I remember, when we started, taking a hatchet with us, like backwoodsmen, to take a view of Prospect Tower, on the American side of the great Horseshoe Fall, how we had to hew down the trees that obstructed the light; how we actually hung over the precipice, holding on to each other's hands, to lop off a branch still in sight where it was not wanted. The manner in which we accomplished this was what some bystanders pronounced "awful." I hugged a sapling of a silver birch, growing on the brink of the precipice, with my left arm, while friend Easterly, holding my right hand with one of the Masonic grips--I won't say which--_hung over_ the precipice, and stretching out as far as he could reach, lopped off the offending branch. Yet in this perilous position my lively companion must crack his joke by punning upon my name, and a Cockney weakness at the same time, for he "guessed he was below the _w_erge of the precipice." The branch down, and we had resumed our perpendicular positions, he simply remarked, if that was not holding on to a man's hand in _friendship_, he did not know what was.
But the _work_ was not done yet; to get the view of the Tower we wanted, we had to make a temporary platform over the precipice. This we managed by laying a piece of "lumber" across a fallen tree, and, unshipping the camera, shoved it along the plank until it was in position, balancing the shore end of the plank with heavy stones. When all was ready for exposure, I went round and stood on the point of a jutting rock to give some idea of the great depth of the Fall, but I very nearly discovered, and just escaped being myself the plummet. In the excitement of the moment, and not thinking that the rock would be slimy and slippery with the everlasting spray, I went too rapidly forward, and the rock having a slight decline, I slipped, but was fortunately brought up by a juniper bush growing within a foot of the edge. For a second or two I lay on my back wondering if I could slide out of my difficulty as easily as I had slidden into it. In a moment I determined to go backwards on my back, hands, and feet, until I laid hold of another bush, and could safely assume a perpendicular position. After giving the signal that "all was right," the plate was exposed, and I _cautiously_ left a spot I have no desire to revisit. But it is astonishing how the majesty and grandeur of the scene divest the mind of all sense of fear, and to this feeling, to a great extent, is attributed the many accidents and terrible deaths that have befallen numerous visitors to the Falls.