Warm, bland, and rushing in torrents, the subtle currents penetrated the
forests, melted the snows from the fields, and as all alike felt the
genial influence, it appeared to bestow a renovated existence on man and
beast. With morning, therefore, a landscape very different from that last
placed before the mind of the reader, presented itself in the valley of
the Wish-Ton-Wish.
The winter had entirely disappeared, and as the buds had begun to swell
under the occasional warmth of the spring, one ignorant of the past would
not have supposed that the advance of the season had been subject to so
stern an interruption. But the principal and most melancholy change was in
the more artificial parts of the view. Instead of those simple and happy
habitations which had crowned the little eminence, there remained only a
mass of blackened and charred ruins. A few abused and half-destroyed
articles of household furniture lay scattered on the sides of the hill,
and, here and there, a dozen palisadoes, favored by some accidental cause,
had partially escaped the flames.
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