Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0148/01488.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 15KB | 280 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01488}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Sketches, Old And New
A Visit To Niagra}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{niagara
bridge
falls
now
behind
does
how
moccasins
noble
picturesque}
$Date{1893}
$Log{}
Title:       Sketches, Old And New
Book:        A Visit To Niagra
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1893

A Visit To Niagra

     Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort.  The hotels are
excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant.  The opportunities for
fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even equalled
elsewhere.  Because, in other localities, certain places in the streams are
much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just as good as another,
for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and so there is no use in
your walking five miles to fish, when you can depend on being just as
unsuccessful nearer home.  The advantages of this state of things have never
heretofore been properly placed before the public.

     The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant
and none of them fatiguing.  When you start out to "do" the Falls you first
drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking down
from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara river. A railway "cut"
through a hill would be as comely if it had the angry river tumbling and
foaming through its bottom.  You can had descend a staircase here a hundred
and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of the water. After you have done
it, you will wonder why you did it; but you will then be too late.

     The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the
little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids - how first one
paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows, and then the other, and
at what point it was that her smoke-stack toppled overboard, and where her
planking began to break and part asunder - and how she did finally live
through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of traveling
seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen minutes, I have
really forgotten which.  But it was very extraordinary, anyhow.  It is worth
the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine times in
succession to different parties, and never miss a word or alter a sentence or
a gesture.

     Then you drive over the Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between
the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the
chances of having the railway train overhead smashing down on to you.  Either
possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but mixed together, they amount
in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.

     On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of
photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an
ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your solemn
crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the light of a
horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime Niagara; and a
great many people have the incredible effrontery or the native depravity to
aid and abet this sort of crime.

     Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see the stately
pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of country
cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable
attitudes in their carriage,and all looming up in their awe- inspiring
imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic
presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the
thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch here dead and
forgotten ages before this hackful of small reptiles was deemed temporarily
necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads, and will still be
monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered
themselves to their blood relations, the other worms, and been mingled with
the unremembering dust.

     There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display
one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort
of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.

     When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are
satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new
Suspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave of
the Winds.

     Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and
put on a waterproof jacket and overalls.  This costume is picturesque, but not
beautiful.  A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight of winding
stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long after the thing
ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before it had begun to be a
pleasure.  We were then well down under the precipice, but still considerably
above the level of the river.

     We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our
persons shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I
clung with both hands - not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to.
Presently the descent became steeper, and the bridge flimsier, and sprays
from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast-increasing sheets
that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the
nature of groping.  Now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the
waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and scatter
us on the rocks and among the torrents below.  I remarked that I wanted to
go home; but it was too late.  We were almost under the monstrous wall of
water thundering down from above, and speech was in vain in the midst of
such a pitiless crash of sound.

     In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and bewildered
by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy
tempest of rain, I followed.  All was darkness.  Such a mad storming, roaring,
and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears before.  I bent
my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back.  The world seemed
going to destruction.  I could not see anything, the flood poured down so
savagely.  I raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the American
cataract went down my throat.  If I had sprung a leak now, I had been lost.
And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust
for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks.  I never was so scared
before and survived it.  But we got through at last, and emerged into the open
day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world
of descending water, and look at it.  When I saw how much of it there was, and
how fearfully in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it.

     The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine.  I love
to read about him in tales and legends and romances.  I love to read of his
inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and forest,
and his general nobility of character, and his stately metaphorical manner of
speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky maiden, and the picturesque pomp
of his dress and accoutrements. Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress
and accoutrements.  When I found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty
Indian bead-work, and stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures
representing human beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through
their arms and bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with
emotion.  I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the
noble Red Man.

