experienced in northern climes, and which can be accounted for only on
the supposition, that the earth, at stated intervals, rapidly gives
out large quantities of its internal heats, or that the air becomes
suddenly rarefied by some essential change or modification in the
state of the electric fluid. The morning had been cloudless; and the
rising sun, with rays no longer dimly struggling through the dense,
obstructing medium of the dark months gone by, but, with the restored
beams of his natural brightness, fell upon the smoking earth with the
genial warmth of summer. A new atmosphere, indeed, seemed to have been
suddenly created, so warm and bland was the whole air; while,
occasionally, a breeze came over the face of the traveller, which
seemed like the breath of a heated oven. As the day advanced, the sky
gradually became overcast--a strong south wind sprung up, before whose
warm puffs the drifted snow-banks seemed literally to be cut down,
like grass before the scythe of the mower; and, at length, from the
thickening mass of cloud above, the rain began to descend in torrents
to the mutely recipient earth. All this, for a while, however,
produced no very visible effects on the general face of nature; for
the melting snow was many hours in becoming saturated with its own and
water from above. Nor had our travellers, for the greater part of the
day, been much incommoded by the rain, or the thaw, that was in
silent, but rapid progress around and beneath them; as their vehicle
was a covered one, and as the hard-trodden paths of the road were the
last to be affected. But, during the last hour, a great change in the
face of the landscape had become apparent; and the evidence of what
had been going on unseen, through the day, was now growing every
moment more and more palpable. The snow along the bottom of every
valley was marked by a long, dark streak, indicating the presence of
the fast-collecting waters beneath. The stifled sounds of rushing
streams were heard issuing from the hidden beds of every natural rill;