108 WINTER 



muskrats an easy prey, through their weakness from 

 exposure and long swimming in the water. 



There would be only two shores to this wild 

 meadow-sea the river-bank, a mere line of earth 

 drawn through the water, and the distant shore of 

 the upland. If the wind blew from the upland toward 

 the bank, then the drift would all set that way, and 

 before long a multitude of shipwrecked creatures 

 would be tossed upon this narrow breakwater, that 

 stood, a bare three feet of clay, against the wilder 

 river-sea beyond. 



To walk up and down the bank then was like 

 entering a natural history museum where all the 

 specimens were alive ; or like going to a small me- 

 nagerie. Sparrows, finches, robins, mice, moles, voles, 

 shrews, snakes, turtles, squirrels, muskrats, with even 

 a mink and an opossum now and then, would scurry 

 from beneath your feet or dive back into the water 

 as you passed along. 



And by what strange craft they sometimes came ! 

 I once saw two muskrats and a gray squirrel floating 

 along on the top of one of the muskrats' houses. 

 And again a little bob-tailed meadow mouse came 

 rocking along in a drifting catbird's nest which the 

 waves had washed from its anchorage in the rose- 

 bushes. And out on the top of some tall stake, 

 or up among the limbs of a tree you would see 

 little huddled bunches of fur, a muskrat perhaps 

 that had never climbed before in his life, waiting, 



