Every one went out and had a nibble of a look at the Falls early in the morning. After breakfast the Duke and the other visitors, clad in waterproofs, which soon glistened like coats of black mail, set out on their excursion, and we saw them in half an hour afterwards, when they had crossed the Suspension Bridge to the American side, descending to the edge of the basin by the snow boulders which had not yet yielded to the sunshine. I believe that every one of the party enjoyed his sight-seeing most thoroughly, each in his own way. There was, perhaps, a general impression among the serious-minded and practical that Niagara was having too much of its own way, and that it ought to be turned to better account as a reserve of force. The ultimate destiny of that great power may be safely predicted. Niagara will turn machinery.
After mid-day Lord Stafford, Mr. Wright, and myself drove from the hotel to do the sights. It is an aggravating function. There never was such a nest of harpies as is nurtured here. Talk of a Swiss valley, or Savoy, or the Lakes, or Killarney, of any place infested by the creatures who live on travellers' blood--roll them into one gigantic fee-devouring giant, with the hands and heads of Briareus, it would not be "a circumstance" to Niagara. Every step is marked by demands for dollars and cents. There must be some authority for these payments, but somehow it strikes one that Niagara, which is doing its part--the chief certainly in the play--derives no benefit from its performance, and that a set of impostors are turning its waters into silver and gold. I have no patience with such imposts. I swear, and eke I pay. American side, Canadian side, Goat Island, Burning Well--they are all the same, "Dollars and cents." How near death one may be when he is in a passion! I was walking over a bridge made of planks, from one island to another, on our way from the Burning Well--my foot slipped, and I shot off the plank on my back--No! not into the water, but on a bed of sedge.--There was no one near me. I had just crossed a similar bridge, where a similar accident would have sent me into a rush of water, wherein a few gasps and cries would have been all that could have preceded the death of the strongest swimmer in his agony. But that is a detail. There were at dinner some very clever gentlemen, whose conversation and ideas proved that go-ahead-ishness is not exclusively an American attribute. One of them destroyed Manitoulin, my Island of the Blest with a few contemptuous criticisms. It was, he declared, "a very one-horse sort of place," but he knew of an immense tract to be had almost for a song, where there were homes for thousands, all bound to prosper, &c. And then we heard a development of interesting theories of what might be done with Niagara as a motive force in the way of working spindles, machinery, electric lighting, irrigating, something like M. Victor Hugo's notion, in 'L'Homme qui Rit,' of setting the tides to work on the coast of France. All the while there was Niagara thundering away, never minding the theories, and bent on the practical business of escaping into the sea.