Even more beautiful and fairy-like, if possible, is the garment of frozen fog with which all external objects are adorned and etherealized when the spring advances and the temperature of the water is raised. As the sharp, still night wears on, the light mists begin to rise, and when the morning breaks, the river is buried in a deep, dense bank of fog. A gentle wave of air bears it landward; its progress is stayed by everything with which it comes in contact, and as soon as its motion is arrested it freezes sufficiently to adhere to whatever it touches. So it grows upon itself, and all things are soon covered half an inch in depth with a most delicate and fragile white fringe of frozen fog. The morning sun dispels the mist, and in an hour the gay frost-work vanishes.
The ice islands are sometimes extensive. In the year 1856 the whole of the rocky bar above Goat Island was covered with ice, piled together in a rough heap, the lower end of which rested on Goat Island and the three Moss Islands lying outside of it, all of which were visited by different persons passing over this new route.
The ice formed on the rocks below the American Fall, stretched upward, reached the edge of the precipice just north of the Little Horseshoe, continued up-stream above Chapin's Island, spread out laterally from that to Goat Island on the south, and over nearly half of the American rapids to the north. At the brow of the precipice it accumulated upward until it formed a ridge some forty feet high. About fifteen rods up-stream another ridge was formed of half the height of the first. Every rock projecting upward bore an immense ice-cap. Around and between these mounds and caps horses were driven to sleighs, albeit the course was not favorable for quick time. The boys drew their sleds to the top of the large mound, slid down it, up-stream, and nearly to the top of the smaller hill.
On the lower or down-stream side, they would have had a clear course to the water below, at the brink of the Falls, and might have made "time" compared with which Dexter's minimum would have seemed only a funeral march. But with all Young America's passion for speed, he declined to try this route. The writer walked over the south end of Luna Island, above the tops of the trees.