An ice-belt adheres to the steep shores.

February 1. 

FEBRUAARY 1, 2019

P. M.—Up Assabet. 

The river having suddenly gone down since the freshet, I see cakes of ice eight or ten feet across left two feet high or more above the banks, frozen to four or five maples or oaks. Indeed, each shore is lined with them, where wooded, a continuous row attached to alders, maples, swamp white oaks, etc., which grow through them or against their edges. 

They are some what like tables of a picnic party or a muster-field dinner. Rustic tables and seats. Sometimes a little inclined, having settled on one side. 

Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores, and the rain and melted snow, running down, has drifted over the edge of it, forming abundant and pretty icicles, and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight. 

As for large oak leaves now, I think there is not much difference between the white and scarlet oaks; then come black, red, and swamp white, but the last one has scarcely any.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 1, 1859

An ice-belt adheres to the steep shores.  See January 1, 1857 ("I observe a shelf of ice . . .adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze. . . ."); February 14, 1859 ("Some of the belt itself, where three inches thick, has bent downward eighteen inches at four or five feet from the bank")