17 January 1859 – 23 January 1859

That wonderful frostwork of the 13th and 14th was too rare to be neglected, — succeeded as it Blake, Thoreau says ‘“‘Cholmondeley has been here again,’ etc. (Familiar Letters, p. 349; Riv. 406).] was, also, by two days of glaze, — but, having com- pany, I lost half the advantage of it. It was remark- able to have a fog for four days in midwinter without wind. We had just had sudden severe cold weather, and I suspect that the fog was occasioned by a warmer air, probably from the sea, coming into contact with our cold ice-and-snow-clad earth. The hoar frost formed of the fog was such a one as I do not remem- ber on such a scale. Apparently as the fog was coarser and far more abundant, it was whiter, less delicate to examine, and of far greater depth than a frostwork formed of dew. We did not have an opportunity to see how it would look in the sun, but seen against the mist or fog it was too fair to be remembered. ‘The trees were the ghosts of trees appearing in their winding- sheets, an intenser white against the comparatively dusky ground of the fog. I rode to Acton in the after- noon of the 13th, and I remember the wonderful avenue of these faery trees which everywhere over- arched my road. The elms, from their form and size, were particularly beautiful. As far as I observed, the frostwork was deepest in the low grounds, especially on the Salix alba there. I learn from the papers that this phenomenon prevailed all over this part of the coun- try and attracted the admiration of all. The trees on Boston Common were clad in the same snow-white livery with our Musketaquid trees. Perhaps the most unusual thing about this phenome- non was its duration. The air seemed almost perfectly still the first day, and I did not perceive that the frost- ing lost anything; nay, it evidently grew during the first half of the day at least, for it was cold at the same time that it was foggy. Every one, no doubt, has looked with delight, hold- ing his face low, at that beautiful frostwork which so frequently in winter mornings is seen bristling about the throat of every breathing-hole in the earth’s sur- face. In this case the fog, the earth’s breath made visible, was in such abundance that it invested all our vales and hills, and the frostwork, accordingly, instead of being confined to the chinks and crannies of the earth, covered the mightiest trees, so that we, walking beneath them, had the same wonderful prospect and environment that an insect would have in the former case. We, going along our roads, had such a prospect as an insect would have making its way through a chink in the earth which was bristling with hoar frost. That glaze! I know what it was by my own experi- ence; it was the frozen breath of the earth upon its beard. But to remember still that frostwork, I do not know why it should build out northward alone, while the s twig is perfectly in bare on the south side. Is not the phenomenon elec- eee trical? You might Twig have guided your- self night or day by observing on which side the twigs it was. Closely examined, it Is a coarse aggregation of thin flakes or leafets. Looking from East or West Standing a little east or west of an evergreen, you saw considerable of its greenness, especially the second day, when much had fallen; but in each case suc- cessively you were agreeably disappointed when you arrived exactly north of the tree and saw it to best advantage. Take the most rigid tree, the whole effect is peculiarly soft and spirit-like, for there is no marked edge or out- line. How could you draw the outline of these snowy fingers seen against the fog, without exaggeration ? There is no more a boundary-line or circumference that can be drawn, than a diameter. Hardly could the New England farmer drive to market under these trees with- out feeling that his sense of beauty was addressed. He would be aware that the phenomenon called beauty was become visible, if one were at leisure or had had the right culture to appreciate it. A miller with whom I rode actually remarked on the beauty of the trees; and a farmer told me in all sincerity that, having occasion to go into Walden Woods in his sleigh, he thought he never saw anything so beautiful in all his life, and if there had been men there who knew how to write about it, it would have been a great occasion for them. Many times I thought that if the particular tree, commonly an elm, under which I was walking or riding were the only one like it in the country, it would [be] worth a Journey across the continent to see it. Indeed, I have no doubt that such journeys would be under- taken on hearing a true account of it. But, instead of being confined to a single tree, this wonder was as cheap and common as the air itself. Every man’s wood- lot was a miracle and surprise to him, and for those who could not go so far there were the trees in the street and the weeds in the yard. It was much hike (in effect) that snow that lodges on the fine dead twigs on the lower part of a pine wood, resting there in the twilight commonly only till it has done snowing and the wind arises. But in this case it did not rest on the twig, but grew out from it horizontally, and it was not confined to the lowest twigs, but covered the whole forest and every surface. Looking down the street, you might say that the scene differed from the ordinary one as frosted cake differs from plain