To Abner Buttrick’s Hill.

  The river has been breaking up for several days, and I now see great cakes lodged against each of the bridges, especially at Hunt’s and the North Bridge, where the river flows with the wind. For a week or more you could not go to Ball’s Hill by the south side of the river . . .

  I walk down the river below Flint’s on the north side. The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with new life now . . .

  C. [William Ellery Channing] found a skater-insect on E. Hubbard’s Close brook in woods to-day.