And thus, through the weakness of human intellect to com prehend all that Niagara signifies, and the feebleness of human power to analyze and describe the subtle emotions which it arouses, Niagara still remains a thing to be comprehended only by personal experience a sight to behold with the seeing eye, and a mystery to be felt in spiritual communion with its actual presence. "It is," as was eloquently said by James C. Carter, Esq., at the Dedication of the Niagara Reservation in 1885, "the combined appeal to every sense and every faculty, exalting the soul into a higher sphere of contemplation, which distinguishes this spot above all others in the world. Niagara is an awful symbol of Infinite power a vision of Infinite beauty - a shrine, a temple erected by the hand of the Almighty for all the children of men."

THE CONDITION FROM WHICH NIAGARA WAS RESCUED.

It is unnecessary to describe the pristine beauty of Niagara and its environs before the disfigurement of the scenery began. Suffice it to say that up to one hundred years ago, it retained all the primeval glory of forest, rock and torrent with which it had been endowed by the Creator a glory in which even the redman saw an expression of his Manitou and which evoked from him his heathen sacrifices and invocations.

In 1805, the approach of civilization to the western limits of New York led the State to offer the land along the Niagara river for sale, and large tracts were purchased by Mr. Augustus Porter, Mr. Peter B. Porter, and others. The Messrs. Porter and their descendants are entitled to the appreciative remembrance of the lovers of Niagara's beauty for their guardianship, for many years, of the primeval forests of Goat Island, by means of which

these noble groves were returned substantially in their native åttractiveness to the care of the State, when the Reservation was established.

In 1807 the first grist mill was built at Niagara, supplying the inhabitants of an extensive region. In 1813, it was destroyed by the British, but was rebuilt on the same site in 1815. In 1822 a new mill was built, which is the subject of naive allusion by a cultured woman from Virginia who visited the Falls in July, 1827. A few sentences of hers, picturing the almost unblemished landscape, and alluding to the first discordant note in the symphony of Niagara's natural beauty are worth quoting. She describes the innumerable and changing forms of the bright, swiftly moving water, and the marvelous effects of light upon the stream, and refers to the boundless luxuriance of the framework of beautiful forms of foliage. Then she continues:

"But it seems to me that what we see here is not so important as what we feel, what we experience. There is something peculiar in the spirit of the place. There is a strange freshness and beauty upon everything, as if the world had just been made; and it seems as if there were something more in the objects around us than the mere material forms of what we see as if a meaning and spirt beyond what the outward eye can see came into plainer view here than elsewhere. It produces an exaltation of our noblest faculties; it is like dwelling amidst the scenery of an unfallen and immortal world."

But she notes a blemish upon the perfection of the scene. She says: "There is a mill not far from the Falls. I tell Robert it should not have been placed so near; but he laughs at my romantic ideas and says it is a very good mill, and is useful and necessary. Yet I tell him that useful things are not necessary in a place like this."

In the letter which we have quoted, we not only see pictured the beginning of the decadence of the Niagara scenery, but we also have in a nutshell the elements of the aesthetic and utilitarian arguments that were used in various forms and with various degrees of intensity half a century later, for and against the creation of the Niagara Reservation.

From the small beginning of a single mill, the encroachment of utilitarian interests upon the scene was rapid. The noble prime val forest which gave the river and Falls their superb arboreal setting, began to fall beneath the woodman's axe, to enrich the owners' purses or to make room for more artificial structures. Two more mills were soon constructed below the old mills, and these were followed by the building of two long race-ways for milling purposes. Bath (now Green) Island and Goat Island be came encumbered with numerous structures; and on the mainland, factories, hotels, bazaars, barns, ice houses, sheds, high fences, and clumsy railings and stairways disfigured the landscape and obstructed the view. In addition to these offenses, hideous sign-boards flaunted their garish advertisements in the faces of visitors on every hand; and any broad, uninterrupted view of nature, undefiled by the aggressive evidence of greedy commercialism was practically impossible.

But even with these drawbacks, the scenery was not freely to be enjoyed. With a skill bordering on military genius, private enterprises seized and barricaded every point of vantage commanding a visual range of the Falls, and recognized no countersign save that imprinted upon the coin of the realm. So thoroughly had the ground been pre-empted, that there was not a foot of American soil from which the glorious Falls of Niagara could be seen without paying for the privilege.