bread. In some moods you might suspect that it was the work of enchantment. Some ma- gician had put your village into a crucible and it had crystallized thus. The weeping willow, with its thick- ened twigs, seemed more precise and regularly curved than ever, and as still as if it were carved of alabaster. The maples, with their few long shoots, were rather set and still. It was remarkable that when the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue. If any tree is set and stiff, it was now more stiff, if airy and graceful, it was now more graceful. The birches especially were a great ornament. As usual in the winter, where a rock rises above the ice it was a mere hillock covered with a white counterpane, and often where one end, perhaps the higher, of the rock was bare on one side it looked like a seal or walrus slowly lifting itself above the surface, or resting there. One suggested a bonfire under the elms in the street at night. P. M. — Up Assabet to bridge. Two or more inches of snow fell last night. In the expanse this side Mantatuket Rock I see the tracks of a crow or crows in and about the button-bushes and willows. They have trampled and pecked much in some spots under the button-bushes where these seeds are still left and dibbled into the snow by them. It would seem, then, that they eat them. The only other seeds there can be there are those of the mikania, for I look for them. You will see a crow’s track beginning in the middle of the river, where one alighted. I notice such a track as this, where one alighted, and apparently struck its spread tail ef into the snow at the same time with @':;.- ..-°*° 33 its feet. [see afterward where a wing’s ere quills have marked the snow much like apar- iridge’s. The snow is very light, so that the tracks are rarely distinct, and as they often advance by hops some — — —« might mistake it =", = a—w for a squirrel’s or mink’s track. I suspect that they came here yester- day after minnows when the fishermen were gone, and that has brought them here to-day in spite of the snow. They evidently look out sharp for a morsel of fish. I see where, by the red maple above Pinxter Swamp, they have picked over the fine dark-greenish moss from button-bush, and the leaves which had formed a squir- rel’s nest, knocking it down on to the river and there treading about and pecking a small piece, apparently for some worms or insects that were in it, as if they were hard pushed. I am pretty sure to find tracks under the last-named bank, in the edge of the low swamp white oak wood, either of rabbits or mice, crows or fox. The two former generally keep close under the bank, as the safest beat for them, but sometimes I see where they hopped across the river several times last night, and I can imagine how shyly they looked back from the oppo- site side. ‘The mice occasionally hop out a rod and back, making a semicircle; more rarely quite across. In my walk of the 16th, I noticed that almost all the way after leaving the railroad till I reached the high- way near Hubbard’s Bridge I was on the track of a fox. My beat was nearly identical with its (or there may have been several), — lengthwise through the Cassan- dra Ponds and Hollows by the lowest and most open path, along the narrow grown-up hillside path to Plea- sant Meadow, and just along the edge of the button- bushes, visiting every musquash-house, and crossing the river from time to time. I notice in midstream, opposite the cooper’s shore, where an opening has been made for ice, some eighteen feet square, and has not frozen over again, but the wa- ter is seen passing with a swift current and disappear- ing quickly under the thin edge of the newly formed ice. I notice one of those fine unaccountable cobweb- like lines, nearly straight though undulating, stretched from side to side of this opening, about eight inches from the edge of the ice on the lower side. It looked at first as if the water, compared with the ice, was higher, in fact heaped up at that point on account of the obstruction which the lower side offered, and that it then suddenly descended and passed under the thin edge of the newly formed ice! The ridge of the watery dam was a narrow light line, and there were on the upper side, parallel with it, eight or ten other light lines or ripples alternating with dark within the breadth of three or four inches, growing less and less distinct; and on the lower side there was a sudden slope (ap- parently to the level of the water below) about one inch wide. It : = was remarkable that the current | : : and all that it carried with it | 3 passed incessantly through and over these lines without in the : least disturbing them, or rather | : breaking them, only producing that slight undulation. I describe it as it appears. Of the large black oaks on the north bank near Prescott Barrett’s, some are quite bare, others have about as many leaves on their lower parts as a white oak. The swamp white oaks opposite are all bare. I notice in two places where a musquash has been out on the snow-covered ice, and has travelled about a rod or less, leaving the sharp mark of its tail. To-day, an average winter day, I notice no vapor over the open part of the river below the Island, as I did the very cold afternoon of the 10th. The air and water are probably now too nearly of the same temperature. That, then, in the winter, is a phenomenon of very cold weather.

