Niagara: A History of the Falls Read Online Free Page B

his description of Niagara Falls. In his writings he did his best to undercut La Salle’s contributions and establish himself as the real explorer of the Mississippi.
    Hennepin’s description of “this prodigious frightful Fall” was enough to send shivers up his readers’ spines. No doubt that was his purpose. It was to him “the most Beautiful and at the same time most Frightful Cascade in the World.” He peppered his descriptions with adjectives designed to awe his readers: “a great and horrible cataract” … “frightful abyss” … “horrible mass of water” … “a sound more terrible than that of thunder.”
    It was these overheated descriptions that stimulated in Europeans the macabre vision of the New World – a wild, weird land of dark, impenetrable forests where painted savages lurked behind every tree and a gargantuan cataract foamed and roared in the unknown interior of the continent. Hennepin also wrote of rattlesnakes squirming beneath the sheet of water, and later travellers followed with tales of eels wriggling among the rocks below, of great eagles soaring above the spray, and, at the end of a gloomy gorge, a vast whirlpool, like the Charybdis of antiquity, waiting to entrap the unwary visitor.
    Thus was established the image of the Falls as a dread and mystic place. It would take the best part of a century to soften that perception.

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“The most awful scene”
     
    For most of the eighteenth century the Falls remained almost as remote as the moon. A couple of eyewitness accounts in French followed Hennepin’s, but nothing appeared in English until 1751 when a translation of Kalm’s travel diary added to the Falls’ reputation as a fearsome cataract. “You cannot see it without being quite terrified,” he wrote. He described how birds flying over the boiling rapids became so soaked with spray that they plunged to their deaths, of how flocks of waterfowl swimming above the Falls were swept over the precipice, and of how the bodies of bear, deer, and other animals that tried to cross the upper river were found broken to pieces at the bottom of the cascade.
    Kalm retold the tale of two Iroquois trapped on Goat Island – an incident that had occurred a dozen years earlier but was still the talk of the region. The pair had gone deer hunting well above the Falls but, tipsy from brandy, had awakened in their canoe to find it heading for the abyss. Paddling frantically, they managed to reach the island before being swept over, but then realized they were trapped between the two cascades.
    Faced with slow starvation, they built a rope ladder from basswood bark, tied one end to a tree, and dropped the other down the 170 feet of the Goat Island cliff and into the torrent below. They climbed down the rock face and into the water, intending to swim ashore, but could make no headway against the great eddy caused by the collision of waters from the two cataracts. Each time they tried to escape, the fury of the stream below the Falls hurled them back. At last, badly bruised and scratched, they were forced to haul themselves back up to their island prison.
    After several days they managed to attract the attention of some of their comrades on shore, who hastened to the fort at the river’s mouth to seek help. The commandant ordered long pikestaffs tipped with iron to be made. Armed with these, two Indians volunteered to attempt a crossing to the northeastern (American) side of the island to try to rescue the starving pair. “They took leave of their friends as if they were going to their death,” and then, steadying themselves precariously with a pole in each hand, they managed to make the agonizing journey through the rocks and shallows to the island – something never before or since attempted. The victims, who had been without food for nine days (except, perhaps, for berries and wild grasses) were thus successfully guided to safety.
    It took considerable daring and a stout heart to hazard