BOOKS AND AUTHORS – Annals of Niagara

(Montreal Family Herald, Nov. 2)

Annals of Niagara-By William Kirby

F.R.S.C. (Montreal: William Drysdale and Co. 1897. Price 75 cents.)

[Welland Tribune, 18 November 1897]

Mr. William Kirby, a distinguished fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is so well-known throughout the Dominion by his historical romance of “The Golden Dog,” that needs no words of introduction to the public on the present occasion. From 1640 to 1870 is a large space of time to cover with interesting legends, traditions, and narratives of historical facts, and Mr. Kirby must have labored diligently to procure suitable matter and accurate information for the thirty-six chapters of his book. Niagara is the mother town from which the first settlement of Upper Canada began, and its annals date from the earliest record of the appearance of white men among the Indian tribes whom they found in possession of the district. The origin of the name of Niagara does not seem quite certain. Mr. Kirby thinks that it is the same with the Iroquois word for “tobacco smoke.” He notes also that within a century and a quarter the accentuation of the name has been changed. The accent is now on the antepenultimate syllable, but in Goldsmith’s poem of “The Traveller,” 1764, we find: “Where wild Oswego spreads his swamps around, And Niagara stuns with thundering sound.”

Niagara with the accent on the penult, is a grand and sonorous name, but with the accent on the second syllable it sounds mean, and has driven poor Thomas Moore, in the fifth letter of his “Fudge Family in Paris,” to most desperate straits. He tells of unhappy young lovers who thus, side by side,

“Were taking, instead of rope, pistol or dagger,

Desperate dash down the Falls of Niagara.”

The volume is literally filled with good things, and contains something on every page to enlighten or entertain the Canadian reader. We may notice by the way that Moore, whose risky rhyme we just quoted, visited Niagara in the summer of 1804, and received a hearty welcome from Colonel Brock and the officers of the 49^th, as well as from the best society in the town. Mr. Kirby also mentions that he heard Thomas Darcy McGee lecture on Moore, in the court house of Niagara, a year or two before his assassination at Ottawa. We can heartily recommend our readers to purchase the “Annals of Niagara,” as we are persuaded that it is a valuable and conscientiously composed monograph.