I 124 ] 

 THE SWAMP IN WINTER 



January 10, 1856. I love to wade and flounder 

 through the swamp now, these bitter cold days when 

 the snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel 

 but little way from the town to get to a Nova Zembla 

 solitude, — to wade through the swamps, all snowed 

 up, un tracked by man, into which the fine dry snow 

 is still drifting till it is even with the tops of the 

 water andromeda and half-way up the high blue- 

 berry bushes. I penetrate to islets inaccessible in 

 summer, my feet slumping to the sphagnum far out 

 of sight beneath, where the alder berry glows yet 

 and the azalea buds, and perchance a single tree 

 sparrow or a chickadee lisps by my side, where there 

 are few tracks even of wild animals; perhaps only a 

 mouse or two have burrowed up by the side of some 

 twig, and hopped away in straight lines on the sur- 

 face of the light, deep snow, as if too timid to delay, 

 to another hole by the side of another bush; and a 

 few rabbits have run in a path amid the blueberries 

 and alders about the edge of the swamp. This is 

 instead of a Polar Sea expedition and going after 

 Franklin. There is but little life and but few objects, 

 it is true. We are reduced to admire buds, even like 

 the partridges, and bark, like the rabbits and mice, 

 — the great yellow and red forward-looking buds of 

 the azalea, the plump red ones of the blueberry, and 

 the fine sharp red ones of the panicled andromeda, 



