"Not yet-not just yet," she said, almost wildly, "for how could I explain to him? He would ask me what my wishes were what could I say? I do not know. I cannot tell myself; and and I have no mother to ask :" and here all the strain of self-control gave way, and the girl burst into tears.

66

Sheila, dear Sheila," he said, "why won't you trust your own heart, and let that be your guide? Won't you say this one word-yes-and tell me that I am to come back to Lewis some day, and ask to see you, and get a message from one look of your eyes? Sheila, may I not come back?"

If there was a reply, it was so low that he scarcely heard it; but somehowwhether from the small hand that lay in his, or from the eyes that sent one brief message of trust and hope through their tears-his question was answered; and from that moment he felt no more misgivings, but let his love for Sheila spread out and blossom in whatever light of fancy and imagination he could bring to bear on it, careless of any future.

How the young fellow laughed and joked, as the party drove away again from the Butt, down the long coast-road to Barvas! He was tenderly respectful, and a little moderate in tone, when he addressed Sheila; but with the others he gave way to a wild exuberance of spirits, that delighted Mackenzie beyond measure. He told stories of the odd old gentlemen of his club, of their opinions, their ways, their dress. He sung the song of the "Arethusa," and the wilds of Lewis echoed with a chorus which was not just as harmonious as it might have been. He sung the "Jug of Punch," and Mackenzie said that was a teffle of a good song." He gave imitations of some of Ingram's companions at the Board of Trade; and showed Sheila what the inside of a Government Office was like. He paid Mackenzie the compliment of asking him for a drop of something out of his flask; and in return he insisted on the King smoking a cigar-which, in point of age, and sweetness, and fragrance,

was really the sort of cigar you would naturally give to the man whose daughter you wanted to marry.

Ingram understood all this; and was pleased to see the happy look that Sheila wore. He talked to her with even a greater assumption than usual of fatherly fondness; and if she was a little shy, was it not because she was conscious of so great a secret? He was even unusually complaisant to Lavender, and lost no opportunity of paying him indirect compliments that Sheila could overhear.

"You poor young things!" he seemed to be saying to himself, "you've got all your troubles before you; but in the meantime you may make yourselves as happy as you can!"

Was the weather at last about to break? As the afternoon wore on, the heavens became overcast, for the wind had gone back from the course of the sun, and had brought up great masses of cloud from the rainy south-west.

"Are we going to have a storm?" said Lavender, looking along the southern sky, where the Barvas hills were momentarily growing blacker under the gathering darkness overhead.

"A storm?" said Mackenzie, whose nctions on what constituted a storm were probably different from those of his guest. "No-there will be no storm. But it is no bad thing if we get back to Barvas very soon."

Duncan sent the horses on, and Ingram looked out Sheila's waterproof and the rugs. The southern sky certainly looked ominous. There was a strange intensity of colour in the dark landscape, from the deep purple of the Barvas hills, coming forward to the deep green of the pasture-land around them, and the rich reds and browns of the heath and the peat-cuttings. point of the clouded and hurrying sky, however, there was a soft and vaporous line of yellow in the grey; and, under that, miles away in the west, a great dash of silver light struck upon the sea, and glowed there so that the eye could scarcely bear it. scarcely bear it. Was it the damp that brought the perfumes of the moorland

At one

The

so distinctly towards them-the bogmyrtle, the water-mint, and wild thyme? There were no birds to be heard. crimson masses of heather on the grey rocks seemed to have grown richer and deeper in colour; and the Barvas hills had become large and weird in the gloom. "Are you afraid of thunder?" said Lavender to Sheila.

"No," said the girl, looking frankly towards him with her glad eyes, as though he had pleased her by asking that not very striking question. And then she looked round at the sea and the sky in the south, and said, quietly, "But there will be no thunder; it is too much wind."

Ingram, with a smile which he could scarcely conceal, hereupon remarked"You're sorry, Lavender, I know. Wouldn't you like to shelter somebody in danger, or attempt a rescue, or do something heroic?"

"And Mr. Lavender would do that, if there was any need," said the girl, bravely; "and then it would be nothing to laugh at."

"Sheila, you bad girl, how dare you talk like that to me!" said Ingram; and he put his arm within hers, and said he would tell her a story.

