After nearly thirty years’ digging, he has been traced from the days of the great glaciers to the beginnings of American history; but we cannot say how long a time that comprises. The winter of 1892-1893 was, so far as appearances went, a return to glacial times. Ice was piled up fifty feet in height, and the water turned from the old channel of the river. The cutting of another one opened up new territory for the relic hunter when the ice was gone and the stream had returned to its old bed. Many an Indian wigwam site that had been covered deep with soil was again warmed by the springtide sun, and those were rare days when, from the ashes of forgotten camps, I raked the broken weapons and rude dishes that the red men had discarded. It was reading history at first hands, without other commentary than your own. The ice-scored gravel-beds told even an older story; but no one day’s digging was so full of meaning, or brought me so closely in touch with the past, as when I uncovered what remained of the old Dutch trader’s house; traced the boundaries of the one-time pleasure-garden, hearing in the songs of birds the clinking of glasses, and then, in fancy, adding to the now deserted landscape the fur-laden canoes of the Indians who once gathered here to exchange for the coveted gaudy beads the skins of the many animals which at that time roamed the forests. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER FOURTEENTH _DRIFTING_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Make an early start if you wish an eventful outing. Why know the world only when the day is middle-aged or old? A wise German has said, “The morning hour has gold in its mouth.” For many a rod after leaving the wharf the river still “smoked,” and the scanty glimpses between the rolling clouds of mist spurred the imagination. There was nothing certain beyond the gunwales. The pale-yellow color of the water near at hand and the deep-green and even black of that in the distance had no daytime suggestiveness. It was not yet the familiar river with its noonday glitter of blue and silver.