teaogo (Tioga), Sept. 30, 1779.

[11] I first struck the trail in London, among the Colonial Papers
preserved in the Public Records Office. Subsequently, in the Archives
Department at Ottawa, I found that trail broaden into a fair highway.
Something has been gleaned at Albany; more, no doubt, is to be looked
for at Washington; but it is an amazing fact that our Government is far
less liberal in granting access for students to its official records
than is either England or Canada. But the Niagara region was British
during the Revolution, and its history is chiefly to be sought in
British archives. Especially in the Haldimand Papers, preserved in the
British Museum, but of which verified copies are readily accessible in
the Archives at Ottawa, is the Revolutionary history of the Niagara to
be found. Besides the 232 great volumes in which these papers are
gathered, there are thousands of other MSS. of value to an inquirer
seeking the history of this region; especially the correspondence,
during all that term of years, between the commandants at Fort Niagara
and other upper lake posts, and the Commander in Chief of the British
forces in America; between that general and the Ministry in London, and
between the commandants at the posts and the Indian agents, fur traders
and many classes and conditions of men. For the incidents here recorded
I have drawn, almost exclusively, on these unpublished sources.

[12] A snow is a three-masted craft, the smallest mast abaft the
mainmast being rigged with a try-sail. Possibly, on the lakes where
shipyards were primitive, this type was not always adhered to; but the
correspondence and orders of the period under notice carefully
discriminate between snows and schooners.

[13] See "What Befel David Ogden," in this volume.

[14] "A Narrative of the Captivity and Sufferings of Benjamin Gilbert
and his Family; Who were surprised by the Indians, and taken from their
Farms, on the Frontiers of Pennsylvania, in the Spring, 1780.
Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Joseph Crukshank, in Market-street,
between Second and Third-streets. M DCC LXXXIV." 12mo, pp. iv-96. It was
reprinted in London (12mo, pp. 123) in 1785, and again (12mo, pp. 124,
"Reprinted and sold by James Phillips, George-Yard, Lombard street") in
1790. A "third edition, revised and enlarged," 16mo, pp. 240, bears date
Philadelphia, 1848. Of a later edition (8vo, pp. 38, Lancaster, Pa.,
1890) privately printed, only 150 copies were issued. The work was
written by William Walton, to whom the facts were told by the Gilberts
after their return. (Field.) Ketchum made some use of the "Narrative" in
his "Buffalo and the Senecas," as has Wm. Clement Bryant and perhaps
other local writers. See also "Account of Benjamin Gilbert," Vol. III.,
Register of Pennsylvania. A reissue of the original work, carefully
edited, would not only be a useful book for students of the history of
Buffalo and the Niagara region, but would offer much in the way of
extraordinary adventure for the edification of "the general reader."

[15] Ketchum says he could not have done so. ("History of Buffalo," Vol.
I., p. 328.) But Ketchum was misled, as many writers have been in
ascribing the leadership to Brant. My assertion rests on the evidence of
contemporary documents in the Archives at Ottawa, especially the MS.
"Anecdotes of Capt. Joseph Brant, Niagara, 1778," in the handwriting of
Col. Daniel Claus. Wm. Clement Bryant published a part of it in his
"Captain Brant and the Old King," _q. v._

[16] What became of all the scalps brought in to Fort Niagara during
these years, and delivered up to the British officers, if not for pay,
certainly for presents? The human scalp, properly dried, is not readily
perishable, if cared for. Very many of them--from youthful heads or
those white with age, the long tresses of women and the soft ringlets of
children--became the property of officers at this post. Little is said
on this subject in the correspondence; we do not see them with flags and
other trophies in the cathedrals and museums of England. What became of
them?

[17] In another letter to Lord George Germaine, dated Nov. 20, 1780, we
have a few additional particulars. It is probably the fullest account of
this calamity in existence. "It is with great concern," wrote Haldimand,
"I acquaint your Lordship of a most unfortunate event which is just
reported to me to have happened upon Lake Ontario about the 1st. [Nov.,
1780.] A very fine snow [schooner] carrying 16 guns, which was built
last winter, sailed the 31st ultimo from Niagara and was seen several
times the same day near the north shore. The next day it blew very hard,
and the vessel's boats, binnacle, gratings, some hats, etc., were found
upon the opposite shore, the wind having changed suddenly, by Lt. Col.
Butler about forty miles from Niagara, on his way from Oswego, so there
cannot be a doubt that she is totally lost and her crew, consisting of
forty seamen, perished, together with Lt. Col. Bolton of the King's
Regiment, whom I had permitted to leave Niagara on account of his bad
state of health, Lt. Colleton of the Royal Artillery, Lt. Royce and
thirty men of the 34th Regiment, who were crossing the lake to reinforce
Carleton Island. Capt. Andrews who commanded the vessel and the naval
armament upon that lake was a most zealous, active, intelligent officer.
The loss of so many good officers and men is much aggravated by the
consequences that will follow this misfortune in the disappointment of
conveying provisions across the lake for the garrison of Niagara and
Detroit, which are not near completed for the winter consumption, and
there is not a possibility of affording them much assistance with the
vessels that remain, it being dangerous to navigate the lake later than
the 20th inst., particularly as the large vessels are almost worn out.
The master builder and carpenters are sent off to repair this evil."

[18] "The Falls of Niagara, or Tourist's Guide," etc., by S. De Veaux.
Buffalo, 1839.

