least expected; still holding on its way underneath, with a faint,
stertorous, rumbling sound, as if, like the bear and marmot, it too had
hibernated, and we had followed its faint summer-trail to where it earthed
itself in snow and ice. At first we should have thought that rivers would
be empty and dry in midwinter, or else frozen solid till the spring thawed
them; but their volume is not diminished even, for only a superficial cold
bridges their surface. The thousand springs which feed the lakes and
streams are flowing still. The issues of a few surface springs only are
closed, and they go to swell the deep reservoirs. Nature's wells are below
the frost. The summer brooks are not filled with snow-water, nor does the
mower quench his thirst with that alone. The streams are swollen when the
snow melts in the spring, because nature's work has been delayed, the
water being turned into ice and snow, whose particles are less smooth and
round, and do not find their level so soon.

Far over the ice, between the hemlock woods and snow-clad hills, stands
the pickerel fisher, his lines set in some retired cove, like a Finlander,
with his arms thrust into the pouches of his dreadnought; with dull,
snowy, fishy thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated a few inches from
his race; dumb, erect, and made to be enveloped in clouds and snows, like
the pines on shore. In these wild scenes, men stand about in the scenery,
or move deliberately and heavily, having sacrificed the sprightliness and
vivacity of towns to the dumb sobriety of nature. He does not make the
scenery less wild, more than the jays and musk-rats, but stands there as a
part of it, as the natives are represented in the voyages of early
navigators, at Nootka Sound, and on the Northwest coast, with their furs
about them, before they were tempted to loquacity by a scrap of iron. He
belongs to the natural family of man, and is planted deeper in nature and
has more root than the inhabitants of towns. Go to him, ask what luck, and
you will learn that he too is a worshipper of the unseen. Hear with what