Wednesday. P. M.—'To Great Meadows via Sleepy Hollow. It is a remarkably warm, still, and pleasant afternoon for winter, and the wind, as I discover by my hand- kerchief, southwesterly. I noticed last night, just after sunset, a sheet of mackerel sky far in the west hori- zon, very finely imbricated and reflecting a coppery glow, and again I saw still more of it in the east this morning at sunrise, and now, at 3.30 p. m., looking up, I perceive that almost the entire heavens are cov- ered with a very beautiful mackerel sky. This indi- cates a peculiar state of the atmosphere. The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regu- larity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with per- haps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name.’ Is not the peculiar propriety of this term lost sight of by the meteorologists? It is a luxury for the eye to rest on it. What curtains, what tapestry to our halls! Directly overhead, of course, the scales or cloudlets appear large and coarse, while far on one side toward the horizon they appear very fine. It is as if we were marching to battle with a shield, a testudo, over our heads. I thus see a flock of small clouds, like sheep, some twenty miles in diameter, distributed with won- derful regularity. But they are being steadily driven to some new pasture, for when I look up an hour after- ward not one is to be seen and [the] sky is beautifully clear. The form of these cloudlets is, by the way, like or akin to that of waves, of ripple-marks on sand, of small drifts, wave-like, on the surface of snow, and to the first small openings in the ice of the midstream. I look at a few scarlet and black oaks this afternoon. Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet [in] diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by (which has more than white oaks generally). As far as I observe to-day, the scarlet oak oo has more leaves now than the black oak. hs (id : Gathered a scarlet oak acorn of this form, (: ene and with distinct fine dark stripes or \ ‘h Xv rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. ; By the swamp between the Hollow and Peter’s I see the tracks of a crow or crows, chiefly in the snow, two or more inches deep, on a broad frozen ditch where mud has been taken out. The perpendicular sides of the ditch expose a foot or two of dark, sooty mud which had attracted the crows, and I see where they have walked along beneath it and pecked it. Even here also they have alighted on any bare spot where a foot of stubble was visible, or even a rock. Where one walked yesterday, I see, notwithstanding the effect of the sun on it, not only the foot-tracks, but the distinct impression of its tail where it alighted, counting distinctly eleven (of probably twelve) feathers, — about four inches of each, —the whole mark being some ten inches wide and six deep, or more like a semicircle than that of yester- day. The same crow, or one of the same, has come again to-day, and, the snow being sticky this warm weather, has left a very distinct track. The width of the whole track is about two and three quarters inches, length of pace about seven inches, length of true track some two inches (not including the nails), but the mark made in setting down the foot and withdrawing it is In each case some fifteen or eighteen inches long, for its hind toe makes a sharp scratch four or five inches long before it settles, and when it lifts its foot again, it makes two other fine scratches with its middle and outer toe on each side, the first some nine inches long, the second six. The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep, thus: — — SS ee eee ee You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. It must be that they require but little and glean that very assiduously. The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. Walking along the river eastward, I notice that the twigs of the black willow, many of which were broken off by the late glaze, only break at base, and only an inch higher up bend without breaking. I look down the whole length of the meadows to Ball’s Hill,etc. Ina still, warm winter day like this, what warmth in the withered oak leaves, thus far away, mingled with pines! They are the redder for the warmth and the sun. At this season we do not want any more color. A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. I know him (looking with my glass) by the axe over his shoulder, with his basket of fish and fish-lines hung on it, and the tin pail of minnows in his hand. The pail shines brightly more than a mile off, reflecting the setting sun. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all. The water (where open) is also green. I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening. At least such were the two even- ings on which I saw it this winter. Coming up the street in the twilight, it occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm- lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. Let them stand so near at least.

