direction, now attracted their attention, They turned, and their eyes
were greeted with a scene, which, though less startling from its
distance, yet even surpassed, in picturesque grandeur, the one they
had just been witnessing. Through the whole visible reach of the
Connecticut, a long, white, glittering column of ice, with its ridgy
and bristling top towering high above the adjacent banks, was sweeping
by and onward, like the serried lines of an army advancing to the
charge; while the broad valley around even back to the summits of the
far-off hills, was resounding with the deafening din that rose from
the extended line of the booming avalanche, with the deep rumblings of
an earthquake mingled with the tumultuous roar of an approaching tempest.

The attention of the company, however, was now drawn from this
magnificent display of the power of the elements, by an object of more
immediate interest to their feelings. This was an open double sleigh,
approaching, on the opposite side of the river, towards the place at
which they had just crossed over, in the manner we have described. The
mountain mass of ice that was still forcing its way down the river
before them, with increasing impetus, was now within three hundred
yards of the pass, to which those in the sleigh were hastening, with
the evident design of crossing. And though the latter, owing to a
point of woods that intervened at a bend in the stream a short
distance above, could not see the coming ice, yet they seemed aware of
its dangerous proximity; for, as they now drove down to the edge of
the water, they paused, and a large man, who appeared to have control
of the team, rose to his feet, and with words that could not be
distinguished in the roaring of the wind and the noise from the scene
above, made an appealing gesture, which was readily understood by our
foot travellers as an inquiry whether the team would have time to
cross before the ice reached the spot.