[19] Capt. Parrish became Indian agent, but Capt. Jones held the office
of interpreter for many years. "Their councils [with the Indians] were
held at a council house belonging to the Senecas situated a few rods
east of the bend in the road just this side of the red bridge across
Buffalo Creek on the Aurora Plank Road, then little more than an Indian
trail; but much of their business was transacted at the store of Hart &
Lay, situated on the west side of Main Street, midway between Swan and
Erie streets, and on the common opposite, then known as Ellicott
Square."--MS. narrative of Capt. Jones's captivity, by Orlando Allen, in
possession of William L. Bryant of Buffalo. Horatio Jones was captured
about 1777 near Bedford, Pa., being aged 14; was taken to a town on the
Genesee River, where he ran the gauntlet, was adopted, and lived with
the Indians until liberated by the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784. The
MS. narrative above quoted is Orlando Allen's chronicle of facts given
to him by Capts. Jones and Parrish, and is of exceptional value.

[20] Brig. Powell to Col. van Schaick, Feb. 13, 1780; Haldimand Papers,
"Correspondence relating to exchange of prisoners," etc., B. 175.

[21] I cannot better show the real state of affairs at Fort Niagara,
towards the close of the Revolutionary War, than by submitting the
following "Review of Col. Johnson's Transactions," which I copy from the
Canadian Archives. [Series B, Vol. 106, p. 123, _et seq._] I do not know
that it has ever been printed. Obviously written at the instigation of
Col. Johnson, it is perhaps colored to justify his administrative
conduct; but in any event it is a most useful picture of conditions at
the time. Except for some slight changes in punctuation in order to make
the meaning more readily apparent, the statement is given verbatim:

                                         MONTREAL, 24th March, 1782.

Before Colonel Johnson arrived at Niagara in 1779 the Six Nations lived
in their original possession the nearest of which was about 100 and the
farthest about 300 miles from that post. Their warriors were called upon
as the service required parties, which in 1776 amounted to about 70 men,
and the expenses attending them and a few occasional meetings ought to
have been and he presumes were a mere Trifle when compared with what
must attend their situation when all [were] driven to Niagara, exposed
to every want, to every temptation and with every claim which their
distinguished sacrifices and the tenor of Soloman [solemn] Treaties had
entitled them to from Government. The years 1777 & 1778 exhibited only a
larger number occasionally employed and for their fidelity and
attachment to Government they were invaded in 1779 by a rebel army
reported to be from 5 to 600 men with a train of Artillery who forced
them to retire to Niagara leaving behind them very fine plantations of
corn and vegetables, with their cloathing, arms, silver works, Wampum
Kettles and Implements of Husbandry, the collection of ages of which
were distroyed in a deliberate manner and march of the rebels. Two
villages only escaped that were out of their route.

The Indians having always apprehended that their distinguished Loyalty
might draw some such calamity towards them had stipulated that under
such circumstances they effected [expected] to have their losses made up
as well as a liberal continuation of favors and to be supported at the
expence of Government till they could be reinstated in their former
possessions. They were accordingly advised to form camps around Niagara
which they were beginning to do at the time of Colonel Johnson's arrival
who found them much chagrined and prepared to reconcile them to their
disaster which he foresaw would be a work of time requiring great
judgement and address in effecting which he was afterwards successful
beyond his most sanguine expectations, and this was the state of the
Indians at Colonel Johnson's arrival. As to the state and regulation of
Colonel Johnson's offices and department at that period he found the
duties performed by 2 or three persons the rest little acquainted with
them and considered as less capable of learning them, and the whole
number inadequate to that of the Indians, and the then requisite calls
of the service, and that it was necessary after refusing the present
wants of the Indians to keep their minds occupied by constant military
employment, all which he laid before the Commander in Chief who
frequently honoured his conduct with particular approbation.

By His Instructions he was to apply to Lieut. Colonel Bolton, more
especially regarding the modes of this place and the public accounts &c
from whom he received no further information, than that they were kept,
and made up by the established house at that post, and consider of
goods, orders and all contingencies and disbursements for Indians,
ranging parties, Prisoners, &c. That they were generally arranged half
yearly as well as the nature of them and of the changeable people they
had to deal with would permit; that he believed many demands were
therefore outstanding and that he was glad to have done with passing
[i. e., granting of passes] as it was impossible for him or any person
that had other duties to discharge to give them much attention. At which
Colonel Johnson expressed his concern but was told that the house was
established in the business and thro' the impossibility of having proper
circulating cash in another channell they advanced all monies and
settled all accounts and that that mode had been found most eligable.
Colonel Johnson thereupon issued the best orders he could devise for the
preventing abuses and the better regulation of matters relating to goods
payment of expenses, and proceeding to the discharge of the principal
objects of his duty, he, accordingly to a plan long since proposed,
formed the Indians into Companies and by degrees taught them to feel the
convenience of having officers set apart to each, which they were soon
not only reconciled to but highly pleased with, by which means he gave
some degree of method and form to the most Independent race of the
Indians, greatly facilitated all business with them and by a prudent
arrangement of his officers those who were before uninformed became in a
little time some of the most approved and usefull persons in his
department, being constantly quartered at such places or sent on some
services as tended most to their improvement and the public advantage,
whilst by spiriting up and employing the Indians with constant party's
along the frontiers from Fort Stanwix to Fort Pitt he so harrassed the
back settlements, as finally to drive numbers of them from their
plantation destroying their houses, mills, graneries, &c, frequently
defeating their scouting parties killing and captivating many of their
people amounting in the whole to near 900 and all this with few or no
instances of savage cruelty exclusive of what they performed when
assisted by His Majesty's Troops as will appear from his returns. By
these means he presented [? preserved] the spirit of the Indians and
kept their minds so occupied as to prevent their being disgusted at the
want of Military aid, which had been long their Topic and which could
then be afforded according to their requisitions; neither did he admit
any point of negociation during this period of peculiar hurry, for
knowing the importance the Oneidas &c., were off [of] to the rebels and
the obstruction they gave to all means of intelligence from that
quarter, he sent a private Belt and message on pretence of former
Friendship for them, in consequence of which he was shortly joined by
430 of them of [whom] 130 were men who have since on all occasions
peculiarly distinguished themselves, and after defeating the rebel
Invitation to the Indians he by the renewal of the great covenant chain
and war Belt which he sent thro' all the nations animation to the most
western Indians.