But this race to escape the storm was needless; for they were just getting within sight of Barvas, when a surprising change came over the dark and thunderous afternoon. The hurrying masses of cloud in the west parted for a little space, and there was a sudden and fitful glimmer of a stormy blue sky. Then a strange, soft, yellow, and vaporous light shot across to the Barvas hills, and touched up palely the great slopes, rendering them distant, ethereal, and cloud-like. Then a shaft or two of wild light flashed down upon the landscape beside them. The cattle shone red in the brilliant green pastures. The grey rocks glowed in their setting of moss. The stream going by Barvas Inn was a streak of gold in its sandy bed. And then the sky above them broke into great billows of cloud-tempestuous and rounded masses of golden vapour that burned with the wild glare of the sun

set. The clear spaces in the sky widened, and from time to time the wind sent ragged bits of yellow cloud across the shining blue. All the world seemed to be on fire; and the very smoke of it-the majestic masses of vapour that rolled by overhead-burned with a bewildering glare. Then, as the wind still blew hard, and kept veering round again to the north-west, the fiercely-lit clouds were driven over one by one, leaving a pale and serene sky to look down on the sinking sun and the The Atlantic caught the yellow glow on its tumbling waves, and a deeper colour stole across the slopes and peaks of the Barvas hills. Whither had gone the storm? There were still some banks of clouds away up in the north-east; and in the clear green of the evening sky, they had their distant greys and purples faintly tinged with rose.

sea.

"And so you are anxious, and frightened, and a little pleased," said Ingram to Sheila that evening, after he had frankly told her what he knew, and invited her further confidence. "That is all I can gather from you; but it is enough. Now you can leave the rest

to me.

"To you?" said the girl, with a blush of pleasure and surprise.

"Yes. I like new experiences. I am going to become an intermeddler now. I am going to arrange this affair, and become the negotiator between all the parties; and then, when I have secured the happiness of the whole of you, you will all set upon me and beat me with sticks, and thrust me out of your houses."

"I do not think," said Sheila, looking down, "that you have much fear of that, Mr. Ingram.'

"Is the world going to alter because of me?"

"I would rather not have you try to do anything that is likely to get you into unhappiness," she said.

"Oh, but that is absurd. You timid young folks can't act for yourselves. You want agents and instruments that have got hardened by use. Fancy the condition of cur ancestors, you know,

before they had the sense to invent steel claws to tear their food in pieces-what could they do with their fingers? I am going to be your knife and fork, Sheila; and you'll see what I shall carve out for you. All you've got to do is to keep your spirits up, and believe that nothing dreadful is going to take place merely because some day you will be asked to marry. You let things take their ordinary course. Keep your spirits up-don't neglect your music, or your dinner, or your poor people down in Borvabost-and you'll see it will all come right enough. In a year or two, or less than that, you will marry contentedly and happily, and your papa will drink a good glass of whiskey at the wedding, and make jokes about it, and everything will be as right as the mail. That's my advice,-see you attend to it."

"You are very kind to me," said the girl, in a low voice.

"But if you begin to cry, Sheila, then I throw up my duties-do you hear? Now look-there goes Mr. Lavender down to the boat with a bundle of rugs; and I suppose you mean me to imperil my precious life by sailing about these rocky channels in the moonlight? Come along down to the shore; and mind you please your papa by singing 'Love in thine eyes,' with Mr. Lavender. And if you would add to that, 'The Minute Gun at Sea,'-why, you know,

I

may as well have my little rewards for intermeddling now, as I shall have to suffer afterwards."

"Not through me," said Sheila, in rather an uncertain voice: and then they went down to the Maighdean-mhara.

Ir is one of the disadvantages of reading books about natural scenery that they fill the mind with pictures, often exaggerated, often distorted, often blurred, and, even when well drawn, injurious to the freshness of first impressions. Such has been the fate of most of us with regard to the Falls of Niagara. There was little accuracy in the estimates of the first observers of the cataract. Startled by an exhibition of power so novel and so grand, emotion leaped beyond the control of the judgment, and gave currency to notions regarding the waterfall which have often led to disappointment.

A record of a voyage in 1535 by a French mariner named Jacques Cartier, contains, it is said, the first printed allusion to Niagara. In 1603 the first map of the district was constructed by a Frenchman named Champlain. In 1648 the Jesuit Rageneau, in a letter to his superior at Paris, mentions Niagara as "a cataract of frightful height."2 In the winter of 1678 and 1679 the cataract was visited by Father Hennepin, and described in a book dedicated "to the King of Great Britain." He gives a drawing of the waterfall, which shows that serious changes have taken place since his time. He describes it as "a great and prodigious cadence of water, to which the universe does not offer a parallel." The height of the fall, according to Hennepin, was more than 600 feet. "The waters," he says, "which fall from this great precipice do foam and boil in the most astonishing manner, making a noise more terrible

1A Discourse delivered in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on Friday, 4th April, 1873.

2 From an interesting little book presented to me at Brooklyn by its author, Mr. Holly, some of these data are derived: Hennepin, Kalm, Bakewell, Lyell, Hall and others, I have myself consulted.

