360 WILD 6P0ETS IN THE SOUTH. 



dusk, with the intention of skating a short distance up 

 the Kennebec, which glided directly before the door. 

 The night was beautifully clear. A peerless moon rode 

 through an occasional fleecy cloud, and stars twmkled 

 from the sky and from every frost-covered tree in mil- 

 lions, and the great zone of the milky way and the lucid 

 planets were all copied in the mirror-like ice, till your 

 foot seemed treading the jewelled vault of heaven. 

 Your mind would wonder at the light that came glint- 

 iug from ice, and snow wreath, and incrusted branches, 

 as the eye followed for miles the broad gleam of the 

 Kennebec, and like a satin ribbon wound between the 

 dark forests that bound it. And yet all was still. The 

 cold seemed to have frozen tree and air, and water, and 

 every living thing that moved. Even the ringing of my 

 skates on the ice echoed back from the Moccasin Hill 

 with a startling clearness, and the crackle of the ice as I 

 passed over it in my course, seemed to follow the tide of 

 the river v/ith lightning speed. 



" I had gone up the river nearly two miles, when, 

 coming to a little stream which empties into the larger, 

 I turned in to explore its course. Fir and hemlock of a 

 century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway 

 radiant with frost-work. All was dark within, but I was 

 young and fearless, and as I peered into an unbroken 

 forest that mirrored itself on the borders of the stream, I 

 laughed with joyousness, my wild hurrah rang through 

 the silent woods, and I stood listening to the echo that 

 reverberated again and again, until all was hushed. I 