Soon after with intention to reduce the vast consumption of provisions,
he with much difficulty prevailed on part of the Indians to begin some
new plantation, that they might supply themselves with grain, &c; but
this being an object of the most serious and National concern, and urged
in the strongest terms by the commander-in-chief, Col. Johnson, during
the winter 1780, took indefatigable pains to persuade the whole to
remove and settle the ensuing season on advantageous terms. He had
himself visited for that purpose but finding that their treaties with
and expectations from Government, combined with their natural Indulgence
to render it a matter of infinite difficulty which would encrease by
delay and probably become unsurmountable he procured some grain from
Detroit and liberally rewarded the families of Influence at additional
expence to sett the example to the rest and assisted their beginning to
prevent a disappointment by which means he has enabled before the end of
May last to settle the whole about 3500 souls exclusive of those who had
joined the 2 farms that had not been distroyed by the rebels and thereby
with a little future assistance, and good management to create a saving
of £100,000 pr annum N. York currency at the rate of provision is worth
there to Government, together with a reduction of rum and of all Indian
Expenses, as will appear from the reduced accounts since these
settlements were made. The peculiar circumstances above mentioned and
the constant disappointment of goods from the Crown at the times they
were most wanted will easily account for the occasional expence. The
house which conducted the Business at Niagara was perpetually thronged
by Indians and others. Lieut. Colonel Bolton often sent verbal orders
for articles as did some other secretaries and sometimes necessity
required it and often they were charged and others substituted of equal
value with other irregularities, the consequence of a crew of Indians
before unknown, of an encrease of duties, and the necessity for sending
them to plant well satisfied.

The number of prisoners thrown upon Colonel Johnson from time to time
and of Indian Chiefs and their families about his quarters was attended
with vast trouble and an Expense which it was impossible to ascertain
with exactness and when he directed the moiety of certain articles of
consumption to be placed to the account of the Crown, he soon found
himself lower. The merchants have since been accused of fraud by a clerk
who lived some time with them, the investigation of which he was called
suddenly to attend and he now finds that many articles undoubtedly
issued have been placed to his account instead of their [the] Crown, and
many false and malicious insinuations circulated to the prejudice of his
character and his influence with the Indians which is rendered the more
injurious by his abrupt departure from the shortness of the time, which
did not permit his calling and explaining to the chiefs the reasons for
his leaving them as [he] undoubtedly should have done, and therefore,
and on every public account, his presence is not only effected
[expected], but is become more necessary among them than ever. This
brief summary is candidly prepared and is capable of sufficient proof
and Illustration.

[22] Site of Rome, N. Y.

[23] Perhaps more correctly, according to eminent authority (Lewis H.
Morgan), "Ga-nun-da-sa-ga." It was one of the most important of the
Seneca towns, situated near the site of the present town of Geneva. Gen.
Sullivan destroyed it in September, 1779, and no attempt was ever made
to rebuild it.

[24] Except perhaps in the case of Capt. Alexander Harper and his party,
for whom the ordeal was made light, most of the Indians having been
enticed away from the vicinity of the fort; but this was apparently due
to Brant, rather than to the British.--_See_ Ketchum's "History of
Buffalo," Vol. I., pp. 374, 375.

[25] I have followed the old narrative in the spelling of these Indian
names, which, no doubt, students of Indian linguistics will discover are
not wholly in accord with the genius of the Seneca tongue.

[26] Ketchum gives Capt. Powell a better character than this incident
would indicate; and says that he "visited the prisoners among the
Senecas, at Buffalo Creek, several times during the time they remained
there, not only to encourage them by his counsel and sympathy, but to
administer to their necessities, and to procure their release; which was
ultimately accomplished, mainly through his efforts, assisted by other
officers at the fort, which [_sic_] the example and interest of Jane
Moore, the Cherry Valley captive had influenced to coöperate in this
work of mercy." ["History of Buffalo," Vol. I., p. 376.] I have adhered
to the spirit and in part, to the language, of Ogden's own narrative.

[27] Address delivered at Fort Niagara, N. Y., at the celebration of the
centennial of British evacuation, August 11, 1896. Amplification on some
points, not possible in the brief time allotted for the spoken address
on that occasion, is here made in foot-notes.

[28] See Oliver Wendell Holmes's beautiful poem, "Francis Parkman," read
at the meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society in memory of the
historian, who died November 8, 1893.

[29] The first official step towards such fortification was taken by
Frontenac. On Nov. 14, 1674, he wrote to the Minister, Colbert: "Sieur
Joliet ... has returned three months ago, and discovered some very fine
Countries, and a navigation so easy through the beautiful rivers he has
found, that a person can go from Lake Ontario and Fort Frontenac in a
bark to the Gulf of Mexico, there being only one carrying place, half a
league in length, where Lake Ontario communicates with Lake Erie. A
settlement would be made at this point and another bark built on Lake
Erie. These are projects which it will be possible to effect when Peace
will be firmly established, and whenever it will please the King to
prosecute these discoveries." [Paris Docs. I., N. Y. Colonial MSS.]
Joliet, it must be remembered, was never on the Niagara; whatever
representations he made to Frontenac regarding it were based on hearsay,
very likely on reports made to him by La Salle at their meeting in 1669;
so that priority in promoting the Niagara route reverts after all to
that gallant adventurer.

