like some huge battlement, to the heavens--"there! do you hear that
dull roar, with occasionally a crashing sound, away up there among
those clouds of fog near the top peaks of the mountain?"

"Ay, ay, quite distinctly."

"Well, that is an echo, which, strangely enough, we can hear when we
can't the original sound, and which is made by the striking up there
of the roar of the river above us; that of course must be open, having
already broken up and got the ice in motion somewhere. But hark again!
Now, don't you hear that rumbling noise? Can't you, now, both hear and
feel those quick, irregular, deep, jarring sounds?"

"Yes, plainly--very plainly, now--you are right. Sure enough, the ice
in the river above us is on the move!" responded all, with excited looks.

"To be sure it is; and from the noise it makes, it must be coming down
upon us with the speed of a race-horse! Let us all to the hills, boys,
where we can get a fair view of the spectacle."

The company, accordingly, now all ran to gain the top of a neighboring
swell, which commanded a view of West River for a long distance up the
stream, as well as one of a considerable reach of the more distant
Connecticut, both of which views were obstructed, at the spot they had
just left, by a point of woods and turn in the river in the former
instance, and by intervening hills in the latter.

Among the many wild and imposing exhibitions of nature, peculiar to
the mountainous regions of our northern clime, there is no one,
perhaps, of more fearful magnificence, than that which is sometimes