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Updated: June 18, 2025
As I did so, out came the chickadee and scolded sharply. The storm and the cold had driven him early to his chamber. The snow buntings are said to plunge into the snow-banks and pass the night there. We know the ruffed grouse does this. The other day I sat for an hour watching a pair of wood thrushes engaged in building their nest near "Slabsides."
When Travis left it was still early and Alice walked with him to the big gate. The moon shone dimly and the cool, pure light lay over everything like the first mist of frost in November. Beyond, in the field, where it struck into the open cotton bolls, it turned them into December snow-banks.
A little later, the scenery on Frederic Sound became truly transcendent: grand mountains, forms that would be awful but for the sunshine resting on their heads, the lake-like sound, with its blue spits of land and cameo-like promontories profiled against the sky, motionless glace-de-Venise water reflecting a thousand shades of azure and gray and white, gulls resting on the water, with white bodies and black tips, almost a complete circle of brilliant snow-banks peeping above the clouds that hung to them amorously, and far-away vistas of blue-white glaciers coming down to meet the water-margin.
In time this refuge becomes a sort of "yard," surrounded by unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their way to this retreat on snowshoes, and from the top of the banks pick off the deer at leisure with their rifles, and haul them away to market, until the enclosure is pretty much emptied.
The man who carried the mail or the post, as he was called, talked much of running a stage, and, once or twice during the winter, he was seen taking a single passenger, in his cutter, through the snow-banks, toward the Mohawk, along which a regular vehicle glided, semi-weekly, with the velocity of lightning, and under the direction of a knowing whip from the down countries, Toward spring, divers families, who had been into the old States to see their relatives, returned in time to save the snow, frequently bringing with them whole neighborhoods, who were tempted by their representations to leave the farms of Connecticut and Massachusetts, to make a trial of fortune in the woods.
Perhaps I sympathize more truly with her kind-hearted spouse, who says with a deep sigh: "We mustn't be tackiturn jest because the wind's off the snow-banks." So I go to the flag-raising. "The Crooked Rivers and Capers have had their flag up these three weeks," said Lunette; "and I heard how the Artichokes had h'isted theirn yesterday.
"It was worth the trouble of a ride to 'Sconset to see the masses of snow on the road. The road had been cleared for the coal-carts, and we drove through a narrow path, cut in deep snow-banks far above our heads, sometimes for the length of three or four sleighs. We could not, of course, turn out for other sleighs, and there was much waiting on this account.
As when the summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen.
Rich as our Sierras are in treasures none are more precious than these. They give one pleasing surprises, often when least expected. For while the tree-clusters, the mountain-peaks, and the glowing snow-banks throw themselves into our view by their elevated positions, the retiring lakes, secluded, modest, hide their beauty from us until we happen to climb up to, or above, them.
Preuss, in obedience to my orders; and, in anticipation of the snow-banks and snow-fields ahead, foreseeing the inevitable detention to which it would subject us, I reluctantly determined to leave it there for a time. It was of the kind invented by the French for the mountain part of their war in Algiers; and the distance it had come with us proved how well it was adapted to its purpose.
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