ply marked all around
the horizon; the line runs as level as the shore line of a lake or
sea; indeed, a warmer aerial sea fills all the valleys, sub-merging
the lower peaks, and making white islands of all the higher ones.
The branches bend with the rime. The winds have not shaken it down.
It adheres to them like a growth. On examination I find the
branches coated with ice, from which shoot slender spikes and
needles that penetrate and hold the cord of snow. It is a new kind
of foliage wrought by the frost and the clouds, and it obscures the
sky, and fills the vistas of the woods nearly as much as the myriad
leaves of summer. The sun blazes, the sky is without a cloud or a
film, yet we walk in a soft white shade. A gentle breeze was blowing
on the open crest of the mountain, but one could carry a lighted
candle through these snow-curtained and snow-canopied chambers. How
shall we see the fox if the hound drives him through this white
obscurity? But we listen in vain for the voice of the dog and press
on. Hares' tracks were numerous. Their great soft pads had left
their imprint everywhere, sometimes showing a clear leap of ten
feet. They had regular circuits which we crossed at intervals. The
woods were well suited to them, low and dense, and, as we saw,
liable at times to wear a livery whiter than their own.

The mice, too, how thick their tracks were, that of the white-footed
mouse being most abundant; but occasionally there was a much finer
track, with strides or leaps scarcely more than an inch apart. This
is perhaps the little shrew-mouse of the woods, the body not more
than an inch and a half long, the smallest mole or mouse kind known
to me. Once, while encamping in the woods, one of these tiny shrews
got into an empty pail standing in camp, and died before morning,
either from the cold, or in despair of ever getting out of the pail.

At one point, around a small sugar maple, the mice-tracks are
unusually thick. It is doubtless their granary; they have beech-nuts
stored there, I'll warrant. There are two entrances to the cavity of
the tree,--one at the base, and one seven or eight feet up. At the
upper one, which is only just the size of a mouse, a squirrel has
been trying to break in. He has cut and chiseled the solid wood to
the depth of nearly an inch, and his chips strew the snow all about.
He knows what is in there, and the mice know that he knows; hence
their apparent consternation. They have rushed wild