220 RIVER LIFR, 



be one case of type left in one of the racks which had ridden out 

 the perils and roughness of the voyage without spilling a type. 



" It may be a little fanciful, perhaps, but there seems to be an 

 increased value in these articles which have once slipped from 

 us, made the voyage of the stream, and are, at length, so imex- 

 pectedly and singularly recovered. One of our citizens — a Ken- 

 nebecker, by-the-way — was particularly zealous in saving the 

 "Whig flag-staff, declaring it should long remain to bear aloft the 

 flag of freemen. 



" The whole river seems to have been an entire mass of ice, 

 partly solid and partly porous. The sudden rise of the river ex- 

 cited alarm, and its sudden subsidence, at the rate of about two 

 feet a minute, caused astonishment. 



"There is in the upper side, and near the middle of Exchange 

 street, a large cake of ice more than five feet thick. On Broad 

 street there are ice-balls twenty-five feet in diameter, and scat- 

 tered about in eveiy direction are thousands of smaller masses. 



" It will be difficult for people who did not witness it to real- 

 ize that all the business part of the city was a pool in which 

 large vessels might sail — that Exchange street, and Main street, 

 and others lower down, were deep canals for half their length, 

 and that Central street was a running river. But such things 

 were, and hundreds of stores were under water ! Boats were in 

 requisition, and varioiis contrivances were resorted to in the ef- 

 fort to turn an honest penny. Among them we noticed one fel- 

 low had taken the Wall street sign, and fastened it upon the stern 

 of his boat, in order to popularize his boat and route. The scene 

 in the vicinity of the steam-boat wharf or at the Rose Place is 

 truly astonishing — such heaps of ice thrown in wild confusion, 

 furnishing a capital idea of icebergs from the Northern Ocean. 

 We advise our friends to visit these places, and to gather in some 

 idea of the mighty power of the flood and of the process of making 

 ice mountains. 



