ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 



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FROM THE BLUFF ABOVE BYRON, ILLINOIS 



and the stream rose ten or fifteen feet above its common level, flooding the 

 bottoms. Great cakes of ice were thrust up the bank gouging and tearing 

 it away. They stood on edge and piled up in huge, formless barricades. 

 They cut the bark from trees. They rode down the bushes and covered the 

 fields with their fragments. Then the ice jam broke and the flood hurled 

 the ice masses with terrific violence against the bridge. Stone piers were 

 ripped out and great timbers snapped like twigs and carried away in the 

 seething waters. . The agent of summer refreshment and winter sport 

 became an irresistible giant, threatening, filling its beholders with awe. 



The cut made by the river in the old preglacial divide two miles north 

 of the village formed a picturesque spot for picnics, a wonderland of rocks 

 and canyons for the children. The river had cut a deep gorge with rocky 

 walls now veiled by trees and shrubs thru whose meshes the grandeur of 

 the towering buttresses was enhanced. A spring brook had worn a side 

 <anyon narrow and deep, shady and cool on the hottest summer afternoon. 

 The trickling water stepped daintily down from ledge to ledge. Its bed 

 was softened by mosses. Its sides were greened with liverwort. In spring 

 the rich soil of the hillsides above the rocks was purpled with hepaticas 

 clustered about the roots of trees. This was the home land for shy, retiring 

 birds. The quiet, the cool, the gentle moving, the strange life gave an 

 atmosphere to the glen which might have made a more imaginative child 

 people it with fairies; in the boy it aroused an unusual feeling. It made 

 him step more softly, listen more keenly, look more intently. It impelled 

 him to explore. Is that an eagle's nest in the high tree? Perhaps a wolf 

 lives in that cleft in the rock ; a beaten path leads to it. 



