What had been clear green on the face of the cataract was here more like
rich verd-antique, and had a look of firmness almost like that of the
stone itself. So it showed beneath the bridge, and down the river till
the curving shores hid it. These, springing abruptly prom the water's
brink, and shagged with pine and cedar, displayed the tender verdure of
grass and bushes intermingled with the dark evergreens that comb from
ledge to ledge, till they point their speary tops above the crest of
bluffs. In front, where tumbled rocks and expanses of caked clay varied
the gloomier and gayer green, sprung those spectral mists; and through
them loomed out, in its manifold majesty, Niagara, with the seemingly
immovable white Gothic screen of the American Fall, and the green massive
curve of the Horseshoe, solid and simple and calm as an Egyptian wall;
while behind this, with their white and black expanses broken by dark
foliaged little isles, the steep Canadian rapids billowed down between
their heavily wooded shores.
The wedding-journeyers hung, they knew not how long, in rapture on the
sight; and then, looking back from the shore to the spot where they had
stood, they felt relieved that unreality should possess itself of all,
and that the bridge should swing there in mid-air like a filmy web,
scarce more passable than the rainbow that flings its arch above the
mists.
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