186 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



stream again, as if sure of escape in that direction. 

 Thus they race up and down, the sport of the ebb 

 and flow; but the ebb wins each time by some dis- 

 tance. Large fields from above, where the men 

 were at work but a day or two since, come down; 

 there is their pond yet clearly defined and full of 

 marked ice; yonder is a section of their canal 

 partly filled with the square blocks on their way 

 to the elevators; a piece of a race-course, or a part 

 of a road where teams crossed, comes drifting by. 

 The people up above have written their winter 

 pleasure and occupations upon this page, and w& 

 read the signs as the tide bears it slowly past. 

 Some calm, bright days the scattered and dimin- 

 ished masses glide by like white clouds across an 

 April sky. 



At other times, when the water is black and still, 

 the river looks like a strip of the firmament at 

 night, dotted with stars and moons in the shape of 

 little and big fragments of ice. One day, I remem- 

 ber, there came gliding into my vision a great irreg- 

 ular hemisphere of ice, that vividly suggested the 

 half moon under the telescope; its white uneven 

 surface, pitted and cracked, the jagged inner line, 

 the outward curve, but little broken, and the blue- 

 black surface upon which it lay, all recalled the 

 scenery of the midnight skies. It is only in excep- 

 tionally calm weather that the ice collects in these 

 vast masses, leaving broad expanses of water per- 

 fectly clear. Sometimes, during such weather, it 

 drifts by in forms that suggest the great continents, 



