A Summer’s Journey and a Winter's Cam aign. 23 Y

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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