Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-03-15
THE DELAWARE ICE-GORGE
PoRT JERvIs. Y. Y. Nj

PORT JERyIS, n. \. March IL.
All day Mr. Chanu,e, with dozen men, mas
been at work clearing the channel OF the river,
where il issues from he gorge With ITS swift,
strong current fully feet deep and forty feet
scross the river is fast cutting its way-not yet
into the icegorge ITSELF but through the scattered
cakes at the ha e OF the humDock that marks the
crest OF the wave of ice blocks which can e down
the river ten DAYS ago. The safety of the town
now and in the future is in the fact that the glacier
i, no longer q DAM and has not been for week,
but simply the roof of long tunnel through
which the river runs. The bigger and swifter 1t
runs the better. The blasting to-day and yester-
day has used up nearly sixty pounds of nitro
plycerne and nearly as much giant powder, all to
make clear and keep Gle ar the opening where this
new glacial stream comes to hight The gorge IS
four miles long. The river current had been
freed of ice for 800 yards at its extreme bsse-not
very much. but enough to make faster and surer
the work which is going on in all the four miles.
Mr.. Chsnute is not attacking brute force by SCI
ence he is simply directing 1t.
At the end of the pack of icc-blocks which
threaten danger the river shows itself in long,
siuuous, darkened line of water-soaked ice, and
into this ice Mr. Chanu,e bores, and drops in his
tin tubes and cracks and splinters the big cakes,
and the river carries them and flows Oft in a
fuller. freer current. 1t would be useless to do
this without the river to carry off the ice, As was
shown last week, and to-day as well: Inc pig
yes, blast of the day-six pounds Of nitro-glycer-
iue-was exploded under an advanced point in the
foot of the ice-gorge, and shattered some sixty
cubic wards or so, which, shattered or sound
STAY ed where it was with no water to move
it; and this seems altogether likely to be the
result of any blasting away from the moving
current of the river. 1t is for this reason that the
work. thus far, has been altogether confined to the
"bennykill" The liver itself has practically
abandoned its main channel, where, naturally
enough the flood took most ice-cakes and lett
them piled tbickest and deepest. The prospect
r Il. 80 fay olV will NO
proyiso that the square miles of snow up-above
do not melt too fast. Nobody knows what would
happen then. The depressions on the surface OF
the ice noticed last Sunday in the middle OF the
gorge grow more marked as the snow melts, and
are gradually showing in some connected fashion
the course of the river under the ice. Near the
point where the Delaware comes to the light a
sunken hollow marks its track for nearly four
hundred yards, and that will probably be uncov-
cred tomorrow. The gorge has grown to be an
old story, old enough to be natural curiosity.
People come twenty or thirty miles on each
through train to look at it, and find very little to
see; nothing at all in tact-ce-cakes heaped at
random in a long, deep, winding river-bed, and
smothered under heavy fall of snow. neither big
nor dangerous, except as it lies in the track OF a
fieshet due now any day. The village trustees
have given up the idea of melting the ice down
with naphtha. Mr. Chanutes methodical attack
will be continued till the freshet comes. The
townspeope have not got over fearing the ice
gorge, and these fears are backed by plenty of
precedents. Forty years ago. in 1892 an ice
gorge which had been formed up the river was
struck by the advancing ice of the spring freshet
some days later, and dam formed so fast,
and the water piled up behind it SO rapidly that
the river forty feet in barely two hours flood
ing the canal. There, as here. the canal follows
the river valley, but keeping on level, runs high
worst that has beer sred will happen. Five
years after an ;ce-gr,es just below the present