A second remarkably pleasant day like the last. P. M. — Up river. I see a large white oak perfectly bare. Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above. Is not the former Esox fasciatus 2? There is no marked difference when I look at them on their sides. I see in various places on the ice and snow, this very warm and pleasant afternoon, a kind of mosquito per- haps, a feeble flyer, commonly resting on the ice. The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun ? What a singular element is this water! I go shaking the river from side to side at each step, as I see by its motion at the few holes. T learn from J. Farmer that he saw to-day in his wood- Jot, on removing the bark of a dead white pine, an im- mense quantity of mosquitoes, moving but little, in a cavity between the bark and the wood made probably by some other insect. These were probably like mine. There were also wasps and what he calls lightning-bugs there.

A January thaw, with some fog, occa- sioned as yet wholly by warm weather, without rain; high wind in the night; wind still south. The last two days have been remarkably pleasant and warm, with a southerly wind, and last night was apparently warmer yet (I think it was 46° this morning); and this morning I am surprised to see much bare ground and ice where was snow last evening, and though last evening it was good sleighing and the street was not wet at all, — though the snow was moist, — now it 1s almost entirely bare ice except for the water. The sluices are more than full, rushing like mill-streams on each side the way and often stretching in broad lakes across the street. It 1s the worst or wettest of walking, requiring india-rubber boots. Great channels, eight inches deep and a foot or more wide, are worn in the ice across the street, reveal- ing a pure, clear ice on the sides, contrasting with the dirty surface. I do not remember so sudden a change, the effect of warmth without rain. Yesterday afternoon it was safe sledding wood along the riverside on the ice, — Hubbard was doing so, — and I saw at the bridges that the river was some eight inches lower than it had been when it froze, the ice adhering to the piers, and all held up there so much higher than the surrounding sur- face; and now itis rapidly rising, and the river is for- bidden ground. It is surprising how suddenly the slumbering snow has been melted, and with what a rush it now seeks the lowest ground on all sides. Yesterday, in the streets and fields, it was all snow and ice and rest; now it is chiefly water and motion. Yesterday afternoon I walked in the merely moist snow-track of sleds and sleighs, while all the sides of the road and the ditches rested under a white mantle of snow. This morning I go picking my way in rubbers through broad puddles on a slippery icy bottom, stepping over small torrents which have worn channels six or eight inches deep, and on each side rushes past with a loud murmur a stream large enough to turn a mill, occasionally spreading out into a sizable mill-pond. It begins to rain by afternoon, and rains more or less during the night. Before night I heard of the river being over the road in one place, though it was rather low be- fore. Saw Melvin buying an extra quantity of shot in anticipation of the freshet and musquash-shooting to- morrow.

