Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/439

Rh when I read in old books which spell the word savages with an l (salvages), like John Smith's &quot;General Historie of Virginia,&quot; etc., reminding me of the derivation of the word from sylva, some of the wild wood and its bristling branches still left in their language. The savages they describe are really salvages, men of the woods.

Feb. 23, 1854. The snow drives horizontally from the north or northwesterly in long waving lines like the outline of a swell or billow.

Saw some of those architectural drifts forming. The fine snow came driving along over the field like steam curling from a roof. As the current rises to go over the wall, it produces a lull in the angle made by the wall and the ground, and accordingly just enough snow is deposited there to fill the triangular calm, but the greater part passes over, and is deposited in the larger calm. A portion of the wind also apparently passes through the chinks of the wall, and curves upward against the main drift, appearing to carve it, and perforate it in various fashions, holding many snowy particles in suspension, in vertical eddies. I am not sure to what extent the drift is carved and perforated, and how far the snow is originally deposited in these forms.

Feb. 23, 1855. Mr. L. says that he and