Eut here the birds and the early flowers were unseen ; the sceptre of the frost king was yet all-potent. The blue bird, the robin, and the swallow, our earliest feathered visitors from the south, yet lingered in their southern homes. Soon the clouds gathered and came down in warm and gentle rain ; the deep snows of northern New York melted rapidly, and the Upper Hudson and the Mohawk poured out a mighty flood that spread over the valleys, submerged town wharves, and burst the ribs of ice yet thick and compact. Down came the turbid waters whose attrition below, working with the warm sun above, loosened the icy chains that for seventy days had held the Hudson in . bondage, and towards the close of February great masses of the shivered fetters were moving with the ebb and flow of the tide. The snow disappeared, the buds swelled, and, to the delight of all, one beautiful morning, when even the dew was not congealed, the blue birds, first harbingers of approaching summer, were heard gaily singing in the

THE HUDSON.

trees and hedges. It was a -welcome and delightful invitation to the fields and waters, and I hastened to the lower borders of the Highland region to resume my pen and pencil sketches of the Hudson from the wilderness to the sea.

The air was as balmy as May on the evening of my amval at Sing Sing, on the eastern bank of the Hudson, where the State of New York has a large penitentiary for men and women. I strolled up the steep and winding street to the heart of the village, and took lodgings for the