Today I have been "on the move" all day long. "The Moorish king rode
up and down," unfortunately not "through Granada's royal town," but
between Havelberg and Jerichow, on foot, in a carriage, and on
horseback, and got mighty cold doing so--because, after the warm
weather of the last few days, I had not made the slightest preparation
to encounter five degrees below freezing, with a cutting north wind,
and was too much in haste or too lazy to mount the stairs again when I
noticed the fresh air. During the night it had been quite endurable
and superb moonlight. A beautiful spectacle it was, too, when the
great fields of ice first set themselves massively in motion, with
explosions like cannon-shots, shattering themselves against one
another; they rear, shoving over and under each other; they pile up
house-high, and sometimes build dams obliquely across the Elbe, in
front of which the pent stream rises until it breaks through them with
rage. Now are they all broken to pieces in the battle--the giants--and
the water very thickly covered with ice-cakes, the largest of which
measure several square rods, which it bears out to the free sea like
shattered chains, with grumbling, clashing noises. This will go on so
for about three days more, until the ice that comes from Bohemia,
which passed the bridge at Dresden several days ago, has gone by. (The
danger is that the ice-cakes by jamming together may make a dam, and
the stream rise in front of this--often ten to fifteen feet in a few
hours.) Then comes the freshet from the mountains which floods the bed
of the Elbe, often a mile in width, and is dangerous in itself, owing
to its volume. How long that is to last we cannot tell beforehand. The
prevailing cold weather, combined with the contrary sea wind, will
certainly retard it. It may easily last so long that it will not be
worth while to go to Reinfeld before the 20th. If only eight days
should be left me, would you have me undertake it, nevertheless?--or
will you wait to have me without interruption after the 20th, or