d again.
The temperature fell a little, and the tempest abated. The colonists
sallied out directly. There was certainly two feet of snow on the shore,
but they were able to walk without much difficulty on the hardened
surface. Cyrus Harding and his companions climbed Prospect Heights.

What a change! The woods, which they had left green, especially in the
part at which the firs predominated, had disappeared under a uniform
color. All was white, from the summit of Mount Franklin to the shore,
the forests, the plains, the lake, the river. The waters of the Mercy
flowed under a roof of ice, which, at each rising and ebbing of the
tide, broke up with loud crashes. Numerous birds fluttered over the
frozen surface of the lake. Ducks and snipe, teal and guillemots were
assembled in thousands. The rocks among which the cascade flowed were
bristling with icicles. One might have said that the water escaped by a
monstrous gargoyle, shaped with all the imagination of an artist of the
Renaissance. As to the damage caused by the storm in the forest, that
could not as yet be ascertained; they would have to wait till the snowy
covering was dissipated.

Gideon Spilett, Pencroft, and Herbert did not miss this opportunity of
going to visit their traps. They did not find them easily, under the
snow with which they were covered. They had also to be careful not to
fall into one or other of them, which would have been both dangerous and
humiliating; to be taken in their own snares! But happily they avoided
this unpleasantness, and found their traps perfectly intact. No animal
had fallen into them, and yet the footprints in the neighborhood were
very numerous, among others, certain very clear marks of claws. Herbert
did not hesitate to affirm that some animal of the feline species had
passed there, which justified the engineer's opinion that dangerous
beasts existed in Lincoln Island. These animals doubtless generally
lived in the forests of the Far West, but pressed by hunger, they had
ventured as far as Prospect Heights. Perhaps they had smelled out the
inhabitants of Granite House. "Now, what are these feline creatures?"
asked Pencroft. "They are tigers," replied Herbert. "I thought those
beasts were only found in hot countries?"

"On the new continent," replied the lad, "they are found from Mexico to
the Pampas of Buenos Aires. Now, as Lincoln Island is nearly under the
same latitude as the provinces of La Plata, it is not surprising tha