A RIVER VIEW 187 



as they appear upon the map, surrounded by the 

 oceans, all their capes and peninsulas, and isth- 

 muses and gulfs, and inland lakes and seas, vividly 

 reproduced. 



If the opening of the river is gentle, the closing 

 of it is sometimes attended by scenes exactly the 

 reverse. 



A cold wave one December was accompanied by 

 a violent wind, which blew for two days and two 

 nights. The ice formed rapidly in the river, but 

 the wind and waves kept it from uniting and mass- 

 ing. On the second day the scene was indescrib- 

 ably wild and forbidding; the frost and fury of 

 December were never more vividly pictured: vast 

 crumpled, spumy ice-fields interspersed with stretches 

 of wildly agitated water, the heaving waves thick 

 with forming crystals, the shores piled with frozen 

 foam and pulverized floes. After the cold wave 

 had spent itself and the masses had become united 

 and stationary, the scene was scarcely less wild. I 

 fancied the plain looked more like a field of lava 

 and scoria than like a field of ice, an eruption from 

 some huge frost volcano of the north. Or did it 

 suggest that a battle had been fought there, and 

 that this wild confusion was the ruin wrought by 

 the contending forces? 



No sooner has the river pulled his icy coverlid 

 over him than he begins to snore in his winter 

 sleep. It is a singular sound. Thoreau calls it a 

 "whoop," Emerson a "cannonade," and in "Mer- 

 lin" speaks of 



