to be going along through a narrow channel with the sleigh-bells keeping pace on the ice alongside—like a sailing and trotting-match on the same element. The business was profitable, as the railway people could afford to pay very high for freight, which they would otherwise have to draw with teams over the back country. Then the Cold-Spring forge was casting bomb-shells, etc., for the Mexican war; and that heavy freight could hardly be got to New York at all, without a boat. At one time there was such a pressure for these war materials that they were obliged to make extra passages on Sundays.
Ward mentioned one of our well-known neighbors who has lately taken to a new amusement. He seems to be fond of sitting on a cake of ice, any sunny noon, and floating down the river, just in front of us. This idler—a bald eagle, and the largest remember in this part of the country—has haunted Idlewild for a year past, and his circlings of swoop around the projecting eminence on which our house stands, are the admiration of man, woman and child, for some distance. He lives, as is well known, by taking tribute of the fish-hawk, from whom he receives the fish just dived for, on presenting his bill; but to do this he must be on the wing and ready to pounce down, any instant, with his superior swiftness—so the ice-rafting is probably but a royal amusement. The nest of this monstrous eagle (larger than any goose, Ward says), is some-
