about twenty minutes, carrying a twelve-foot bamboo rod with American flags fluttering at both ends. During the crossing, women fainted; at least one woman went into labor. Judging from a daguerreotype of Reginald Burnaby taken on the eve of his crossing, he was a lean, swarthily handsome gypsy-looking individual of about twenty-eight with a close-shaved head, a drooping handlebar mustache, a fierce, just perceptibly cross-eyed theatrical stare. On the wire he wore a Union lieutenant’s coat (his own?) and a circus performer’s black tights, and his daring exploit was celebrated in newspapers as far away as San Francisco, London, Paris, and Rome. The second time Burnaby risked his life above the Gorge, in June 1871, sponsored by a Niagara Falls spa, he drew even larger crowds. The novelty of this crossing was that Burnaby was laced into a straitjacket from which he managed to free himself midway over the Gorge; the drama was that a sudden headwind came up from the Canadian shore, and spitting rain, and Burnaby was forced to crouch on the tightrope and, “desperate and ingenious as a monkey,” as the London Times correspondent described it, made his painstaking way from Prospect Point to Luna Island in approximately forty minutes. For Burnaby’s third crossing, in August 1872, crowds were even larger, estimated at over two thousand on the American side alone, and at least half that number on the Canadian side. This crossing was sponsored by the daredevil himself, allegedly in need of money to support his wife and newborn baby. For this, most controversial crossing, from Prospect Point to Luna Island across the 68 W Joyce Carol Oates
American Falls, and from Luna Island to Goat Island, across the Bridal Veil Falls, Burnaby wore red silk tights and had painted his shaved head and face in the “warpaint” of an Iroquois Indian brave.
From the start of the event the atmosphere was reported to be unruly and disrespectful. Mist rising out of the Gorge was particularly thick, and the crowd’s view of the crossing was obscured, which con-tributed to general discontent and charges of “fraud.” The daredevil seemed, too, less certain of himself. He was thinner, and seemed to have lost the reckless ebullience of his youth of only the previous summer. After about twenty-five minutes of a slow, inch-by-inch walk on the wire, something happened that caused Burnaby to fall into the cataract. (Though no one was ever arrested, it was believed that an unidentified youth on the American side had fired a slingshot at the daredevil, striking him in the back.) To the horror of the crowd, Burnaby plunged nearly two hundred feet into the churning water at the foot of the Falls; to the delight of the crowd, now screaming and jostling one another to get a better view, Burnaby bobbed to the surface of the water after a few minutes, seemingly
“unscathed” as journalists would report. A “universal cheer” went up as the daredevil with the shaved, painted head swam toward the base of Luna Island; would-be rescuers reached out for him even as, when Burnaby was less than ten feet from shore, a powerful undertow sucked him down into the swift, green-tinged water. Eyewitnesses would claim that, as he was sucked down, Burnaby cried, “Darling, goodbye! Kiss the baby for me!” to his young wife who watched helplessly, their eight-month infant in her arms, from a platform on Goat Island.
That infant would one day be Dirk Burnaby’s father.
The broken, battered body of Reginald Burnaby, scarcely recognizable except for the boldly painted head and face, wasn’t discovered for several days, until at last it was sighted fifteen miles downriver, north of Lewiston, hauled to shore and given a Christian burial, courtesy of a coalition of Niagara Falls residents who’d taken pity on Burnaby and his young family.
After the widely publicized fate of REGINALD BURNABY
The Falls X 69
THE GREAT, tightrope walking across the Niagara Gorge was
American Falls, and from Luna Island to Goat Island, across the Bridal Veil Falls, Burnaby wore red silk tights and had painted his shaved head and face in the “warpaint” of an Iroquois Indian brave.
From the start of the event the atmosphere was reported to be unruly and disrespectful. Mist rising out of the Gorge was particularly thick, and the crowd’s view of the crossing was obscured, which con-tributed to general discontent and charges of “fraud.” The daredevil seemed, too, less certain of himself. He was thinner, and seemed to have lost the reckless ebullience of his youth of only the previous summer. After about twenty-five minutes of a slow, inch-by-inch walk on the wire, something happened that caused Burnaby to fall into the cataract. (Though no one was ever arrested, it was believed that an unidentified youth on the American side had fired a slingshot at the daredevil, striking him in the back.) To the horror of the crowd, Burnaby plunged nearly two hundred feet into the churning water at the foot of the Falls; to the delight of the crowd, now screaming and jostling one another to get a better view, Burnaby bobbed to the surface of the water after a few minutes, seemingly
“unscathed” as journalists would report. A “universal cheer” went up as the daredevil with the shaved, painted head swam toward the base of Luna Island; would-be rescuers reached out for him even as, when Burnaby was less than ten feet from shore, a powerful undertow sucked him down into the swift, green-tinged water. Eyewitnesses would claim that, as he was sucked down, Burnaby cried, “Darling, goodbye! Kiss the baby for me!” to his young wife who watched helplessly, their eight-month infant in her arms, from a platform on Goat Island.
That infant would one day be Dirk Burnaby’s father.
The broken, battered body of Reginald Burnaby, scarcely recognizable except for the boldly painted head and face, wasn’t discovered for several days, until at last it was sighted fifteen miles downriver, north of Lewiston, hauled to shore and given a Christian burial, courtesy of a coalition of Niagara Falls residents who’d taken pity on Burnaby and his young family.
After the widely publicized fate of REGINALD BURNABY
The Falls X 69
THE GREAT, tightrope walking across the Niagara Gorge was
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