[30] In 1896.

[31] In the palisaded cabin on the site of Lewiston.

[32] Father Watteaux (also spelled "Watteau," "Vatteaux," etc.) was
first only in the sense of being assigned to a located mission. "Father
Gabriel [de la Ribourde] was named Superior.... Father Melithon was to
remain at Niagara and make it his mission." (Le Clercq, Shea's
translation, Vol. I., p. 112.) "Father Melithon remained in the house at
Niagara with some laborers and clerks." (_Ib._, p. 113.) This was in the
summer of 1679; but six months earlier mass had been celebrated on the
New York side of the Niagara by Father Hennepin.

[33] This statement, which I have elsewhere accepted (_See_ "The
Cross-Bearers," p. 28 of this volume), is on the usually unimpeachable
authority of Dr. John Gilmary Shea, the historian of the Catholic Church
in America. (_See_ "The Catholic Church in Colonial Days," p. 322.) I
find, however, on referring to the authorities on which Dr. Shea rests
his statement that the particular grant made on the date named--May 27,
1679--was not at Niagara but at Fort Frontenac. (Hennepin, "Nouvelle
Découverte," p. 108.) At Frontenac La Salle had seigniorial rights, and
could pass title as he wished; but on the Niagara he had no right to
confer title, for he held no delegated power beyond the letters patent
from the King, which permitted him to explore and build forts, under
certain restrictions.

[34] This would seem to fix the date of the northeast blockhouse at
1790; but on examination of other sources of information I discover
strong evidence that the original construction was earlier. The Duke de
la Rochefoucault Liancourt, who visited Fort Niagara in June, 1795,
wrote: "All the buildings, within the precincts of the fort, are of
stone, and were built by the French." ("Travels," etc., London ed.,
1799, Vol. I., p. 257.) This would make them antedate July, 1759, which
is not true of the bakehouse. The Duke may therefore have erred
regarding other buildings, the northeast blockhouse among them; yet had
it been but four or five years old, he would not be likely to attribute
it to the French. Pouchot's plan of the fort (1759) does not show it. I
have seen the original sketch of a plan in the British Museum, dated
Niagara, 1773, which shows, with several buildings long since destroyed,
two constructions where the blockhouses now stand, with this note: "Two
stone redoubts built in 1770 and 1771." An accompanying sketch of the
southwest redoubt shows a striking similarity to the southwest
blockhouse as it now stands, although a roadway ran through it and a gun
was mounted on top. These redoubts may have been remodeled by Gother
Mann.

[35] Although I am aware that some American writers, and probably all
Canadian writers who touch the subject, are offering evidence that there
was no "massacre" at Wyoming, I still find in the details of that affair
what I regard as abundant warrant for the designation of "massacre."

[36] Haldimand to T. Townshend, October 25, 1782.

[37] Haldimand to Lord North, June 2, 1782. In the same letter he wrote
"I have lately received a letter from Brig.-Gen. Maclean who commands at
Niagara.... Affairs with the Indians are in a very critical state. I
have ordered and insisted upon Sir John Johnson's immediate departure
for Niagara in hopes that his influence may be of use in preventing the
bad consequences which may be apprehended. I have been assured by the
officers who brought me the accounts of the cessation of arms, via New
York, that Gen. Schuyler and the American officers made no secret of
their hostile intentions against the Indians and such Royalists as had
served amongst them. It is to be hoped that the American Congress will
adopt a line of conduct more consonant to humanity as well as Policy."

[38] The full story of the efforts of the United States Government to
obtain possession of Fort Niagara and the other posts on the northern
frontier would make a long chapter. I have barely touched a few features
of it. One episode was the mission of the Baron Steuben to Haldimand, to
claim the delivery of the posts. Washington selected Steuben because of
his appreciation of that general's tact and soundness of judgment in
military matters. The President's instructions under date of July 12,
1783, were characteristically precise and judicious. Steuben was to
procure from General Haldimand, if possible, immediate cession of the
posts; failing in that, he was to get a pledge of an early cession; "but
if this cannot be done," wrote Washington, "you will endeavor to procure
from him positive and definite assurances, that he will as soon as
possible give information of the time that shall be fixed on for the
evacuation of these posts, and that the troops of his Britannic Majesty
shall not be drawn therefrom until sufficient previous notice shall be
given of that event; that the troops of the United States may be ready
to occupy the fortresses as soon as they shall be abandoned by those of
his Britannic Majesty." An exchange of artillery and stores was also to
be proposed. Having made these arrangements with Haldimand, Steuben was
to go to Oswego, thence to Niagara, and after viewing the situation, and
noting the strength and all the military and strategic conditions, was
to pass on to Detroit. Armed with these instructions from the
Commander-in-Chief, Steuben went to Canada, and on the 8th of August met
Gen. Haldimand at Sorel. For once, the man who had disciplined the
American Army met his match. His report to Washington indicates an
uncommonly positive reception.

