210 A RIVER VIEW. 



A dweller upon its banks, I am an interested spec- 

 tator of the spring and winter harvests which its 

 waters yield. In the stern winter nights, it is a 

 pleasant thought that a harvest is growing down 

 there on those desolate plains which will bring work 

 to many needy hands by-and-by, and health and com- 

 fort to the great cities some months later. When 

 the nights arc coldest the ice grows as fast as corn in 

 July. It is a crop that usually takes two or three 

 weeks to grow, and if the water is very roily, or brack- 

 ish, even longer. Men go out from time to time and 

 examine it, as the farmer goes out and examines his 

 grain or grass, to see when it will do to cut. If 

 there comes a deep fall of snow before the ice has 

 attained much thickness it is " pricked," so as to let 

 the water up through and form snow ice. A band of 

 fifteen or twenty men, about a yard apart, each 

 armed with a chisel-bar, and marching in line, punc- 

 ture the ice at each step, with a single sharp thrust. 

 To and fro they go, leaving a belt behind them that 

 presently becomes saturated with water. But ice, to 

 be first quality, must grow from beneath, not from 

 above. It is a crop quite as uncertain as any other. 

 A good yield every two or three years, as they say 

 of wheat out West, is about all that can be counted 

 upon. When there is an abundant harvest, after the 

 ice-houses are filled, they stack great quantities of it, 

 as the farmer stacks his surplus hay. 



The cutting and gathering of the ice enlivens these 

 broad, white, desolate fields amazingly. One looks 



