boats were busily engaged in transporting persons over the submerged
road. As you stood near the mouth of the river, and looked up the
current, a scene of considerable interest, and, even grandeur,
presented itself. At that time, the innumerable dams higher up the
stream, that have been since constructed, had not been built, nor had
the rocks, at the throat, been blasted to make a wider egress. The
ice, which then rushed down, as it were by agreement, simultaneously
and in huge blocks--but, now-a-days, at intervals, and broken up by
falling over the dams--unable to escape in the eager rivalry of the
cakes to pass each other, was jammed in the throat, and piled up high
in the air, looking like ice-bergs that had floated from the North
Pole. You saw the stream, at all times, rapid, and now, swollen vastly
beyond its ordinary proportions, rushing with ten-fold force, and
hurrying, in its channel, with hoarse sounds, the ice-cakes, which, in
the emulous race, grated against, and, sometimes, mutually destroyed
one another, to drive some under the icy barrier, thence to glide away
to the ocean, and to toss others high above the foaming torrent on the
collected masses, more gradually to find their way to the same bourne.
Looking away from the channel, one saw the cakes caught in the eddies,
whirled up against the banks, and, in some instances, forced into
smoother and shoaler water, where they grounded, or were floated into
little creeks and bays formed by the irregularities of the shores.
These quiet places were, of course, on the side nearest the town, the
opposite bank being too abrupt and the water too deep, for there
was the channel, and there the water tore along with the greatest
violence.

In one of these placid bays a party of school-boys were amusing
themselves with getting upon the loose blocks and pushing them about
like boats. The amusement appeared to be unattended with danger, the