"To the first proposition which I had in charge to make," he wrote to
Washington, Aug. 23, 1783 ["Correspondence of the Revolution," IV., 41,
42], "Gen. Haldimand replied that he had not received any orders for
making the least arrangement for the evacuation of a single post; that
he had only received orders to cease hostilities; those he had strictly
complied with, not only by restraining the British troops, but also the
savages, from committing the least hostile act; but that, until he
should receive positive orders for that purpose, he would not evacuate
an inch of ground. I informed him that I was not instructed to insist on
an immediate evacuation of the posts in question, but that I was ordered
to demand a safe conduct to, and a liberty of visiting the posts on our
frontiers, and now occupied by the British, that I might judge of the
arrangements necessary to be made for securing the interests of the
United States. To this he answered that the precaution was premature;
that the peace was not yet signed; that he was only authorized to cease
hostilities; and that, in this point of view, he could not permit that I
should visit a single post occupied by the British. Neither would he
agree that any kind of negotiation should take place between the United
States and the Indians, if in his power to prevent it, and that the door
of communication should, on his part, be shut, until he received
positive orders from his court to open it. My last proposal was that he
should enter into an agreement to advise Congress of the evacuation of
the posts, three months previous to their abandonment. This, for the
reason before mentioned, he refused, declaring that until the definite
treaty should be signed, he would not enter into any kind of agreement
or negotiation whatever."

[39] The inability of the New York State Government to accomplish
anything in the matter at this time is illustrated by the following
extract from Gov. Clinton's speech to the Senate and Assembly, January
21, 1784: "You will perceive from the communication which relates to the
subject that I have not been inattentive to the circumstances of the
western posts within this State. They are undoubtedly of great
importance for the protection of our trade and frontier settlements, and
it was with concern I learnt that the propositions made by the State for
governing those posts were not acceded to by Congress. It affords me,
however, some satisfaction to find that the Commander-in-Chief was in
pursuit of measures for that purpose, but my expostulations proved
fruitless. The British commander in that Department treating the
Provisional Articles as a suspension of hostilities only, declined to
withdraw his garrisons and refused us even to visit these posts. It is
necessary for me to add that it will now be impracticable to take
possession of them until spring, and that I have no reason to believe
that Congress have, or are likely to make any provision for the expense
which will necessarily occur, it therefore remains for you to take this
interesting subject into your further consideration."

To this the Senate made answer: "The circumstances of our western posts
excite our anxiety. We shall make no comment on the conduct of the
British officer in Canada as explained by your Excellency's
communication. It would be in vain. Convinced that our frontier
settlements, slowly emerging from the utter ruin with which they were so
lately overwhelmed, and our fur trade which constitutes a valuable
branch in our remittances, will be protected by these posts, we shall
adopt the best measures in our power for their reëstablishment."

[40] "Lt.-Col. Fish," the Governor General's report continues, "gave me
the strongest assurances that the proceedings against the Loyalists were
disapproved by the leading men in the different States, and gave me a
recent instance of Gov. Clinton having [? saving] Capt. Moore [?] of the
53d Regiment from the insolence of the mob in New York."

[41] "Lt.-Col. Hull in the American service, arrived here on the 10th
inst. with a letter from Major Gen. Knox, dated New York the 13th
June.... I did not think myself, from the tenor of Yr Lordship's letter
of the 8th of April, authorized to give publicly, any reason for
delaying the evacuation of the Posts, tho' perhaps it might have had
some effect in quickening the efforts of Congress to produce the
execution of the Article of the Difinitive Treaty in favor of the
Royalists, tho' I held the same private conversation to Lt.-Col. Hull as
I had to Lt.-Col. Fish."--Haldimand to Lord Sydney Quebec, July 16,
1784.

[42] Haldimand to Thos. Steile, Esq., of the Treasury; Quebec, Sept. 1,
1784.

[43] At the risk of overloading my pages with citations from this old
correspondence, I venture to give the following letter from Lord
Dorchester to Lt.-Gov. Simcoe, so admirably does it illustrate the
British apprehensions at the time. It is dated Quebec, Apr. 3, 1796:

"Circumstances have arisen, which will probably, for a time, delay the
evacuation of the Upper Posts, among which some relating to the
interests of the Indians do not appear the least important. By the 8th
article of the treaty entered into the 3d August last, between Mr. Wayne
and them, it is stipulated that no person shall be allowed to reside
among or to trade with these Indian tribes, unless they be furnished
with a license from the Government of the United States, and that every
person so trading shall be delivered up by the Indians to an American
Superintendent, to be dealt with according to law, which is inconsistent
with the third article of the Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation,
previously concluded between His Majesty and the United States by which
it is agreed that 'it shall at all times be free to His Majesty's
subjects and to the citizens of the United States and also to the
Indians, dwelling on either side of the Boundary Line, freely to _pass
and repass_, by land or inland navigation, into the respective
territories and countries of the two parties on the Continent of America
(the country within the limits of the Hudson Bay Co. only excepted), and
to navigate the lakes, rivers and waters thereof, and freely to carry on
trade and commerce _with each other_.'

"Previously therefore to the actual execution of the treaty on our part,
it is requisite that we should be convinced that the stipulations
entered into by the United States will also be fulfilled by them; and on
a point so interesting to His Majesty's subjects and more especially to
the Indians, it is indispensably necessary that all doubts and
misconceptions should be removed. His Majesty's Minister at Philadelphia
is accordingly instructed to require an explanation on this subject.
Till therefore the same shall be satisfactorily terminated I shall delay
the surrender of the Posts. These matters you will be pleased to explain
to the Indians, pointing out to them at the same time the benevolent
care and regard always manifested towards them by the King their Father,
and particularly the attention that has been shown to their interests on
the present occasion."

[44] Dorchester to Robert Liston (British Minister at Philadelphia),
June 6, 1796.

