This is quite a town, with numerous hotels and stores, and with paved streets; and I imagine the Falls will soon be surrounded by a city. I pay a dollar a day here, and shall certainly stay till next Monday [the 20th of May] at least. Direct to Chicago, Ill., till Monday next is passed. The population of Niagara Falls village is about five thousand.
Thoreau waited there some days, expecting his friend Channing, and wrote home some of the observations here noted down; but the letter may not have been preserved. The remark about Chicago was intended for his family in Concord. He spent his days rambling about Goat Island, the Canadian shore, and the whole region of the Falls, and goes on this same day, May 15:
The prevailing trees on Goat Island are the beech, bass,—the former most forward in leafing,—sugar-maple, arbor-vitæ, red cedar, ostrya (?) elm, hemlock, and hornbeam. The most conspicuous flowers in bloom were the large white trillium, with
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