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Updated: May 25, 2025
The great size of some of the blocks of granite, and the distance which they have travelled, imply a power in the river which it no longer possesses. We can hardly doubt that river-ice once played a much more active part than now in the transportation of such blocks, one of which may be seen in the Museum of the Ecole des Mines at Paris, 3 or 4 feet in diameter.
Here they bartered their peltry for powder, bullets, and various other articles most needed by frontiersmen, and catching a southeast wind started on their return. In a few hours they had made seventy miles, and at night, as the sky threatened snow, they prepared a shelter in a hollow in the bank of the river. Before morning a snow-storm had covered the river-ice and blocked their passage.
For an hour or more he had led the usual sports, coasting down the steep descent from the house to the edge of the woods, and skating and playing hockey on the rough river-ice which eager hands kept clear after every snow-storm. He always felt the contagion of these sports: the glow of movement, the tumult of young voices, the sting of the winter air, roused all the boyhood in his blood.
In some men's hearts the ice "went out" at the sound, and the melting welled up in their eyes. Summer and liberty were very near. "Oh, hurry, Yukon Inua; let the ice go out and let the boats come in." But the next few days hung heavily. The river-ice humped its back still higher, but showed no disposition to "git."
The snow was ground down and rammed back about the skids, and the worn-out hollow gleamed a faint blue-grey in the shadow of the firs. The men made another strenuous effort as the log started, but in another moment it rushed away, and, like a toboggan, sped downwards through the forest to the river-ice below.
Another wagon, painted dirty yellow, followed. It was a Consolidated ice-cart; Farr knew those carts with their loads of river-ice. The spectacle of something which promised rivalry to that yellow cart piqued his interest. His mood welcomed the first adventure which Chance presented. He had found Chance playing peculiar pranks with his affairs in the days just past.
He was still "frightfully bunged up," but "I think we'll push on to-morrow," he said that night, as he sat by the fire smoking before turning in. "Right you are!" said the Boy, who was mending the sled-runner. Neither had referred to that encounter on the river-ice, that had ended in bringing the Colonel where there was succour.
At that time gravel was borne to the greatest distances from the central mountains through the main valleys, which had a somewhat steeper slope than now, and the quantity of river-ice must at that time have aided in the transportation of pebbles and boulders.
The party was washed out of its encampment, and had it not been that Andy discovered shelter for them in a sort of cavern under a huge boulder, they would all have been saturated. The storm ended with a sharp fall of hail. Hailstones as big as duck eggs fell, and the wind blew so that a portion of the river-ice was broken up.
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