[45] Under date of Niagara, August 6, 1796, Peter Russell wrote to the
Duke of Portland: "All the posts we held on the American side of the
line in the vicinity of this province, are given up to the United States
agreeable to the treaty, excepting that of Niagara, which remains
occupied by a small detachment from the 5th Regiment, until the garrison
they have ordered thither may arrive from Oswego. And I understand that
they have not yet taken possession of Michillimackinac from the want of
provisions. I have directed the officers commanding his Majesty's troops
in this Province to make me a return of the effective number that may
remain after the departure of the 5th and 24th Regiments, and of their
distribution." On August 20th he wrote: "The Fort of Niagara was
delivered up to a detachment of troops belonging to the United States of
America on the 11th inst. and the guard left in it by the 5th Regiment
has sailed for Lower Canada." Mackinac, the last of the posts to be
surrendered, did not pass into the hands of the Americans until the
following October.

[46] This must not be confounded with the wreck of the steamer
President, which was never heard from after the storm of March 13, 1841.
The President of which Mr. Lay wrote was obviously a bark, ship, or
other sailing craft.

[47] In one Canadian work, John Charles Dent's "Story of the Upper
Canadian Rebellion," statements are printed to show that the Caroline
did not go over the falls, but that her hull sank in shallow water not
far below the Schlosser landing. There is however a mass of evidence to
other effect. It is striking that so sensational an episode, happening
within the memory of many men yet living, should be thus befogged. The
contemporary accounts which were published in American newspapers were
wildly exaggerated, one report making the loss of life exceed ninety.
(There was but one man killed.) Mackenzie himself is said to have spread
these extravagant reports. He had a gift for the sort of journalism
which in this later day is called "yellow," a chief iniquity of which is
its wanton perversion of contemporary record, and the ultimate confusion
of history.

[48] By the end of December, 1837, about 600 men had resorted to Navy
Island in the guise of "Patriots." Although this number was later
somewhat increased, the entire "army" at that point probably never
numbered 1,000.

[49] There were about 150 Patriots, claiming to be citizens of the
United States, who were taken prisoners in Upper Canada, and transported
to Van Dieman's Land. Among those taken near Windsor, besides Marsh,
were Ezra Horton, Joseph Horton and John Simons of Buffalo, John W.
Simmons and Truman Woodbury of Lockport. Taken at Windmill Point, near
Prescott, was Asa M. Richardson of Buffalo. Taken at Short Hills,
Welland Co., was Linus W. Miller of Chautauqua Co., who afterwards wrote
a book on the rebellion and his exile; and Benjamin Waite, whose
"Letters from Van Dieman's Land" were published in Buffalo in 1843.
Waite died at Grand Rapids, Mich., Nov. 9, 1895, aged eighty-two. It is
not unlikely that some Americans who underwent that exile are still
living. I have seen no list of Americans captured during the outbreak in
Lower Canada.

[50] _See_ "Reminiscences of Levi Coffin," p. 253.

[51] _See_ "John Brown and His Men," p. 171.

[52] _See_ Siebert's "The Underground Railroad," pp. 35, 36.

[53] "Narrative of William W. Brown," 1848, pp. 107, 108. Quoted by
Siebert.

[54] There is a considerable literature on the specific subject of the
Underground Railroad, and a great deal more relating to it is to be
found in works dealing more broadly with slavery, and the political
history of our country. Of especial local interest is Eber M. Pettit's
"Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad," etc., Fredonia,
1879. The author, "for many years a conductor on the Underground
Railroad line from slavery to freedom," has recorded many episodes in
which the fugitives were brought to Buffalo, Black Rock, or Niagara
Falls, and gives valuable and interesting data regarding the routes and
men who operated them in Western New York and Western Pennsylvania.

[55] I have drawn these facts from Mrs. Jameson's "Winter Studies and
Summer Rambles in Canada," published in London in 1838. Mrs. Jameson was
at Niagara in 1837, apparently during or soon after the riot. She called
on one of the negro women who had been foremost in the fray. This woman
was "apparently about five-and-twenty," had been a slave in Virginia,
but had run away at sixteen. This would indicate that she may have come
a refugee to the Niagara as early as 1828. William Kirby, in his "Annals
of Niagara," has told Moseby's story, with more detail than Mrs.
Jameson; he reports only one as killed in the _mêlée_--the schoolmaster
Holmes--and adds that "Moseby lived quietly the rest of his life in St.
Catharines and Niagara." Sir Francis Bond Head's official communication
to the Home Government regarding the matter reports two as killed.

[56] _See_ "A Narrative," by Sir Francis Bond Head, Bart., 2d ed.,
London, 1839, pp. 200-204.

[57] "Letters from the United States, Cuba and Canada," London, 1856, p.
118.

[58] "Canada, Its Defences, Condition and Resources," by W. Howard
Russell, LL. D., London, 1865, pp. 33, 34.

[59] Mr. Butler's name does not appear in Siebert's history, "The
Underground Railroad." The "operators" for Erie County named therein (p.
414) are Gideon Barker, the Hon. Wm. Haywood, Geo. W. Johnson, Deacon
Henry Moore, and Messrs. Aldrich and Williams. For Niagara County he
names Thomas Binmore, W. H. Childs, M. C. Richardson, Lyman Spaulding.
Chautauqua and Wyoming counties present longer lists, and thirty-six are
named for Monroe County. As appears from my text, the Erie County list
could be extended.

[60] No doubt an investigator could find a number of former slaves, rich
in reminiscences of Underground days, still living in the villages and
towns of the Niagara Peninsula, though they would not be very numerous,
for, as Aunt Betsy says, "the old heads are 'bout all gone now." Between
Fort Erie and Ridgeway lives Daniel Woods, a former slave, who came by
the Underground. Harriet Black, a sister-in-law of Mrs. Robinson, still
living near Ridgeway, was also a "passenger." Probably others live at
St. Catharines, Niagara and other points of former negro settlement, who
could tell thrilling tales of their escape from the South. There are
many survivors on the Canada side of the Niagara, of another class; men
or women who were born in slavery but were "freed by the bayonet," and
came North with no fear of the slave-catchers. Of this class at Fort
Erie are Melford Harris and Thomas Banks. Mr. Banks was sold from
Virginia to go "down the river"; got his freedom at Natchez, joined the
102d Michigan Infantry, and fought for the Union until the end of the
war. His case is probably typical of many, but does not belong to the
records of the Underground Railroad.