Apparently the wind south two or three days or thermometer so long above 40° will make a freshet, if there is snow enough on the ground. 8.30 a. mM. — Go to the riverside. It is over the meadows. Hear Melvin’s gun. The thick white ice 1s seen lifted up and resting over the channel several rods from the present shore on the high bank side. As I stand there looking out to that white ice, about four rods distant (at my boat’s place), I notice countless narrow light lines, a third of an inch wide, in or on the very thin, dark, half-cemented ice (hardly so thick as pasteboard) which has formed since midnight on the sur- face of the risen water between the old ice and the shore. At first I thought that these light lines were cracks in that thin ice or crystallization (it is now 34°), occasioned, perhaps, by the mere rising of the water. But observ- ing that some of them were peculiarly meandering, re- turning on themselves loopwise, I looked at them more attentively, and at length I detected at the inner end of one such line a small black speck about a rod from me. Suspecting this to be a caterpillar, I took steps to ascer- tain if it were, at any rate, a living creature, by discover- ing if it were in motion. It appeared to me to move, but it was so slowly that I could not be certain until I set up a stick on the shore or referred it to a fixed point on the ice, when I was convinced that it was a cater- pillar slowly crawling toward the shore, or rather to the willows. Following its trail back with my eye, I found that it came pretty directly from the edge of the old or thick white ice (2. e. from where the surface of the flood touched its sloping surface) toward the willows, from northeast to southwest, and had come about three rods. Looking more sharply still, I detected seven or eight such caterpillars within a couple of square rods on this crystallization, each at the end of its trail and headed toward the willows in exactly the same direction. And there were the distinct trails of a great many more which had reached the willows or disappeared elsewhere. These trails were particularly distinct when I squatted low and looked over the ice, reflecting more light then. They were generally pretty direct toward the shore, or toward any clump of willows if within four or five rods. I saw one which led to the willows from the old ice some six rods off. Slowly as they crawled, this journey must have been made within a few hours, for undoubtedly this ice was formed since midnight. Many of the lines were very meandering, like this: — and apparently began and ended within the thin ice. There was not enough ice to support even a caterpillar within three or four feet of the shore, for the water was still rapidly rising and not now freezing, and I noticed no caterpillars on the ice within several feet, but with a long stick I obtained quite a number. Among them were three kinds. Probably the commonest were, first, a small flat (beneath) black one with a dark shell head and body consisting of numerous rings, like dark velvet, four or five eighths of an inch long;* second, a black caterpillar about same length, covered with hairy points or tufts, (remind me somewhat of that kind I see on the black willows, which is larger and partly yellow); thirdly, one all brown fuzzy and six or seven eighths of an inch long. The last lay at the bottom, but was alive. All curled up when I rescued them. There were also many small brown grasshoppers (not to mention spiders of various sizes and snow- fleas) on the ice, but none of these left any perceptible track. These tracks, thus distinct, were quite innumerable, — there was certainly one for each foot of shore, — many thousands (?) within half a dozen rods, — leading commonly from the channel ice to or toward the shore or a tree, but sometimes wandering parallel to the shore. Yet comparatively few of the caterpillars were now to be seen. You would hardly believe that there had been caterpillars enough there to leave all these trails within so short a time. It may be a question how did they come on the chan- nel ice. I answer that they were evidently drowned out of the meadow-grass by the rise of the water, 7. ¢., if there is sufficient thaw to lay the ground bare (as the musquash are, which I now hear one shooting from a boat), and that they either swam or were washed on to that channel ice by the rising water (while probably others were washed yet higher up the bank or meadow and were not obliged to make this journey ?), and so, as soon as the water froze hard enough to bear, they commenced their slow journey toward the shore, or any other dark terrestrial-looking object, like a tree, within half a dozen rods. At first I thought they left a trail because the ice was so very thin and watery, but perhaps the very slight snow that whitened the ground a little had melted on it. Possibly some were washed from adjacent fields and meadows into the river, for there has been a great wash, a torrent of water has rushed downward over these fields to the river. There was, perhaps, a current setting from the shore toward the middle, which floated them out. How is it when a river is rising ? At any rate, within twenty-four hours this freshet has invaded the Broadways or lower streets of the cater- pillar towns, and, within some six hours probably, these innumerable journeys have been performed by wrecked caterpillars over a newly formed ice-bridge, — more such adventurers in our town alone than there are human beings in the United States, — and their trails are there to be seen, every one of