After a walk of about half an hour, through alternating fields and
forest, they arrived, as they had calculated, at the banks of the
tributary above named, where it was crossed on the ice by the winter
road, which, owing to the failure of the rude bridge near the mouth of
the stream, and the difficulty of descending the bank in its immediate
vicinity, had been broken out through the adjoining meadow and over
the river at this point, which was consequently a considerable
distance above the ordinary place of crossing.

On reaching this spot, it was found that the flood, which, on the high
grounds, where we have last been taking the reader, was but little
observable, had made, and was evidently still making, a most rapid
progress. The rising waters had already forced themselves through the
small but constantly widening outlets of their strong, imprisoning
barriers, and were beginning to hurry along, in two dark, turbid
streams, over the surface of the ice, beneath the opposite banks,
where it was still too strongly confined to the roots and frozen earth
to permit of its rising; while the uplifting mass, in the middle of
the river, had nearly attained the level of the surrounding meadows.
And, although the main body still remained unbroken, yet the deep,
dull reports that rose in quick succession to the ear from the
cracking mass in every direction around, and the sharp, hissing,
gurgling sounds of the water, which was gushing violently upwards
through the fast multiplying fissures, together with the visible,
tremor-like agitation that pervaded the whole, plainly evinced that it
could not long withstand the tremendous pressure of the laboring
column of waters beneath.

The travellers, who were not to be turned back by a foot or two of
water in their path over the ice, so long as the foundation remained