The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-04-05
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CHAPTER I. On the "Cryptic ,

on the CrypClc-
 On the forenoon of a day in Febru- ary, 1899, the White Star s. S. Cryptic forced her way from Pier No. 4S out into the Hudson River through a mass of floating ice, which made a moving carpet over the whole river from Poughkeepsie to Sandy Hook It was little wonder that the hearts of the outward bound passengers were cheer ed with hope; outside on the wide ocean there must be somewhere clear skies and blue water, and perchance here and there slant of sunshine. Come what might. however, it must be bet ter than what they were leaving be- hind them in New York. For three whole weeks the great city had been beleaguered by cold; held besieged in the icy grip of 8 blizzard which, nov ing from northwest to south, had be- gun on the last day of January to de- States. In one place, Breckenridge in Colorado. there fell in five days-and this on the top of an accumulation of feet of snow-an addition of forty-five inches. In the track swept by the cold wave. a thousand miles wide, rec ord below temperatures were affected, ranging from 15 below zero in Indiana to 54 below at White River on the northern shore of Lake Superior.
 In New York city the temperature had sunk to 6.2 below zero, the lowest ever recorded, and an extraordinary temperature for a city almost entirely surrounded by tidal currents. The city itself was in a helpless condition, para lyzed and fmpotent. The snow fell so fast that even the great snow-ploughs driven by the electric current on the tram lines could not keep the avenues clear. And the cold was so great that the strect-cleaning operations-in which eight thousand men with four thou sand carts dumping some fifty thou sand tons Of snow daily into the river were concerned-had to be suspended. Neither men nor horses could endure the work. The "dead boat which takes periodically the city's unclaimed Island was twice beaten back and nearly wrecked; it carried on the later voyage 161 corpses. Before its ghastly traffic could be resumed there were in bodies waiting sepulture. The "Scien- tffic editor'' of one of the great New York dailtes computed that the blanket of snow which lay on the twenty-two would form a solid wall a thousand feet high up the whole sixty feet width of Broadway in the two and half miles between the Battery and a half million tons. Needless to say the streets were almost impossible. In the chief thoroughfares were narrow passages heaped high with piled-up places where the falling snow had drifted it reached to the level of, and sometimes above. the first floor win dows.
 As the Cryptic forced her way through the rustling masses of driftt2% ice the little company of passengers stood on deck watching at first the ferry-boats pounding and hammering their strenuous way into the docks formed by the floating guands or screens by whose aid they shoulderer themselves to their landing stages; and later on, when the great ship following the wide circle of the steering buOys, opened up the entrance of Sandy Hook, the great circle around them of Arctic deso1ation. Away beyond the sweep of the river and ocean currents the sea was frozen and shimnlering with a carpet of pure snow. whose luminous chill mist could subdue. Here and there. to north and south. were many vessels frozen in, spar and rope being roughly outlined with cliEging snow. The hills of Long Island and Staten Island and the distant ranges of New Jersey stood out white and stark into the sky of steel.
 All was grirnly. deathly silent so that the throb of the engines, the rustic and chatter of the drifting ice-pack, as the great vessel. getting faster way as hard scrunch as she cut through some solid floating ice-field. sounded like something unnatural-some sound of the living amid a world of the dead.
 When the NarrowS had been reached and passed and the flag of smoke from the great chimney of the Standard Oil Refining works lay far behind on the starboard quarter; when Fire Island was dropping down on the western