310 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



that winter in conversation with others, as the coldest I have ever expe- 

 rienced since my arrival in California, July 4, 1849, and a resident of Sac- 

 ramento from the fourteenth of the same month and year until April, 1861, 

 and in other places until the commencement of the present cold wave. 



During the cold spell mentioned above, I was doing business at the Big 

 Tree Store, corner of Eighth and J Streets, Sacramento. I have no recol- 

 lection of the day or date of the commencement of the cold wave in 1854. 

 I kept no record. There had been a fall of snow, leaving about two and 

 a half inches on the ground, and the weather cleared up that night very 

 cold. I usually opened the store in the morning before daylight. Having 

 occasion for some water to wash myself, I went in the rear to the pump 

 and caught hold of the iron handle. My hand clung to it; experience 

 told me it required very cold weather to freeze a moist hand to cold iron. 

 Having a thermometer hanging on the outside of the house facing the east, 

 an examination of the same was made with a lighted candle. The read- 

 ing was 18° above zero, or 14° below the freezing point. This would make 

 it 1° below Dr. Logan's reading. It was all of two weeks before the snow 

 disappeared from sheltered places. 



It is now thirty-four years since that cold wave passed over, this State, 

 and I have not seen any winter to compare with it until the present one of 

 1888. 



Another circumstance I will relate, during the cold weather of 1854. I 

 have no doubt many old settlers are yet lingering in Sacramento who will 

 remember the cake of ice I placed on my platform scales, in front of my 

 store on J Street. My well water was hard, and would not readily remove 

 dirt when using it. To obtain soft water I had a large hogshead placed in 

 the rear of the store to catch rain water from the roof. It was facing the 

 north, and so sheltered the sun never shone upon it. The first morning 

 after the cold wave set in, I noticed the water frozen in the hogshead. I 

 requested all of our folks in the store nqt to break the ice until the cold 

 spell had passed over; every night the freeze added thickness to that ice, 

 and continued nearly two weeks before the temperature moderated above 

 the freezing point. Even the snow in the sheltered places lay on the 

 ground during that time. With a crowbar I broke the ice in that hogs- 

 head, taking from it a large block and placing it on my platform scales in 

 front of the store on J Street, and measured the thickness. The sides next 

 to the hogshead were eight and a half (8^) inches thick, and the center 

 six (6) inches. The winter of 1854 was the longest cold spell I have any 

 recollection of, until the present winter. The highest and lowest tempera- 

 ture at Oroville during the present time, up to and including yesterday, 

 the sixteenth, was 56° and 20°. 



Yours truly, 



Oroville, January 17, 1888. 



HIRAM ARENTS, 



Voluntary Signal Service Observer. 



From the "Marysville Appeal," of February 8, 1888: The Redlands 

 " Citrograph " remarks of Southern California, after the recent severe cold 

 snap: " It has come out — not unscathed, as some of our over zealous 

 brethren insist — but with a wonderfully small amount of damage." That's 

 right. Tell the truth. Same here. 



