A Summer’s Journey and a Winter's Cam aign. 23
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fathoms deep. The floods uplift the ice by slow degrees
till the weight of water starts the ponderous mass that winter
laid on the river’s bosom. I have seen the rivers ¢t Ger-
many break up, but the scene was tame compared with the
tumult on these swift rivers of North America.

“JT was on the ice when the movement first took place. It
moves! What moves? The banks seem to glide up stream.
Then came a slight tremor beneath my feet, and I sprang
to the shore. The sensations were like those produced by
shocks of earthquakes. The stone-like surface I had often
walked on was in motion from bank to bank. At no great
distance the channel narrows, and the greater breadth of ice
from above was here caught as in a vice. The river is in
agony—eroaning, gurgling, sighing, surging, tilting, hissing,
roaring deep and loud like subterranean thunder. What
can ever dislodge this piled up mass? The flood is rising at
the rear foot by foot. Crack, crack, crack! Look! there
oo the trees falling inward. The forest king, that has drunk
life from the river at its roots, is quivering. There it lurches!
Down, down, flat on the ground without axe or tempest, all
its roots now exposed to the ice in motion. The rising mass
scalps the river’s bank as an Indian would his foe. At last,
with a sullen groan rising into a terrific roar, away goes the
stupendous obstruction, and down s.nks the river as if to rest
after its splendid victory. Then succeeds the ministry of the
south wind; then triumphs the gracious sun in his royal
progress northwards. As the baffled ice king retreats, the
snow-clad heights are melted as with the joy of freedom. The
tears trickling from under the snow-fringe swell the cascades
that furrow the mountain’s face. Down they roll, swelling
the river until its volume sweeps away all obstacles, and
leaves it ready to bear the traveller seaward.

“So is the Gospel ministry dissolving hard hearts around
me; uplifting the dread incubus drawn over them by Satan,
and setting free those streams of faith and love that remove
all barriers between man and his rest in God,”

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