I was very,
very loth to leave my kind friends, though we may perchance forgather
again should I outlive my parole, and be enabled to carry out certain
half-formed plans of hunting in the Far West. It was only the sternest
sense of duty that impelled me to sacrifice to Niagara sixty hours that
intervened before June the 13th, when the Inman steamer started, in
which I had secured a berth by telegraph.
Twenty-two hours of unbroken rail-travel--partly through the beautiful
Susquehannah Valley; partly through the best cultivated lands (about
Troy and Elmira) that I saw in the States, whose trim, loose stone walls
reminded one of part of the Heythrop and Cotswold countries--brought us
to Buffalo. The Company had here so contrived matters that it was
absolutely impossible for the traveler to proceed farther that night, or
to get at any luggage beyond what he carries in his hand: from Elmira it
travels by a route of its own, to which your through-ticket does not
apply: the baggage-agent hands it over to you at Niagara the next
morning, with a cheerfully placid face, as if rather proud of the
satisfactory correctness of the whole arrangement.
I will not add a stone to the descriptive cairn heaped up by generations
of tourists in honor of the King-Cataract; simply because it is
presumption in any man to pass judgment on that famous scene till he has
studied it for more days than I could spare hours.
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