in two in the rat's effort to wrench them open, leaving the frozen fish half-exposed. All the rest show the marks of their teeth at one end or the other. You can see distinctly also the marks of their teeth where with a scraping cut they have scraped off the tough muscle which fastens the fish to its shell, also sometimes all along the nacre next the edge. . . . . These shells lie thickly around the edge of each small circle of thinner black ice in the midst of the white, showing where was open water a day or two ago. At the beginning and end of winter, when the river is partly open, the ice thus serves the muskrat instead of other stool. . . . . Hence it appears that this is still a good place for clams as it was in Indian days.
February 26, 1857. What an accursed land, methinks unfit for the habitation of man, where the wild animals are monkeys!
February 27, 1841. Life looks as fair at this moment as a summer's sea . . . . like a Persian city or hanging gardens in the distance, so washed in light, so untried, only to be thridded by clean thoughts. All its flags are flowing and tassels streaming, and drapery flapping like some pavilion. The heavens hang over it like some low screen, and seem to undulate in the breeze. Through this pure, unwiped hour, as through a crystal glass, I look out upon the
