All sorts of creeping,
crawling, fluttering life came forth from the warming earth and
hastened to mature, reproduce, and cease. Just a breath of balmy air,
and then the long cold frost again--ah! they knew it well and lost no
time. Sand martins were driving their ancient tunnels into the soft
clay banks, and robins singing on the spruce-garbed islands. Overhead
the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the
partridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory.
But in all this nervous haste the Yukon took no part. For many a
thousand miles it lay cold, unsmiling, dead. Wild fowl, driving up
from the south in wind-jamming wedges, halted, looked vainly for open
water, and quested dauntlessly on into the north. From bank to bank
stretched the savage ice. Here and there the water burst through and
flooded over, but in the chill nights froze solidly as ever. Tradition
has it that of old time the Yukon lay unbroken through three long
summers, and on the face of it there be traditions less easy of belief.
So summer waited for open water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretching
of days and cracking its stiff joints. Now an air-hole ate into the
ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to
freeze again. Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a
yard. But still the river was loth to loose its grip.
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