The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-01-27
REM WINTERS

mate? This question must ~instinctively
be asked by everybody who reads the
daily reportsAin the newspapers of the
terrible winter that all Europe is pass
INC through and Of the storms and biz
yards that are sweeping over our own
eastern coast. In 1888 New York was
visited by the %severest storm within the
memory of tho oldest inhabitant. 1t
was regarded as phenomenal in its ma
ture, something that never happened be-
fore and was not likely to happen again.
Yet yesterdays dispatches bring us
news of another blizzard almost equal
in violence to that of three years ago,
which on Saturday and Sunday ragged
over the whole Atlantic seaboard. The
storm has ,paralyzed business in the
great commercial c~enters, isolated them
from communication with the outside
world and holds millions of people at
its mercy. The prostration of telegraph
lines, the suspension OF street car travel
and the general.crippling of trade show
that the inhabitants of the great cities
have builded upon fallacies as to their
climate and are suffering the conse-
qoences. That such storms as those Of
1883 and this year have not been OF fire.
quent occurrence is true, but the fact
that two such bl1zzards have been ex-
perienced within three years shows how
mistaken all calculations have been
and must give rise to apprehensive
speculation as to what future winters
may bring forth. One thing is clear,
there ie no such science as weather lore.
Our own country is too new for that
and Europeans apparently are no wiser.
New Workers. did not learn anything
from the fact that their bay was frozen
over in 1880 and 1921. They went ahead
and built a city that even now is not
worth living in during a blizzard. The
people of the central states saw the
mercury CONCEAL in the thermometer in
1885 and again IN 1881, yet they are not
fortified to-day for a recurrence of such
weather and know as little OF their eli
mate as they did fifty years ago.
Europe ls no wiser than we. From
Ou6 Gnu " LII COllGtilCII W. ~ Ulo
there is snow and ice. The ice on the
usually free flowing Thames is a foot
thick; the Seine at Paris is choked with
it; the snowdrlfts on the Rhine are
ten feet deep; the orange groves of Val.
encia are covered with snow; railway
travel is stopped; business activity is
suspended; hundreds Of people have
frozen to death and distress and suffer
ing are everywhere.
Europe has a longer history by which
to profit but her civilization, like gu
own, appears to have been pushed for
ward under conditions that ~disregarde,
the warnings of experience. A write
in Harper's Weekly on winters of TIL
past shows that as far back as 4O4 A
D.. the Black sea was frozen over TO
twenty days. From October, 763, unit
February, 764, the two seas at Constan
tinople were frozen for a hundred mile
from shore. and on Midsummer day j
the year 1895 the fruits in England ar
said to have been destroyed by fros'
AS for the ice-bound Thames, OF whicI
80 much is said this year, the chronicle
of 1868 say that for fourteen week
the river was frozen. In 1854 agai
the same is related, and carriages passe
over from Lambeth to Westminster i
1915. There were sports and diversion
on the Thames during the Christina
season of 1854, and also in 1907; and {
December, 1853, to February, 1854, tn
melancholy account is given: The 10
est trees and even the oaks in Englan
split by the frost; most of the hollie
were killed; the Thames covered wit
ice eleven inches thick; and nearly a
the birds perished.' Like reports ha'
been made oft and again since then, til
last exceptional winter occurring
1855.
The continent also furnishes parable
of severe winters running back IA
years. The Cattegat was entirely froz
over in 1904, and horses and men pass
from Denmark to Sweden over the fl
zen Baltic in AGO. Four years later
Is recorded that the weather was SO s
vere in Flanders that wine distribut
at the time was cut with hatchets. Il
Rhine, the Scheldt, and the sea at We
ice wore frozen in 1884. Ice covered t