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young, and that I was then told that she was one of the most famous of American vessels.
During my stay in Boston, I made a winter excursion to Niagara Falls. The trip was accomplished in three or four days, without the least inconvenience, although we were all strangers to the route, and to the hotel where rooms had been engaged by wire for myself and suite. All the tales I had ever heard of the grandeur of the great cataract fell far short of the truth; and I was impressed with an awe quite impossible to express in words when I came to look upon that everlasting volume of waters. As I stood at the edge of the precipice on Goat Island, my most constant thought and vivid impression was that of the insignificance of man when brought face to face with nature. While standing by this, one of the great wonders of the world, I felt as in the very presence of the Creator.
And yet man knows no fear, and his ingenuity has mastered here, as elsewhere, the strength of the elements; and by his inventive genius and skill he is now turning this fierce Kühleborn into an obedient servant. A company has been created, and its efforts to build a flume supplied from the cataract have been successful. The water-power is carried into a large shed, and there made to generate the electricity which furnishes the whole district about the Falls with light and power. The current for these and various other purposes, I am informed, is carried over more than twenty miles to the city of Buffalo.
We had a fine view from the American side of the Falls; there were wreaths of mist curling upward in the