Whoso has seen Niagara only in summer has but half seen it. In winter its beauties are not diminished, while the accessories due to the season are numerous and varied. After two or three weeks of intensely cold weather many beautiful and fantastic scenes are presented around the Falls.
The different varieties of stalactites and stalagmites hanging from or apparently supporting the projecting rocks along the side walls of the deep chasm, the ice islands which grow on the bars and around the rocks in the river, the white caps and hoods which are formed on the rocks below, the fanciful statuary and statuesque forms which gather on and around the trees and bushes, are all curious and interesting. Exceedingly beautiful are the white vestments of frozen spray with which everything in the immediate vicinity is robed and shielded; and beautiful, too, are the clusters of ice apples which tip the extremities of the branches of the evergreen trees.
There is something marvelous in the purity and whiteness of congealed spray. One might think it to be frozen sunlight. And when, by reason of an angle or a curve, it is thrown into shadow, one sees where the rainbow has been caught and frozen in. After a day of sunshine which has been sufficiently warm to fill the atmosphere with aqueous vapor, if a sharp, still, cold night succeed, and if on this there break a clear, calm morning, the scene presented is one of unique and enchanting beauty.
The frozen spray on every boll, limb, and twig of tree and shrub, on every stiffened blade of grass, on every rigid stem and tendril of the vines, is covered over with a fine white powder, a frosty bloom, from which there springs a line of delicate frost-spines, forming a perfect fringe of ice-moss, than which nothing more fanciful nor more beautiful can be imagined.
Then, as the day advances, the increasing warmth of the sun's rays dissolves this fairy frost-work and spreads it like a delicate varnish over the solid spray, giving it a brilliant polish rivaling the luster of the rarest gems; the mid-morning breeze sets in motion this flashing, dazzling forest, which varies its color as the sunlight-angle varies; and finally, when the waxing warmth and growing breeze loosen the hold of the icy covering in the tree-tops, and it drops to the still solid surface in the shade beneath,--the tiny particles with a silver tinkle and the larger pieces with the sharp, rattling sound of the castanet,--the ear is charmed with a wild, dashing rataplan, while a scene of strange enchantment challenges the admiration of the spectator.