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Show 1836.1837I Flagg's Far West 4.7 There are few objects more truly grand - I had [ 18] almost said sublime - than a powerful steamer struggling triumphantly with the rapids of the Western waters. The scene has in it a something of that power which we feel upon us in viewing a ship under full sail; and, in some respects, there is more of the sublime in the humbler triumph of man over the elements than in that more vast. Sublimity is a result, not merely of massive, extended, unmeasured greatness, but oftener, and far more impressively, does the sentiment arise from a combination of vast and powerful objects. The mighty stream rolling its volumed floods through half a continent, and hurrying onward to mingle its full tide with the " Father of Waters," is truly sublime; its resistless power is sublime; the memory of its by- gone scenes, and the venerable moss- grown forests on its banks, are sublime; and, lastly, the noble fabric of man's workmanship struggling and groaning in convulsed, triumphant effort to overcome the resistance offered, completes a picture which demands not the heaving ocean- waste and the " oak leviathan " to embellish. It was not until the afternoon'was far advanced that we found ourselves fairly embarked. A rapid freshet had within a few hours swollen the tranquil Ohio far beyond its ordinary volume'and velocity, and its turbid waters were rolling onward between the green banks, bearing on their bosom all the varied spoils of their mountain- home, and of the rich region through which they had been flowing. The finest site from which to view the city we found to be the channel of the Falls upon the Indiana side of the stream, called the Indian [ 19] chute, to distinguish it from two others, called the Middle chute and the Kentucky chute. The prospect from this point is noble, though the uniformity of the structures, the fewness of the spires, the unimposing character of the public edifices, and the depression of the site upon |