them. Undespairing caterpillars, determined to reach the shore. What risks they run who go to sleep for the winter in our river meadows! Perhaps the insects come up from their winter re- treats in the roots of the grass in such warm and sunny days as we have had, and so are the more washed away, and also become food for crows, which, as I noticed, explore the smallest bare tufts in the fields. I notice where a musquash has lately swam under this thin ice, breaking it here and there, and his course for many rods is betrayed by a continuous row of nu- merous white bubbles as big as a ninepence under the ice. J. Farmer tells me that he once saw a musquash rest three or four minutes under the ice with his nose against the ice in a bubble of air about an inch in diameter, and he thinks that they can draw air through the ice, and that one could swim across Nagog Pond under the ice. I think that the greater part of the caterpillars reach- ing the few feet of open water next the shore must sink to the bottom, and perhaps they survive in the grass there. A few may crawl up the trees. One which I took off the bottom was alive. A freshet, then, even in midwinter, is a most momen- tous event to the insect world. Perhaps the caterpillars, being in the water, are not frozen in, but crawl out on the ice and steer for the land from wherever they may be. Apparently those which started from the edge of the channel ice must have been drifted there either by the current or wind, because they could not have risen directly up to it from the bottom, since it slopes toward the shore for a rod under water. It is remarkable that the caterpillars know enough to steer for the shore, though four or five rods off. I notice that, the river thus breaking up in this freshet, this body of ice over the channel cracks on each side near the line of the willows, a little outside of them, two great rents showing the edge and thickness of the ice, making many a jounce or thankee-marm for the skater when all is frozen again, while between them the ice of the channel is lifted up level, while outside these rents the ice slopes downward for a rod, the shore edge still fastened to the bottom; 2. ¢., the fuller tide, rushing downward, lifts up the main body of the ice, cracking it on each side of the channel, the outside strips remaining attached to the bot- tom by their shore edges and sloping upward to the rents, so that the freshet runs through, and nearly overflows these two strips, creeping far up the bank or over the meadows on each side. P. M. — I see many caterpillars on the ice still, and those glow-worm-like ones. I see several of the black fuzzy (with distinct tufts) caterpillars described above, on the open water next the shore, but none of them is moving; also, in the water, common small black crickets (one alive) and other bugs (commonly alive), which have been washed out of their winter quarters. And in the fields generally, exposed on bare, hard ice, the snow being gone and more than half the earth bare, are a great many caterpillars (still two other kinds than yet described), many naked and fishworm-color, four to six inches long, and those glow-worm-like ones (some more brown). They have evidently been washed out of their retreats in the grass by the great flow of water, and left on the ice. They must afford abundant food [for] birds. Crows which fared hard ten days ago must fare sump- tuously now. This will account for their tracks which I saw the other day leading to every little bare strip [ ? ] or exposed tuft of grass, —those warm days. Perhaps the caterpillars, etc., crawl forth in sunny and warm days in midwinter when the earth is bare, and so supply the birds, and are ready to be washed away by a flow of water! I find thus a great variety of living insects now washed out. Four kinds of caterpillars, and also the glow-worm-like creature so common, grasshoppers, crickets, and many bugs, not to mention the mosquito- like insects which the warm weather has called forth (flying feebly just over the ice and snow a foot or two), spiders, and snow-fleas. A sudden thaw is, then, a great relief to crows and other birds that may have been put to it for food. Their larders are now overstocked. Can that glow-worm-like creature, so common on the ice by the riverside and in the fields now, be the female of the lightning-bug? It is about half an inch long by one eleventh of an inch wide, dusky reddish- brown above, lighter beneath, with a small black flat- tish head and about four short antenne, six legs under the forward part of the body, which last consists of twelve ring-like segments. There is one row of mi- nute light-colored dots down the middle of the back, and perhaps (?) others, fainter, on the side. Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting mus- quash. Cocks crow as In spring. The energy and excitement of the musquash-hunter even, not despairing of life, but keeping the same rank and savage hold on it that his predecessors have for so many generations, while so many are sick and despair- ing, even this is inspiriting to me. Even these deeds of death are interesting as evidences of life, for life will still prevail in spite of all accidents. I have a certain faith that even musquash are immortal and not born to be killed by Melvin’s double-B (?) shot. Methinks the breadth of waves, whether in water or snow or sand or vapor (in the mackerel sky), is deter- mined generally by the force of the wind or other current striking the water, etc. It depends on how much water, etc., the wind has power ‘to displace. The