The Republican journal., 1899-02-16

Hard on the heels of the snow came a
frost that put shackles on the very wind
1t fell black and sudden on the country.
turning the mud floors of the poorer
dwellings into iron that rang below the
heel. though peat fires burned by day and
by night, and Loeb Flnne, lying flat as a
girdle from shore to shore, visibly crisped
and curdled into ice on the surface in the
space of an afternoon. John Splendid
page 80.
Barring the mud floors, for peat fires
read furnaces, cook-stoves aud air lights.
for Loeb Finne substitute Belfast Bay,
and we should have a fair description of
our recent wintIy weather For IS. some
say 20, days the mercury has lowered
about zero, sometimes above, sometimes
below, the few degrees making hardly an
appreeiahle difference in the singing cold.
Not much snow fell 1t was too cold to
snow. even when later the frozen particles
were blown on a wind of hurricane force
which left bare spots in some places and
heaped Others high with impossible drifts.
Coal melted away ike ice under a July
sun. The man of the house, in person or by
deputy, ldbored il the cellar at his fur
mace o. steam heater ike stoker in the
hold of an ocean liner. Without the wind
howled and shIieked. tearing at the super
structure as wild beast does its prey,
while Jack Frost knawed at the founda
dations and held the water pipes i'll an icy
embrace. Such weather depletes the house
holders pocket book and fattens the
plumber bank account This is not the
stereotyped newspaper joke. 1t is frozen
fact
Then the bay. Would it be laid under
an ice embargo? That was the every day
q uestiou for weeks, with the answer trem-
bling in the balance; and no man could
say what the night might bring forth. At
times the ice reached from shore to shore
and the prospect was dismal. Then came
a wild nortbeaster which sent the ice
over to the western shore to be ground
into fragments on the rocks. Then the skies
cleared, the wind came out of the north
west, steady and strong, sending the ice
off to the eastward, and seward between
Turtle Head and the Castine shore, until
the bay was once more open blue water
and all the bluer from contrast with the
snow clad landscape. But when the wind
lulled and the mercury went down the ice
soon made again; and so the question of
an ice embargo remained an open one
from day to day But thus far, thanks to
the steamers, the revenue cutter, and the
winds that blow, Belfast has remained an
open port.
But while we have had cold weather
and high winds it has been colder and
blown harder aud with more serious re-
suits elSewhere-in sections, too, where
it would least be expected. Shipping ice
bound at Baltimore. the Potomac frozen
over at Washington, the James river clos
ed to navigation. Nearer home the cold
has reached an extreme beyond all pre-
vious records. Boston harbor has had
only a narrow channel open through
fields of ice. In the West billiards of
long duration have ragged with with great
fury. Deaths from cold have been many
and the suffering intense. Even the far
South has been invaded by Jack Frost,
and from over sea come reports of storms
and bitter cold. If we have now expert
enced the worst, and all will hope that we
have, the winter of 1898 80 will have an
icy tablet in our meteorological records.