"Our Canadian Fall is the grandest, after all," said May.
"Yes," replied Kate, "only it isn't all Canadian, you see, for the boundary-line runs somewhere about the middle of the river. The Americans have more than their own share--all their own, and nearly half of ours."
"I shouldn't think it mattered much," observed Hugh, "as they certainly can't take it away, or fence it in, and forbid trespassers."
Their eyes followed the long, irregular curve, more like the figure _five_ than like a horse-shoe, and so deeply indented in the center that they could scarcely mark the center of the abyss, whose almost apple-green tint was every moment hidden by the perpetually ascending clouds of milky spray, sometimes touched by the tinted bow, and always descending into the cloudy veil that eternally conceals the seething abyss below.
"This is Terrapin Rock," said Kate, after they had looked in silence for a time; "and there used to be a tower here from which you could look down on all this wild raging commotion, feeling the strong stone structure tremble beneath you. It came down at last--or was pulled down, because it was thought dangerous, I forget which."
"Well, _this_ is fearful enough for me," said Flora, turning away, at last, with Kate, while May still stood lost in the fascination of the scene, till roused by Kate's call, when she discovered that Hugh Macnab had lingered also, absorbed in the same fascination, and was now waiting to help her back across the little bridge which joined the rocky point to the island.
"It seems like waking up to one's own identity again, after having lost it in a vague sense of 'the Immensities,'" remarked Hugh, as they joined the others; and May felt that the words exactly expressed her own feeling.
"But we _must_ wake up in earnest," said Kate, "and hurry on, or Aunt Bella will be certainly imagining that we have all gone over the Falls."
They hurried along the smooth, broad road till they at last came up with Aunt Bella, seated on a rustic bench, with a large basket beside her.
"Oh, my dears! what have--" she began, but Kate playfully laid her finger on her lips, saying: "We are all here, Auntie, quite safe, and now we are going to look at the Fall from Luna Island."