[61] H. Clay to Lewis L. Hodges; original letter in possession of the
Buffalo Historical Society.

[62] Anonymous reminiscences published in the Buffalo Courier, about
1887.

[63] Apparently the greatest travel, at least over these particular
routes, was during 1840-41. It was a justifiable boast of the
"conductors" that a "passenger" was never lost. In a journal of notes,
which was annually kept for many years by one of the zealous
anti-slavery men of that day, I find the following entry in 1841:
"Nov. 1.--The week has been cold; some hard freezing and snow; now warm;
assisted six fugitives from oppression, from this land of equal rights
to the despotic government of Great Britain, where they can enjoy their
liberty. Last night put them on board a steamboat and paid their passage
to Buffalo."

[64] When I knew Frank Henry, he was light-house keeper at Erie. He died
in October, 1889, and his funeral was a memorable one. After the body
had been viewed by his friends, while it lay in state in the parlor of
his old home in Wesleyville, the casket was lifted to the shoulders of
the pall-bearers, who carried it through the streets of the little
village to the church, all the friends, which included all the villagers
and many from the city and the country round about, following in
procession on foot. The little church could not hold the assemblage, but
the overflow waited until the service was over, content, if near enough
the windows or the open door, to hear but a portion of the eulogies his
beloved pastor pronounced. Then they all proceeded to the graveyard
behind the historic church and laid him away. He was a man of an
exceptionally frank and lovable character. Prof. Wilbur H. Siebert
mentions him in his history, "The Underground Railroad from Slavery to
Freedom"; but nowhere else, I believe, is as much recorded of the work
which he did for the refugee slaves as in the incidents told in the
following pages; and these, we may be assured, are but examples of the
service in which he was engaged for a good many years.

[65] Afterwards long known as the Lowry Mansion, on Second Street,
between French and Holland streets. It is still standing.

[66] Capt. D. P. Dobbins was for many years a distinguished resident of
Buffalo. As vessel master, Government official, and especially as
inventor of the Dobbins life-boat, he acquired a wide reputation; but
little has been told of his Underground Railroad work. He died in 1892.

[67] I had the facts of this experience from Mr. Frank Henry, and first
wrote them out and printed them in the Erie Gazette in 1880. (Ah, Time,
why hasten so!) In 1894 H. U. Johnson of Orwell, O., published a book
entitled "From Dixie to Canada, Romances and Realities of the
Underground Railroad," in which a chapter is devoted to Jack Watson, and
this experience at the Wesleyville church is narrated, considerably
embellished, but in parts with striking similarity to the version for
which Frank Henry and I were responsible. Mr. Johnson gives no credit
for his facts to any source.

[68] Such an one was the anti-slavery worker, Sallie Holley, who had
formerly taken great pleasure in the sermons of Mr. Fillmore's pastor,
the Rev. Dr. Hosmer of the Unitarian Church. When Mr. Fillmore returned
to Buffalo and was seen again in his accustomed seat, Miss Holley
refused to attend there. "I cannot consent," she wrote, "that my name
shall stand on the books of a church that will countenance voting for
any pro-slavery presidential candidate. Think of a woman-whipper and a
baby-stealer being countenanced as a Christian!"--_See_ "A Life for
Liberty," edited by John White Chadwick, pp. 60, 69.

[69] _See_ Seward's "Works," Vol. I., p. 65, _et seq._

[70] _See_ Chamberlain's "Biography of Millard Fillmore," p. 136.

[71] For the knowledge that the first mention of Niagara Falls is in
Champlain's "Des Sauvages," we are indebted to the Hon. Peter A. Porter
of Niagara Falls, who recently discovered, by comparison of early texts,
that the allusions to the falls in Marc Lescarbot's "Histoire de la
Nouvelle France" (1609), heretofore attributed to Jacques Cartier, are
really quotations from "Des Sauvages," published some five years before.
There is, apparently, no warrant for the oft-repeated statement that
Cartier, in 1535, was the first white man to hear of the falls. That
distinction passes to Champlain, who heard of them in 1603, and whose
first book, printed at the end of that year or early in 1604, gave to
the world its first knowledge of the great cataract.--_See_ "Champlain
not Cartier," by Peter A. Porter, Niagara Falls, N. Y., 1899.

[72] Champlain a bien été jusqu'à Mexico, comme on peut le voir dans son
voyage aux Indes Occidentales; mais il ne s'est pas rendu au Pérou, que
nous sachions.--_Note in Quebec reprint, 1870._ Nor had he been to
Niagara.

[73] Mocosa est le nom ancien de la Virginie. Cette expression, _saults
Mocosans_, semble donner à entendre que, dès 1603 au moins, l'on avait
quelque connaissance de la grande chute de Niagara.--_Note in Quebec
reprint, 1870._

[74] "Lescarbot écrit, en 1610, une pièce de vers dans laquelle il parle
des grands sauts que les sauvages disent rencontrer en remontant le
Saint-Laurent jusqu'au voisinage de la Virginie."--_Benj. Sulte,
"Mélanges D'Histoire et de Litterature" p. 425._

[75] The pronunciation of "Niagara" here, the reader will remark, is
necessarily with the primary accent on the third syllable; the correct
pronunciation, as eminent authorities maintain; and, as I hold, the more
musical. "Ni-ag'-a-ra" gives us one hard syllable; "Ni [or better,
-nee]-a-ga'-ra" makes each syllable end in a vowel, and softens the word
to the ear. "Ni-ag'-a-ra" would have been impossible to the Iroquois
tongue. But the word is now too fixed in its perverted usage to make
reform likely, and we may expect to hear the harsh "Ni-ag'-a-ra" to the
end of the chapter.

