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78 Läsebok. N:o 77 — 78.
And they ha’e ta’en his very hearts blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.
John Barleycorn was a hero bold.
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
Twill make your courage rise.
J C?
Twill make a man forget his woe;
O 7
’Twill heighten all his joy;
Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,
C 7
Tho’ the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland!
Robert Burns.
80. T lie Cataract of Niagara, in Canada, North America.
This amazing fall of water is made by the river St.
Lawrence, in its passage from Lake Erie into the lake
Ontario. The St. Lawrence is one of the largest rivers in the
world; and yet the whole of’ its waters is discharged in this
place, by a fall of a hundred and fifty feet perpendicular.
It is not easy to bring the imagination to correspond to the
greatness of the scene. A river extremely deep and rapid,
and that serves to drain the waters of almost all North
America into the Atlantic ocean, is here poured precipitately down
a ledge of rocks, that rises, like a wall, across the whole bed
of its stream. The river, a little above, is near three
quarters of a mile broad ; and the rocks where it grows narrower,
are four hundred yards over. Their direction is not straight
across, but hollowing inwards like a horse-shoe; so that the
cataract, which bends to the shape of the obstacle, rounding
inwards, presents a kind of theatre, the most tremendous in
nature. Just in the middle of this circular wall of waters, a
little island, that has braved the fury of the current, presents
one of its points, and divides the stream at the top into two
parts; but they unite again long before they reach the bottom.
The noise of the fall is heard at the distance of several
leagues, and the fury of the waters, at the termination of their
fall is inconceivable. The dashing produces a mist, that rises
to the very clouds; and forms a most beautiful rainbow, when
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