     A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of
curiosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the
Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to speak to
them.  And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over to Luna
Island, I came upon a noble Son of the Forest sitting under a tree, diligently
at work on a bead reticule.  He wore a slouch hat and brogans, and had a short
black pipe in his mouth.  Thus does the baneful contact with our effiminate
civilization dilute the picturesque pomp which is so natural to the Indian
when far removed from us in his native haunts.  I addressed the relic as
follows: -

     "Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a-Whack happy?  Does the great
Speckled Thunder sigh for the war path, or is his heart contented with
dreaming of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest?  Does the mighty Sachem
yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to make bead
reticules for the pappooses of the paleface?  Speak, sublime relic of bygone
grandeur - venerable ruin, speak!"

     The relic said -

     "An' it is mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takin' for a dirty
Injin, ye drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged divil!  By the piper that
played before Moses, I'll ate ye!"

     I went away from there.

     By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a
gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin moccasins and
leggins, seated on a bench, with her pretty wares about her.  She had just
carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family resemblance to a
clothes-pin, and was now boring a hole through his abdomen to put his bow
through.  I hesitated a moment, and then addressed her:

     "Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy?  Is the Laughing Tadpole
lonely?  Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race, and
the vanished glory of her ancestors?  Or does her sad spirit wander afar
toward the hunting grounds whither her brave Gobbler-of-the-Lightnings is
gone?  Why is my daughter silent?  Has she aught against the paleface
stranger?"

     The maiden said -

     "Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye dare to be callin' names?  Lave this, or
I'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!"

     I adjourned from there also.

     "Confound these Indians!" I said.  "They told me they were tame; but, if
appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the war path."

     I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one.  I came
upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum and
moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship:

     "Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High
Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you! You,
Beneficent polecat - you, Devourer of Mountains - you, Roaring Thundergust -
you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye - the paleface from beyond the great waters
greets you all!  War and pestilence have thinned your ranks, and destroyed
your once proud nation.  Poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for
soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses.
Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others, has gotten you into
trouble.  Misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your
reputation with the soulless usurper.  Trading for forty-rod whiskey, to
enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the
everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you
are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag
and bobtail of the purlieus of New York. For shame!  Remember your ancestors!
Recall their mighty deeds!  Remember Uncas! - and Red Jacket! - and Hole in
the Day! - and Whoopdedoodledoo! Emulate their achievements!  Unfurl
yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious gutter-snipes" -

     "Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Hang him!" "Dhround
him!"

     It was the quickest operation that ever was.  I simply saw a sudden flash
in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins - a single
flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same
place.  In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me.  They tore half the
clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave me a thump that dented
the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer; and, to crown
their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to injury, they threw me over the
Niagara Falls, and I got wet.

     About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest
caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get
loose.  I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of
the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several inches above my
head.  Of course I got into the eddy.  I sailed round and round in it
forty-four times - chasing a chip and gaining on it - each round trip a half
mile - reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four times, and just
exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time.

     At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe
in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the other
on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. Presently a
puff of wind blew it out.  The next time I swept around he said -

     "Got a match?"

     "Yes; in my other vest.  Help me out, please."

     "Not for Joe."

     When I came round again, I said -

     "Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will
you explain this singular conduct of yours?"

     "With pleasure.  I am the coroner.  Don't hurry on my account.  I can
wait for you.  But I wish I had a match."

     I said - "Take my place, and I'll go and get you one."

     He declined.  This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness
between us, and from that time forward I avoided him.  It was my idea, in case
anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my custom into
the hands of the opposition coroner over on the American side.

     At last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace
by yelling at people on shore for help.  The judge fined me, but I had the
advantage of him.  My money was with my pantaloons, and my pantaloons were
with the Indians.

     Thus I escaped.  I am now lying in a very critical condition.  At least I
am lying anyway - critical or not critical.  I am hurt all over, but I cannot
tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking inventory.  He
will make out my manifest this evening.  However, thus far he thinks only
sixteen of my wounds are fatal.  I don't mind the others.

     Upon regaining my right mind, I said -

     "It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the bead work and
moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor.  Where are they from?"

     "Limerick, my son."