so much definite knowledge to-day that to-morrow is all discredited and
cast aside leaving us groping for another theory, that it is just as
easy to believe myself eavesdropping at telephone talk between giants.
That particular night it sounded to me like Hercules on his way up from
Hades with Cerberus under his arm and a bit over-anxious lest the
deities fail to have the dog pound ready for him on arrival in the upper
regions--but of course that’s pagan myth. Anyway it was a great uproar.
I fancy winter ice makes the same outcry on other ponds, though I never
happened to hear it anywhere else.
To-day the ice was quiet enough on my side of the pond, though you could
see where it had been at work. With the west wind as team mate it was
dredging and grading over on the east shore. This is the every-day
winter work of thick ice. It picks up big rocks on the beach and carries
them off into deep water or moves them up or down the shore as it sees
fit. But always it pushes back the sand and gravel and stones on low
shores and steadily builds them up till you find wide shallow ridges
between the water’s edge and the slope of the land farther ashore. My
pond is very young, scarcely three-quarters of a century old, yet it
shows marked evidence of this work all along shore. When ice is thick
and the wind strong, especially toward spring when there is apt to be
free water along the edge, you may stand by and see the dredging effect
at work, see the low, long mound of gravel or sand slide backward up the
beach while the edge of the floe crumples and grinds and crumbles, but
still moves irresistibly to its work.
Over at Ponkapoag Pond, which is perhaps a hundred thousand years older,
the effect of this pushing ice through the ages, working at various
levels, has been to produce mounds and dikes almost beyond belief.
Moreover, these are placed in such situations that it is plain to see
that the water was for the greater part of that long time some feet
higher than now. In my first acquaintance with these ridges I thought
them dikes raised by modern men, early farmers, perhaps, who thus for
some occult reason banked the pond as they surrounded their fields with
the stone fences which last still. No man of to-day, however ardent a
farmer, builds these great barriers between field and field. Yet even
with the stone walls before the eye it is hard to believe that men built
dykes along the pond shore that averaged a hundred feet across and were
in some places much more. A ten-foot bank would do, and it was hard to
believe that so much labor would be willingly wasted. Yet along the
Ponkapoag Pond shore in one place is a barrier many feet high and broad
built, not of sand, but of the rough slate rock of the region, thrown
together loosely in huge rough blocks and tamped with earth. This is so
much bigger than any of the field-enclosing stone walls that it puts the
modern farmer quite out of the question, and on finding it I had
pleasant dreams of a prehistoric race of mound-builders who might have
preceded the Indians in their occupation of the land and have built
these pond embankments for purposes of their own.
Again my scientific friend disapproves my dream theory in well-chosen
argument that is very convincing--to him. Nevertheless I go my way with
mind equally divided,--between theories as to prehistoric
men-mound-builders and the probabilities of the work having been done by
that great beaver which, according to the Algonquin legend, made the
world out of mud brought up from the bottom of a lake.
Mind you, I am quite convinced that it is the ice which is doing this on
the Reservoir shore, but Ponkapoag--that is far enough away to be in the
land of legend and all sorts of wonderful things may have happened on
its borders.
Whatever its work, the ice for this winter has nearly completed it. In
early December its crystalline structure was that of ferns, laid flat
and interwoven, making it strong and elastic. All semblance of these has
vanished, and there remains but a loosely adhering structure built like
the Giant’s Causeway in the north of Ireland of vertical irregular
columns jammed together side by side. Moisture is all between these, and
if the temperature is below freezing cements them firmly together, and
it is safe to walk on the surface. The ice is almost a foot thick still,
but let a warm spring sun in on it, and this cement softens, and what
seems a firm foundation crumbles and fails beneath your foot. All along
the edges to-day the process of disintegration was going on, and you
could hear the little seeping swan song of these ice columns as they
slid apart and lay flat, making mush ice in the open water where they
soon dissolved and disappeared. Thus the ice waits the mandate of the
spring. Some day, soon, it will fall apart as if at a word, and vanish,
and by that token we shall know that the winter has really gone, and we
shall go about in a pleasant glow, listening for the first voice of the
spring frogs.
