ps, because Winter has lingered so long that, at best,
she can hardly retrieve half the allotted term of her reign.

The river, this season, has encroached farther on the land than it has
been known to do for twenty years past. It has formed along its course
a succession of lakes, with a current through the midst. My boat has
lain at the bottom of the orchard, in very convenient proximity to the
house. It has borne me over stone fences; and, a few days ago, Ellery
Channing and I passed through two rails into the great northern road,
along which we paddled for some distance. The trees have a singular
appearance in the midst of waters. The curtailment of their trunks quite
destroys the proportions of the whole tree; and we become conscious of a
regularity and propriety in the forms of Nature, by the effect of this
abbreviation. The waters are now subsiding, but gradually. Islands
become annexed to the mainland, and other islands emerge from the flood,
and will soon, likewise, be connected with the continent. We have seen
on a small scale the process of the deluge, and can now witness that of
the reappearance of the earth.

Crows visited us long before the snow was off. They seem mostly to have
departed now, or else to have betaken themselves to remote depths of the
woods, which they haunt all summer long. Ducks came in great numbers,
and many sportsmen went in pursuit of them, along the river; but they
also have disappeared. Gulls come up from seaward, and soar high
overhead, flapping their broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are
among the most picturesque birds that I am acquainted with; indeed,
quite the most so, because the manner of their flight makes them almost
stationary parts of the landscape. The imagination has time to rest upon
them; they have not flitted away in a moment. You go up among the
clouds, and lay hold of these soaring gulls, and repose with them upon
the sustaining atmosphere. The smaller birds,--the birds that build
their nests in our trees, and sing for us at morning-red,--I will not
describe.... But I must mention the great companies of blackbirds--more
than the famous "four-and-twenty" who were baked in a pie--that
congregate on the tops of contiguous trees, and vociferate with all the
clamor of a turbulent political meeting. Politics must certainly be the
subject of such a tumultuous debate; but still there is a melody in each
individual utterance, and a harmony in the general effect. Mr. T