Daredevils of Niagara

xiv + 134 pages, illustrations : 22 cm. Roaring, turbulent Niagara Falls has held bizarre fascination for scores of adventurers. Some have accepted its challenge and survived. Others have been lured to their doom in the great snarling cataract. Here is a thrilling account of the barrel- plungers, the tight-rope walkers, the whirlpool swimmers and all the other daredevils who, in various ways, have defied mighty Niagara. In this book you will meet Annie Edson Taylor, the first to go over the Horseshoe Falls and live; Blondin, Prince of Manila, who led the parade of rope walkers. Maria Spelterini, who crossed the rope with her feet in peach baskets; and the strange Hermit of Goat Island who sought solitude near the Falls and challenged its raging torrent regularly. Too, there was Roger Woodward, the little boy who tumbled over the Falls by mishap; and Red Hill, Jr., whose laborious preparations made headlines across the land. Not all merely flirted with death. Suicides, at the rate of seven a year, have plunged to their end in the swirling rapids. In 1929, following the market crash, the number rose to fifty-three.…