288 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



sure of the foot but shielding the peat below from 

 the cold. The ice on the pond may be solid 

 enough to bear you, but when you step on this 

 peaty edge you go down into the liquid mud be- 

 neath. Here you have reproduced in fragile 

 miniature the same result as happened at the 

 Giant's Causeway on the sea margin at the north- 

 east corner of Ireland. There a long vein of 

 once liquid basalt, freezing suddenly ages ago, 

 left a great ridge of close-packed, vertical rock 

 crystals running out an unknown distance into 

 the sea. 



With the good old rock-ribbed New England 

 earth in winter quarters and the surface vocal 

 with Jeremiahs clamoring for ^snow, it had to 

 come. The incantations of these raised a witch 

 whirl in that mysterious source of all our storms, 

 the region along the tropic of Capricorn, in the 

 Gulf of Mexico. Up the coast it came, with the 

 weather bureau flying storm flags in its honor 

 from Palm Beach to the Penobscot, boring into 

 the freezing temperature and clear air that the 

 North wind had spread around us, obscuring all 

 the sky in the dun clouds of conflict. The young 

 moon threw her clasped hands to a point of 



