Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/184

170 fly or bee in a spider's web. I kneeled down and with pains traced it to a small bare spot as big as my hand amid the snow, and searched there amid the grass and stubble for several minutes, putting the grass aside with my fingers, till, when I got nearest to the spot, not knowing but I might be stung, I used a stick. The sound was incessant, like that of a large fly in agony. But though it made my ears ache, and I had my stick directly on the spot, I could find neither prey nor oppression. At length I found that I interrupted or changed the tone with my stick, and so traced it to a few spires of dead grass, occupying about one quarter of an inch in diameter, and standing in the melted snow water. When I bent these one side, it produced a duller and baser tone. It was a sound issuing from the earth, and as I stooped over it, the thought came over me that it might be the first puling, infantine cry of an earthquake, which would erelong ingulf me. Perhaps it was air confined under the frozen ground, now expanded by the thaw, and escaping upward through the water by a hollow grass stem. I left it after ten minutes buzzing as loudly as at first. Could hear it more than a rod away.

Schoolcraft says [of Rhode Island], &quot;The present name is derived from the Dutch, who called it Roode Eylant (Red Island) from the