Joe Smith says that he saw blackbirds this morning. I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago. So the birds are quite early this year.

  P.M.—Up river on ice . . .

  There are several men of whose comings and goings the town knows little. I mean the trappers. They may be seen coming from the woods and river, perhaps with nothing in their hands, and you do not suspect what they have been about . . . But, few as the trappers are here, it seems by Goodwin’s accounts that they steal one another’s traps . . .