Breathtaking spectacle

By Payal Choudhry

THE real truth of the popular saying "seeing is believing" had not dawned on me until I saw Niagara Falls during a recent visit to the USA and Canada.

I had seen umpteen photographs of the world-famous falls, read about their history and origin during school and watched them in films on numerous occasions. Yet the indelible impact that these gigantic falls made on my mind is nothing short of mind blowing.

The earliest settlers in the Niagara region were the mound builders, native people who travelled from the Ohio valley. They settled in the Niagara region around 100 A.D., and 400 years later were replaced by ancestors of the six nations’ confederacy.

By 1400, neutral Indians occupied the area and relied on fishing, hunting and agriculture for their livelihood. It is from their word Onghiara describing the waters flowing between Lake Erie and Ontario, that Niagara was derived.

The magnificent Ontario is a vast reservoir of placid water. A part of the lake has burst its bank, letting the water fall on a rocky slide several feet below.

This further gushed down a rocky flange, sharply taking a right-hand turn and then diving into a gorge of a depth of about 165 feet.

Probably because of the undulating surface, the falls take on the pattern of a horse-shoe, though the outer reaches are evenly set. Visitors throng the highland to watch the water falling into the gorge.

Between the rocky flange and the point of the water’s descent, a vast whirlpool of fretting, fuming billows send a pall of mist, several feet high in the air and into the faces of spellbound tourists staring down. By now, the cascade has grown enormously in volume, with the expanse of water measuring 2570 feet.

The Niagara river, an offshoot of Lake Ontario, makes a line of divide, cutting across America and Canada. The Canadian side is conspicuous by a giant hydel power station which is surrounded by sylvan green land.

The promenade on the USside is an artistically designed landscape, dotted with plazas, statues, boulevards, taverns and boutiques. Helicopters fly low overhead. The water sneaks into the viaducts that skirt the fast-food shops.

Though visibility is poor in the nebulous mist caused by the surging waves dashing against the river bed, the bright morning sunshine makes a rainbow, lighting up the horizon in dream colours.

The US Tourism Department runs a ferry service from the shore of the river to the confluence of the bed and the ridge of the falls. The steamer for the river cruise is aptly named ‘Maid of the Mist’.

Before embarking, passengers are provided with mackintoshes, for without them, they would be drenched to the skin.

The steamer is specially built with a raised forecastle which is bare, except for a few benches.

As the ‘Maid of the Mist’, laden with mackintosh-clad, curious and excited passengers’ perilously made its way through the tossing waves, the buzz of the engine and the roar of the falls rendered all other sounds inaudible.

The steamer churns on resolutely, till the point where the falling water meets the river.

It is an awe-inspiring moment — the sound, the sight, the sheer majesty of nature in its furious beauty.

As the steamer turns back, you leave the mighty Niagara Falls behind, but not before falling in love with the breathtaking spectacle.