124 BEACH GRASS 



the birds must have suffered greatly from the gen- 

 eral sealing up of their food. 



Evergreen trees were but little changed in 

 color, for the transparent ice, unless it caught the 

 sun's rays, was almost invisible over the dark 

 green needles, yet the trees were so changed in 

 shape as to lose their proper outline. White 

 pines were so heavily loaded that their branches 

 slanted downward, and the trees resembled aged 

 spruces in the northern wilds. The transfor- 

 mation was remarkable. A balsam fir tree near 

 my house, instead of holding its branches diag- 

 onally upwards towards the sky, pointed them 

 down, and the tree looked as if it had been 

 trimmed to a pointed cone. 



Gray branches everywhere bent over in grace- 

 ful curves till their tips touched the snow. In 

 open places like the dunes they were all pros- 

 trate to the south, frozen where the icy north 

 wind had left them. They looked like Samari- 

 tans at their devotions on the summit of Mount 

 Genzim. Their innumerable small branches and 

 fine divisions held such a load of silvery ice that 

 they could no longer stand erect under it. In 



