and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." *

The establishment of the Yellowstone National Park, while significant in the history of the evolution of the principle of preserving sublime scenery for public enjoyment, had comparatively little influence upon the movement for the establishment of the Niagara Reservation. The Yellowstone was distant thousands of miles. The property was wild, unimproved, and remote from civilization. The lands embraced were government lands, and it cost the Government nothing to create the Reservation in question. The case was not parallel with that presented by the Niagara proposition, which contemplated the purchase of valuable improved land by a State for purely aesthetic purposes, and it may therefore be said that the undertaking to reclaim Niagara by means of legislative intervention was virtually without prec edent. In fact, as will be noticed more fully hereafter, the agitation for the reclamation of Niagara by State legislation was begun three years before the Federal legislation concerning the Yellowstone.

and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." *

The establishment of the Yellowstone National Park, while significant in the history of the evolution of the principle of preserving sublime scenery for public enjoyment, had comparatively little influence upon the movement for the establishment of the Niagara Reservation. The Yellowstone was distant thousands of miles. The property was wild, unimproved, and remote from civilization. The lands embraced were government lands, and it cost the Government nothing to create the Reservation in question. The case was not parallel with that presented by the Niagara proposition, which contemplated the purchase of valuable improved land by a State for purely aesthetic purposes, and it may therefore be said that the undertaking to reclaim Niagara by means of legislative intervention was virtually without precedent. In fact, as will be noticed more fully hereafter, the agitation for the reclamation of Niagara by State legislation was begun three years before the Federal legislation concerning the Yellowstone.

The indifference of the State of New York to this first far note

of a coming doctrine, now recognized as firmly established in our National and State polity, was the more remarkable in view of the fact that within her borders thundered the mighty cataract of Niagara - a spectacle of grandeur and sublimity incomparable with anything else in the world. Modern enterprise in exploration, and progress in railroad transportation, which have carried man's prying gaze into the hidden wildernesses of nature, have as yet failed to disclose its counterpart. The artist still confesses the impotence of his brush to depict its overwhelming power, its unproduceable colors, and its unattainable brilliancy. The modern art of photography and the science of pictorial reproduction, which have done so much to familiarize the public with its aspects, have failed to stale the infinite variety of its charms. Poet and orator, preacher and writer, have been exalted by its inspiration to the loftiest efforts of human expression, only to confess the cumbrousness and inadequacy of words to clothe their thoughts. The scientist has traced the origin of Niagara back to the primeval flood and has counted the successive stages of terrestrial upheaval, subsidence and re-uplift that have formed its channel and given direction to its current; he has reckoned by unmeasured ages the advance and retreat of the great ice-sheet and calculates by inches the rate of the fall's recession; he has measured the volume of the greatest of natural elements, which, under the influence of the greatest of natural forces, precipitates itself from a height which he has ascertained to a decimal. But here the scientist, with all his store of knowledge, is compelled to stop and ask the question which arises in the simplest mind in the presence of this awe-inspiring scene - Whence comes it? Who made it? Where is the source of this mighty power?