INDEX
A
Actias luna, 14
Afrite, 243
Algonquin, 251
Amina, 10
Apple tree, 110, 116, 132
Arbor vitæ, 210, 211
Arctic barrens, 4
Arethusa, 155, 201
Asplenium trichomanes, 84
B
Bahamas, 70
Barnacle, 165
Beaver, 231
Bedlam, 242
Bee, honey, 36
Beech, 98, 101, 119, 120
Bermudas, 90
Betula alba, 195
---- lutea, 195
Birch, 8, 10, 13, 71, 103, 112, 118, 135, 139, 149, 188, 210
Birch, yellow, 194, 196, 197
---- white, 197
Blackberry, 17
Blueberry, 34, 101
Bluebird, 109, 110, 117
Blue Hill, 89, 95, 98, 101, 102, 105, 217
Bog-hobble, 201
Bream, 239
Buttercup, 127
Buttonball, 101
C
Calamus, 228
Calopogon, 200
Callosamia promethia, 14
Camelot, 174
Carolinas, 92
Cassandra, 204, 205
Cat, 145, 189
Cat-o-nine-tails, 126
Cedar, 113, 139, 140, 186, 194
---- red, 91, 92, 94, 201, 202, 210
---- white, 205, 207, 209, 211
Cerberus, 247
Cherry, wild, 177
Chestnut, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 118, 145
Chickadee, 7, 117, 120, 121
Chicken, 114
Chickweed, 69
Chipmunk, 181, 183
Cranberry, mountain, 95
Crow, 110, 111, 112, 117, 143, 144, 145, 183, 185
D
Dandelion, 69
Deer, 143
Demoiselle flies, 84
Dragon fly, 84
Duck, wild, 55
E
Eliot memorial bridge, 95
Ethiopia, 243
Ettrick Shepherd, 26
F
Fern, 51, 52, 70, 104
---- Christmas, 77, 78, 84
---- cinnamon, 73, 81
---- crested shield-, 80
---- evergreen wood-, 97, 104
---- flowering, 75
---- hay-scented, 82
---- interrupted, 73
---- lady, 83
---- maidenhair spleenwort, 84
---- ostrich, 71, 74, 81
---- polypody, 82, 83, 84, 85, 97, 104, 105
---- royal, 76
---- seed, 176
---- sensitive, 75
---- spinulose wood-, 79
Flag, blue, 127
Flicker, 115, 116, 117
Fly, caddice, 163
---- house, 30, 31, 32, 33
Fox, 33, 143, 145
Frog, 142
G
Galahad, 174
Gareth, 199
Gerardia, 93
Giant’s Causeway, 252
Goldenrod, 6, 11, 13, 19, 93, 127
Goldfinch, 7, 157
Goldthread, 207
Goose, wild, 155
Gosnold, Bartholomew, 92
Grass, purple wood, 95
Grasshopper, 114
Greenbriar, 100
Greenland, 218
Grouse, ruffed, 144, 160, 177
Gulliver, 143
Guy Fawkes, 241
H
Hancock Hill, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105
Hawk, 145
---- chicken, 114
---- sharp-shinned, 113, 115
Hemlock, 195
Hepatica, 69
Hercules, 247
Hickory, 11, 14, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95
Hornet, white-faced, 25, 27, 35, 38
Houghton’s pond, 96, 102
Hudson’s Bay, 218
Hylas, 142, 148
I
Idylls of the King, 199
Indian, 251
J
Juniperus virginiana, 210
K
Kant, Immanuel, 48
L
Labrador, 3, 13, 93, 218
Ladies’ delights, 68
Lemnas, 158
Lilliputians, 143
Lily, yellow pond-, 227
Limpet, 165
Loon, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63
Louisiana, 3
Lynette, 199
M
Maple, 13, 71, 93, 95, 101, 139, 157, 160
Mink, 146, 153, 160, 162, 232
Moth, luna, 15
---- spice-bush silk, 14
Mouse, 114, 147
---- deer, 180
---- field, 133, 148
---- meadow, 144
Muddy Pond, 200
Mullet, 239
Muskrat, 2, 18, 21, 217, 220, 224, 226, 228, 229, 230
Mussascus, 219, 221, 222, 223, 225, 229, 231
Mussel, fresh-water, 228
N
Nantucket, 246
Nebular hypothesis, 47
Nephrodium spinulosum, 81
Nesæa verticillata, 201
Newfoundland, 218
Nuthatch, red-breasted, 120, 121, 122
O
Oak, 13, 14, 17, 120, 126, 134, 142, 148
---- black, 140
---- red, 95, 118, 131, 140
---- scrub, 90, 131, 177
---- white, 5, 93, 95, 118
Old Guard, 218
Orinoco, 193
Osmunda regalis, 74
Owl, 145
P
Palm, 51, 52
Partridge, 143, 178
Partridge berry, 76, 126, 207
Perch, 239
Pickerel weed, 217
Pigeon, 116, 117
Pine, 13, 16, 50, 118, 125, 135, 136, 137, 139, 149, 156, 173, 208
Pipsissewa, 125
Pitcher plant, 200, 204
Pleiades, 49
Plesiosaurus, 52
Polypody, 82, 83, 84, 85, 97, 104, 105
Polystichum acrostichoides, 78
Ponkopoag pond, 3, 217, 233, 249, 250, 251
Pyrola, 76, 126
R
Rabbit, 131, 133, 134, 143
Ranunculus bulbosus, 127, 128
---- repens, 127
Rat, brown, 148
Reservoir Pond, 251
Rose, wild, 211
S
Samia cecropia, 14
Scorpion, 28, 29
Seal, fur, 222
Skunk, 6, 134, 145
Smilax, wild, 15
Smith, Capt. John, 219
Snail, 161
Snow, black, 211
Snowbird, 8
Sparrow, 8
---- song, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117
---- swamp, 187
---- tree, 185
Sphagnum, 200, 204, 205
Spider, land, 239
Squirrel, 121, 133, 143
---- gray, 181
Stephanotis, 193
Stockton, 122
Struthiopteris germanica, 72
Sweet flag, 17, 228
T
Tamias striatus, 182
Telia polyphemus, 14
Teneriffe, 4
Tennyson, 200
Toad, 161
Trout, 146, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166
Turkey, 179
Turtle, 161
Turner, Obadiah, 27
U
Ulysses, 55
V
Venezuela, 193
Vespa maculata, 26, 35
Violet, wood, 13
W
Wasp, common, 26
---- yellow jacket, 26
Water-strider, 239
Watercress, 163
Waterloo, 218
Weasel, 145, 162, 232
Willow, 16
Witch-hazel, 101
Woodchuck, 5, 6, 134
Woodpecker, downy, 122
Wordsworth, 75