254 BIRD-LAND ECHOES. 



leaves had fallen and the hawks had come down 

 from the mountains or wherever they had passed 

 the summer, not one of them could rest for a mo- 

 ment in the trees if a crow happened to notice him. 

 Immediately the alarm would be sounded, and a 

 dozen crows, suddenly appearing, would chase the 

 hawk away. 



It was but a short distance from the willow hedge 

 to the river-bank, but the stranger to-day could 

 scarcely have detected where the dry land ended 

 and the river flowed. It was as uniformly white and 

 snow-clad as the meadows over which I had passed. 

 Yet there was a break. A long, low line, shown by 

 the abrupt change of level of the snow, meant the 

 edge of the frozen river, frozen now so firmly that 

 horses might safely have crossed. It was here that 

 nature was most suggestive to-day. Here were both 

 ice and snow, and the apparently level reach of the 

 river was not so very smooth. Uplifted cakes, many 

 feet square, of thick ice made rough travelling for 

 many a rod, and often effectually barred the way. 

 Thoreau remarked after reading Kane's Arctic travels 

 that he had seen much the same phenomena as are 

 there described about Concord. I thought of this 

 while walking on the river. It was no mere frozen 

 surface of a shallow stream, but ice that bridged a 

 valley, and so far more dangerous to loiter over. A 

 wide crack here and there revealed what changes 

 had been wrought, for the channel was almost dry, 

 and, dropping down a weighted line, I found that I 

 was forty feet above the river's bed and quite thirty 



