The waters of the Mercy flowed under a roof of ice, which, at each rising and ebbing of the tide, broke up with loud crashes.

Numerous birds fluttered over the frozen surface of the lake.

Ducks and snipe, teal and guillemots were assembled in thousands.

The rocks among which the cascade flowed were bristling with icicles.

One might have said that the water escaped by a monstrous gargoyle, shaped with all the imagination of an artist of the Renaissance.