Pictures of Niagara Falls are not uncommon, and many of our readers have looked upon the mighty original, and listened to the sublime and awful music of its sub-bass solo. But rarely is the mighty cataract seen with surroundings like the above. The photographs from which the above engravings were made, were taken after the mighty waterfall, in conjunction with the frost king, had been building and decorating mountains and palaces, and covering with resplendent tapestries of crystals, diamonds, and sapphires every object in sympathy with its plan.
“When thou didst build, no quarry sent its stones
To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods,
And make thy marble of the glassy wave.”
The great mound before the falls is a hill of ice. The falling spray from the mighty volume of water has frozen as it fell till a mountain of crystals is formed. On the left is a view of a bit of landscape in the near vicinity. In the foreground is a tree loaded with ice. No ordinary tree of the forest could bear the load. Its branches would be broken. But the tree began to bear its annual burden of ice when but a little shrub, and its fibers have grown strong, fitted for its loads. The burdened tree, bearing so strongly its load, is a moral lesson to parents and youth. When the sun falls on the crystal mountain and the bejeweled rocks, trees, and shrubs, the scene is one of indescribable splendor, of scintillating, sparkling, shining, iridescent beauty, far surpassing all that man can do. And yet Niagara in all its phases is but one of many of the glorious works of God, designed of Him to lead poor mortals away from the worship and service of the perishing and evanescent to that of Him who liveth and abideth forever, whose dwelling is in the light, and whose capital city, with its streets of gold, gates of pearl, and walls of jasper, surpasses all the beauties of earth.
