my dear Charles,—By this time you may, perhaps, be curious touching our whereabouts; and if you are not, I have some mind to give you an account of what we have done since I saw you last, and what we propose to do, peradventure, in the course of the next two or three weeks.
Our first hit was
Niagara, and a very happy one, as it turned out. We spent ten days on the
American side, . . . . but the
Lundy's Lane gathering approached,
1 and we moved over to the other side, where we passed twelve days most agreeably, in a nice comfortable cottage. . . . . It satisfied all my expectations of
Niagara,—the views, the walks, the drives, and above all certain excursions by the full moon on the river, where we rowed about in front of the
American Falls, keeping partly in their shade, till the water seemed to rush over like sparkling molten silver, or like a line of living fire, jumping and dancing for a moment on the perilous edge, and then plunging into the roaring, boiling abyss, on whose verge our little boat was all the while tossing.
It was grand, brilliant, awful beyond anything I ever saw; quite beyond
Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau . . . . . There is no real danger in it, and at the full moon everybody will go on the river, I think, to see it. We went repeatedly.
From
Niagara we went to
Geneseo, and passed three or four sad days with our friend
Mrs. William W. Wadsworth, whose husband died after six years illness, while we were at
Niagara.
The beauty of everything without, and the luxury, finish, exactness, of everything within, contrasted strongly with the noiseless stillness of a house of death . . . .
Here, again,—
Lake George,
2—is another contrast to the rushing glories of
Niagara, for the beautiful, quiet lake is always before us, and nearly every one of our pleasures is connected with it. Agreeable people, however, we have in the house, several fixtures, the same we had last year,—
Dr. Beck, the author of the book on legal medicine;
Dr. Campbell, the popular preacher in
Albany; and two or three others, . . . . with whom we have agreeable, easy intercourse.
The ruins of the old Forts, from the time of
Dieskau and
Montcalm, with