No. 163.-VOL. XXVIII.

than that of thunder. When the wind blows to the south, its frightful roaring may be heard for more than fifteen leagues." The Baron la Hontan, who visited Niagara in 1687, makes the height 800 feet. In 1721 Charlevois, in a letter to Madame de Maintenon, after referring to the exaggerations of his predecessors, thus states the result of his own observations:- "For my part, after examining it on all sides, I am inclined to think that we cannot allow it less than 140 or 150 feet,"-a remarkably close estimate. At that time, viz. a hundred and fifty years ago, it had the shape of a horse-shoe, and reasons will subsequently be given for holding that this has been always the form of the cataract from its origin to its present site.

As regards the noise of the cataract, Charlevois declares the accounts of his predecessors, which, I may say, are repeated to the present hour, to be altogether extravagant. He is perfectly right. The thunders of Niagara are formidable enough to those who really seek them at the base of the Horseshoe Fall; but on the banks of the river, and particularly above the fall, its silence, rather than its noise, is surprising. This arises, in part, from the lack of resonance, the surrounding country being flat, and therefore furnishing no echoing surfaces to reinforce the shock of the water. The resonance from the surrounding rocks causes the Swiss Reuss at the Devil's Bridge, when full, to thunder more loudly than the Niagara.

On Friday, the 1st of November, 1872, just before reaching the village of Niagara Falls, I caught, from the railway train, my first glimpse of the smoke of the cataract. Immediately after my arrival I went with a friend to the northern end of the American Fall. It may be that my mood at the time toned

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down the impression produced by the first aspect of this grand cascade; but I felt nothing like disappointment, knowing, from old experience, that time and close acquaintanceship, the gradual interweaving of mind and nature, must powerfully influence my final estimate of the scene. After dinner we crossed to Goat Island, and, turning to the right, reached the southern end of the American Fall. The river is here studded with small islands. Crossing a wooden bridge to Luna Island, and clasping a tree which grows near its edge, I looked long at the cataract, which here shoots down the precipice like an avalanche of foam. It grew in power and beauty as I gazed upon it. The channel spanned by the wooden bridge was deep, and the river there doubled over the edge of the precipice like the swell of a muscle, unbroken. The ledge here overhangs, the water being poured out far beyond the base of the precipice. A space, called the Cave of the Winds, is thus enclosed between the wall of rock and the cataract.

Goat Island terminates in a sheer dry precipice, which connects the American and the Horseshoe Falls. Midway between both is a wooden hut, the residence of the guide to the Cave of the Winds, and from the hut a winding staircase, called Biddle's Stair, descends to the base of the precipice. On the evening of my arrival I went down this stair, and wandered along the bottom of the cliff. One well-known factor in the formation and retreat of the cataract was immediately observed. A thick layer of limestone formed the upper portion of the cliff. This rested upon a bed of soft shale, which extended round the base of the cataract. The violent recoil of the water against this yielding substance crumbles it away, undermining the ledge above, which, unsupported, eventually breaks off, and produces the observed recession.

At the southern extremity of the Horseshoe is a promontory, formed by the doubling back of the gorge excavated by the cataract, and into which it plunges. On the promontory stands

a stone building, called the Terrapin Tower, the door of which had been nailed up because of the decay of the staircase within it. Through the kindness of Mr. Townsend, the superintendent of Goat Island, the door was opened for me. From this tower, at all hours of the day, and at some hours of the night, I watched and listened to the Horseshoe Fall. The river here is evidently much deeper than the American branch; and instead of bursting into foam where it quits the ledge, it bends solidly over and falls in a continuous layer of the most vivid green. The tint is not uniform but varied, long stripes of deeper hue alternating with bands of brighter colour. Close to the ledge over which the water rolls, foam is generated, the light falling upon which and flashing back from it, is sifted in its passage to and fro, and changed from white to emerald green. Heaps of superficial foam are also formed at intervals along the ledge, and immediately drawn down in long white striæ. Lower down, the surface, shaken by the reaction from below, incessantly rustles into whiteness. The descent finally resolves itself into a rhythm, the water reaching the bottom of the Fall in periodic gushes. Nor is the spray uniformly diffused through the air, but is wafted through it in successive veils of gauze-like texture. From all this it is evident that beauty is not absent from the Horseshoe Fall, but majesty is its chief attribute. The plunge of the water is not wild, but deliberate, vast, and fascinating. From the Terrapin Tower, the adjacent arm of the Horseshoe is seen projected against the opposite one, midway down; to the imagination, therefore, is left the picturing of the gulf into which the cataract plunges.

The delight which natural scenery produces in some minds is difficult to explain, and the conduct which it prompts can hardly be fairly criticised

1 The direction of the wind with reference to the course of a ship may be inferred with accuracy from the foam-streaks on the surface of the sea.