musquash-hunter (last night), with his increased supply of powder and shot and boat turned up some- where on the bank, now that the river is rapidly rising, dreaming of his exploits to-day in shooting musquash, of the great pile of dead rats that will weigh down his boat before night, when he will return wet and weary and weather-beaten to his hut with an appetite for his supper and for much sluggish (punky) social inter- course with his fellows, — even he, dark, dull, and bat- tered flint as he is, is an inspired man to his extent now, perhaps the most inspired by this freshet of any, and the Musketaquid Meadows cannot spare him. There are poets of all kinds and degrees, little known to each other. The Lake School is not the only or the principal one. They love various things. Some love beauty, and some love rum. Some go to Rome, and some go a-fishing, and are sent to the house of correc- tion once a month. They keep up their fires by means unknown to me. I know not their comings and goings. How can I tell what violets they watch for? I know them wild and ready to risk all when their muse invites. The most sluggish will be up early enough then, and face any amount of wet and cold. I meet these gods of the river and woods with sparkling faces (like Apollo’s) Jate from the house of correction, it may be carrying whatever mystic and forbidden bottles or other vessels concealed, while the dull regular priests are steering their parish rafts in a prose mood. What care I to see galleries full of representatives of heathen gods, when I can see natural living ones by an infinitely superior artist, without perspective tube? If you read the Rig Veda, oldest of books, as it were, describing a very primitive people and condition of things, you hear in their prayers of a still older, more primitive and abo- riginal race in their midst and round about, warring on them and seizing their flocks and herds, infesting their pastures. ‘Thus is it in another sense in all communities, and hence the prisons and police. I hear these guns going to-day, and I must confess they are to me a springlike and exhilarating sound, like the cock-crowing, though each one may report the death of a musquash. This, methinks, or the like of this, with whatever mixture of dross, is the real morning or evening hymn that goes up from these vales to-day, and which the stars echo. ‘This is the best sort of glori- fying of God and enjoying him that at all prevails here to-day, without any clarified butter or sacred ladles. As a mother loves to see her child imbibe nourish- ment and expand, so God loves to see his children thrive on the nutriment he has furnished them. In the musquash-hunters I see the Almouchicois still pushing swiftly over the dark stream in their canoes. These aboriginal men cannot be repressed, but under some guise or other they survive and reappear continually. Just as simply as the crow picks up the worms which all over the fields have been washed out by the thaw, these men pick up the musquash that have been washed out the banks. And to serve such ends men plow and sail, and powder and shot are made, and the grocer exists to retail them, though he may think himself much more the deacon of some church. From year to year the snow has its regular retreat and lurking-places when a thaw comes (laying bare the earth), under the southeastward banks. I see it now resting there in broad white lines and deep drifts (from my window), as I have seen it for many years, —— as it lay when the Indian was the only man here to see It.

The freshet is now frozen over, but not thick enough to bear without cracking, and that pecul- iar whitish ice like bread or mortar that has run over is seen four to six feet in width all along the shore and about trees, posts, rocks, etc. It is produced by the water, probably, still rising after the freezing in the night and flowing back over the ice in a semiliquid state, or like soft solder, —a rough or wrinkled or rippled dirty- white surface, often stained with the bank, yellowish or brown. There is a cold northwest wind, and I notice that the snow-fleas which were so abundant on this water yesterday have hopped to some lee, 7. ¢., are collected like powder under the southeast side of posts or trees or sticks or ridges in the ice. You are surprised to see that they manage to get out of the wind. On the southeast side of every such barrier along the shore there is a dark line or heap of them. I see one of those glow-worm- like creatures frozen 1n, sticking up perpendicular, half above the ice. Going over the Hosmer pasture this side Clamshell southwestward, I thought I saw much gossamer on the grass, but was surprised to find that it was the light re- flected from the withered grass stems which had been bent or broken by the snow (now melted). It looked just like gossamer even within ten [ ?] feet, — most would have taken it for that, — also these fine gleaming lines (like those of the alders and birch twigs, etc.) were very distinctly parts of an arc of a large circle,— the lower side of it, — as you looked toward the sun, the light being necessarily so reflected. . — s This is a remarkable instance So — of the November, or rather winter, light reflected from twigs and stubble. The grass stood thus: — BE a fo LS {TF It was just like an abundant gossamer. The earth being generally bare, I notice on the ice where it slopes up eastward a little, a distinct rosy light (or pink) reflected from it generally, half an hour before sunset. This is a colder evening than of late, and there is so much the more of it.