The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-30
uKfAT SNOW STORM
sNow OF 1717 ovERwmEIMKD NEW
 ENGLAND.
Cotton M&fher in Letter Tells of It's Sever ltys--MarFcIous Tales of Animals
 Which Escap-

An old newspaper contains the foiiowins account of famous storm:
 great snow feli in New England fn February. fTf7 Hawthorne refers to 1t in his sketch entitled Main Street. as the Great Show Of TIT. fanous for the noun tain drifts in which it buried the whole countrN''r Houses were banked up 10 the l. second-story windows and often higher. The Rev. Cotton Mather gives perhaps, the most particular description which can nov Dc obtained. in a letter. as follows:
 Boston, 10th Dee, i7t7.--sr. Tho we are gott 50 far onward as the beginning of another winter. yeti we have not forgott ye last. which at the latter end whereof VIC were entertained and overwhelmed with a snow. which was attended with sone things, which were uncornmon enough to afford matter for a letter from us Our winter was not SO bad as that wherein Tacitus tells us that corbuIo made his expedition against the Farthians. nor that which. proved so fatal to ye beasts and birds in ye days of ye Emperor Justinian, and that the very fishes were killed under the sfreesiug sea, when Phocaa did as much to ys men whom Tyranto treat like ye fishes of ye sea- But ye conclusion of winter was hard enough, and was to formidable to be easily forgot ten. and of a piece with what you had in Europe a year before. sss s-
 ron tha twentieth of the last February. there came on a snow. which. being added unto what had covered the ground before. made q thicker mantle for our mother than what was usual: And ye storm with 1t was. for the following day. so violent as to make all communication between ye neighbors everywhere to cease-People, for some hours could not psss from one side of a street unto another sss But on ye Twenty fourth day of ye moufh, comes Pelion upon Osea Another snow came on which almost buried ye memory of ye farmer. with a storm so famous that Heaven laid an inter-
 
 ye country on this Lords day ye like where unto had never been seen before. The In- dians near an hundred years old affirm that their fathers never told them of any thing that equalled it. Vast numbers of cattle were destroyed in this calamity
 -Whereof some there were. Of ye Stranger sort, were found standing dead on their legs. az if they had been alive, many weel1sN after, when ye snow melted away, and oth- CTS had their eyes glazed over with ice gt such rate inst. being not fer from the sea, their mistake of the way drowned them sthere One gentleman, on whose sarms were now lost above HOO sheen, which with cher cattle were interrad tshslI ' sey or tnnivedl in the snow writes me Rord that thsre were two sheen very efnru- arly circumttanced. For no less than eight md twenty nays after the. storm. the people pulling out the ruins of above an 1oe sheep put of q nrow bank, which lay sixteen feet high, drifted over them. there were two found aliye, which had been there all this lime. and kept thmsslves alive by eating the wool of their dead companions. when they weft taken out, they shed their own fleeces. Hut soon got into good case again Ehesp wyre not ye only creatures that lived unscccuitabiy for whole weeks without their asaai sustenance buried in ye snow dFifts.s =
 The wine had share with ye sheep in strangf survtvals. man had couple of young Aoggs which he gave over for dead, but oi the twonty-seventh day after their buriaE they made their way out of a snow bank1 at the bottom of which they had found little tansy to feed upon The poui- try q unaccountabIy survived as these Hens wer5 found alive after seven days: turkeys 1 wer{ found alive after five and twenty days, l burfd in ye snow. and at a distance from l ys bround. and altogether destitute of any- thitg to feed them The number of cres- tues that kept q rigid fast. shutt up in i shtw for diverse weeks. together. and were | fhnd alive after all. has yielded surprising | ubriss unto us.