NIAGARA’S WHIRLPOOL

Men Make a Business of Searching for Bodies

Thrilling Moments in the Awful Swirl of the Waters-How the Brave Men do their Work.

[People’s Press, 27 December 1898]

[The following much of which will be news to our readers of Niagara Falls, we clip from a U.S. exchange. How true the old saying-“Go way from home to learn the news.”]

There are men at Niagara Falls who make a business of searching for dead bodies of victims of the ruthless waters. They are thus described in an article in an American paper:

The men who follow this weird call are almost the only inhabitants of the lonely and mysterious section of the shore known as the “Unknown Niagara.” It is a wild stretch that lies at the base of perpendicular rocks, and at whose feet the waters that whirl and whirl eternally, that have never ceased for a single moment, never calm, and where the debris and the wrecks of life have been known to float around for days, and even weeks, with that same continuous, monotonous rotary motion. This sketch is somewhere just below the whirlpool proper on the Canadian side, and few and hardy are the tourists that venture down those Alpine sides to taste the

WILDNESS AND GRANDEUR

of the spot. It is here, however, that this curious class of men, with their few hardy wives, live from day to day, dulled to the fearful roar of the water, and but little impressed by the spectacle about them. Here they lie in wait, and watch the turbulent tides like hawks or eagles watching for their prey, and no upheaval, no relic of tragedy, nothing vomited up by the submarine eddies of that unrestful stream ever escapes their eager attention.

By a system of daring on their own, by a series of evolutions by which they have long studied to laugh and mock at death, they enter the very clutches of that grim element and bring out entire the thing for which they entered. It may prove to be log worth nothing, or it may prove to be a body laden with wealth. But whatever it is they grasp it, and back again they leap through the buffetings of death and upon the shores where the perpendicular rocks rise sheer to the skies.

HOW IT IS DONE

And this is how they do their work, what they have done for years, and will continue to do, and think nothing of the awful daring of the thing and the fearful risk they run in the weirdest of all callings:

One man, bolder and more daring than the rest, stands ready on the shore with the stoutest of ropes about his breast, waist and portion of his limbs, and so arranges as not to interfere with his movements when he takes the leap into the whirlpool. And that leap! Those who have seen him say they hold their breath and their hearts beat as he disappears beneath the raging surface. Seven strong men hold that rope, away-in shore, and then when he rises, to be tossed and buffeted about, they take a double grip and shut their teeth. More than once, the rope strains and every face is anxious and pain is plainly visible in the features until the swimmer is seen above the surface again. And when he appears again it is only for a moment, and the face is white a gasping, but even then plainly showing the grit of this strange race, as they might be called, who hazard life and all in this weird way.

But for the object which they are striving. It has been seen by the man on the lookout but a few minutes before the swimmer took the leap. He has indicated in what part of the whirlpool, and the swimmer is now

IN THE SAME CURRENT

in the same eddy, and finally the two bodies –the warm and the cold, the pulsating and the lifeless,  the quick and the dead, life grapples death, and the two are hauled in. It is a long and strong pull, a pull altogether, and with a shout the daring swimmer is strained away up on shore and out of the rapid whirl.

Then the bold-swimmer man that he is-faints, and a drink of whiskey is brought. It is poured down his throat, and he quickly recovers, When he is able to move about, in a moment or two, he is the most active in the work of preparing the remains for inspection. The body is then put in shape for the reception of relatives, and if that of a rich man, the daring rescuers are made the recipients of a handsome compensation. It may be a body laden with treasure-rings of value, costly jewels, of money in dank soggy wallets and if no one calls, the money is held awhile, and then divided.