"Now forced aloft, bright bounding through the air
Moves the bleak ice, and sheds a dazzling glare;
The torn foundations on the surface ride,
And wrecks of winter load the downward tide."


After travelling a short distance in the road, Woodburn and his
companions halted, put on their snow-shoes, and, turning out to the
left into the woods, commenced, with the long, loping step peculiar to
the racket-shod woodsman, their march over the surface of the
untrodden snow. The road just named, which formed the usual route from
the village they had quitted to their place of destination, led first
directly to the Connecticut, in an easterly direction, and then,
turning to the north, passed up the river near its western banks, thus
describing in its course a right angle, at the point of which, resting
on the river, stood the store of Stephen Greenleaf, the first, and,
for a while, the only merchant in Vermont; whose buildings, with those
perhaps of one or two dependants, constituted the then unpromising
nucleus around which has since grown up the wealthy and populous
village of East Brattleborough. Such being the course of the travelled
route, it will readily be seen, that the main object of our foot
company, in leaving it, was the saving of distance, to be effected by
striking across this angle to some eligible point on the northern
road. Arid they accordingly pitched their course so as to enter the
road near its intersection with the Wantastiquet, or West River,--one
of the larger tributaries of the Connecticut,--which here comes
lolling down from the eastern side of the Green Mountains, and pours
its rock-lashed and rapid waters into the comparatively quiet bosom of
the ingulfing stream below.