[76] Dr. Samuel Johnson, as is well known, was responsible for a number
of lines in "The Traveller." In the verses above quoted the line

  "To stop too fearful and too faint to go"

is attributed to him. Thus near does the mighty Johnson, the "Great Cham
of Literature," come to legitimate inclusion among the poets of Niagara!

[77] This is not necessarily hyperbole, by any means. Before the Niagara
region was much settled, filled with the din of towns, the roar of
trains, screech of whistles and all manner of ear-offending sounds,
Niagara's voice could be heard for many miles. Many early travelers
testify to the same effect as Moore. An early resident of Buffalo, the
late Hon. Lewis F. Allen, has told me that many a time, seated on the
veranda of his house on Niagara Street near Ferry, in the calm of a
summer evening, he has heard the roar of Niagara Falls.

[78] Introduced in the Epistle to Lady Charlotte Rawdon. In Moore's day
there was a tiny islet, called Gull Island, near the edge of the
Horseshoe Fall. It long since disappeared.

[79] It had prior publication, serially, with illustrations, in the
"Portfolio" of Philadelphia, 1809-'10.

[80] Tom Moore's infantile criticisms of American institutions have
often been quoted with approbation by persons sharing his supposed
hostile views. What his maturer judgment was may be gathered from the
following extract from a letter which he wrote, July 12, 1818, to J. E.
Hall, editor of the "Portfolio," Philadelphia. I am not aware that it
ever has been published. I quote from the original manuscript, in my
possession:

"You are mistaken in thinking that my present views of politics are a
_change_ from those I formerly entertained. They are but a _return_ to
those of my school & college days--to principles, of which I may say
what Propertius said of his mistress: _Cynthia prima fuit, Cynthia finis
erit_. The only thing that has ever made them _librate_ in their _orbit_
was that foolish disgust I took at what I thought the _consequences_ of
democratic principles in America--but I judged by the _abuse_, not the
_use_--and the little information I took the trouble of seeking came to
me through twisted and tainted channels--and, in short, I was a rash boy
& made a fool of myself. But, thank Heaven, I soon righted again, and I
trust it was the only deviation from the path of pure public feeling I
ever shall have to reproach myself with. I mean to take some opportunity
(most probably in the Life of Sheridan I am preparing) of telling the
few to whom my opinions can be of any importance, how much I regret &
how sincerely I retract every syllable, injurious to the great cause of
Liberty, which my hasty view of America & her society provoked me into
uttering....

"Always faithfully & cordially Yours,

                                                     "THOMAS MOORE."

[81] John Neal, or "Yankee Neal," as he was called, is a figure in early
American letters which should not be forgotten. He was of Quaker
descent, but was read out of the Society of Friends in his youth, as he
says, "for knocking a man head over heels, for writing a tragedy, for
paying a militia fine and for desiring to be turned out whether or no."
He was a pioneer in American literature, and won success at home and
abroad several years before Cooper became known. He was the first
American contributor to English and Scotch quarterlies, and compelled
attention to American topics at a time when English literature was
regarded as the monopoly of Great Britain. His career was exceedingly
varied and picturesque. He was an artist, lawyer, traveler, journalist
and athlete. He is said to have established the first gymnasium in this
country, on foreign models, and was the first to advocate, in 1838, in a
Fourth-of-July oration, the right of woman suffrage. His writings are
many, varied, and for the most part hard to find nowadays.

[82] Those interested in scarce Americana may care to know that this
"Wonders of the West" is said by some authorities to be the second
book--certain almanacs and small prints excluded--that was published in
Canada West, now Ontario. Of its only predecessor, "St. Ursula's
Convent, or the Nuns of Canada," Kingston, 1824, no copy is believed to
exist. Of the York school-master's Niagara poem, I know of but two
copies, one owned by M. Phileas Gagnon, the Quebec bibliophile; the
other in my own possession. It is at least of interest to observe that
Ontario's native poetry began with a tribute to her greatest natural
wonder, though it could be wished with a more creditable example.

[83] It is a striking fact that "The Culprit Fay," which appeared in
1819, was the outgrowth of a conversation between Drake, Halleck and
Cooper, concerning the unsung poetry of American rivers.--_See_
Richardson's "American Literature," Vol. II., p. 24.

[84] Lord Morpeth made three visits to Niagara. He was the friend and
guest, during his American travels, of Mr. Wadsworth at the Geneseo
Homestead; and was also entertained by ex-President Van Buren and other
distinguished men. His writings reveal a poetic, reflective temperament,
but rarely rise above the commonplace in thought or expression.

[85] The lines are not included in ordinary editions of Campbell's
poems. The original MS. is in the possession of the Buffalo Public
Library.

[86] _See_ "Five Books of Song," by R. W. Gilder, 1894.

[87] Dedicatory sonnet in "Younger American Poets, 1830-1890," edited by
Douglas Sladen and G. B. Roberts.

[88] The only edition I have seen was printed in the City of Mexico in
1871.

[89] _See_ Scribner's Monthly, Feb., 1881.

[90] _See_ "Beauties and Achievements of the Blind," by Wm. Artman and
L. V. Hall, Dansville, N. Y., 1854.