Our friends were beset of course by many carriage-drivers, whom they
repelled with the kindly firmness of experienced travel. Isabel even felt
a compassion for these poor fellows who had seen Niagara so much as to
have forgotten that the first time one must see it alone or only with the
next of friendship. She was voluble in her pity of Basil that it was not
as new to him as to her, till between the trees they saw a white cloud of
spray, shot through and through with sunset, rising, rising, and she felt
her voice softly and steadily beaten down by the diapason of the
cataract.
I am not sure but the first emotion on viewing Niagara is that of
familiarity. Ever after, its strangeness increases; but in that earliest
moment when you stand by the side of the American fall, and take in so
much of the whole as your giants can compass, an impression of having
seen it often before is certainly very vivid. This may be an effect of
that grandeur which puts you at your ease in its presence; but it also
undoubtedly results in part from lifelong acquaintance with every variety
of futile picture of the scene. You have its outward form clearly in your
memory; the shores, the rapids, the islands, the curve of the Falls, and
the stout rainbow with one end resting on their top and the other lost in
the mists that rise from the gulf beneath.
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