Thompson, D. P., 1795-1868 / 2008-11-18 00:00:00


"The water and ice are strangely agitated, it appears to me," observed
Woodburn to his companions, as they stood looking on the scene before
them. "See how like a pot the water boils up through that crevice
yonder! Then hear that swift, lumbering rush of the stream beneath!
The whole river, indeed, seems fairly to groan, like some huge animal
confined down by an insupportable burden, from which it is laboring to
free itself. I have noticed such appearances, I think, when the ice
was on the point of breaking up; but that can hardly be the case here,
at present can it?"
"On the point of breaking up, now?" said one of the company in reply.
"No, indeed! Why, the ice is more than three feet thick, and as sound
and solid as a rock. Should it rain from this time till to-morrow
noon, it won't start."
"Well, now, I don't know about that," remarked an observant old
settler, who had been silently regarding the different portents to
which we have alluded. "I don't know about the ice staying here twenty
hours, or even one. This has been no common thaw, that we have had for
the last six or eight hours, let me tell you.
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