176 PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 



open water of greater or less extent occur, when the men 

 jump in and row. Now and then barriers of broken ice 

 as high as house tops have to be surmounted. But, worst 

 of all, " lolly " has to be crossed. Lolly is a description 

 of soft ice, which is too soft to walk over and too sub- 

 stantial to work a boat through. I can only compare it 

 to those soft green and oozy places in a bog or swamp 

 with which most snipe shooters are familiar, into which 

 the novice blunders up to his armpits, and which require 

 a cat-like and rapid step to cross. Carrying the mails 

 across these straits is therefore an arduous and perilous 

 service ; it is rarely done under four hours of hard toil, and 

 often takes ten or twelve hours to perform. The boatmen 

 are such admirable judges of ice and of weather, that fatal 

 accidents rarely occur, but when it is considered that 

 the mercury is sometimes 10 or 20 below zero during 

 these crossings, it cannot be wondered at that Jack Frost 

 sometimes seizes hold of a toe, an ear, or a nose. To 

 drive him away the part has to be rubbed with snow, or 

 if the toe is affected, a little brandy is poured into the 

 boot. 



I do not know whether it is possible for engineering 

 skill to conquer the difficulty of these straits, but, even 

 if it be, the money required to build a bridge or to 

 tunnel under the water would be enormous. An ice 

 steamer could be constructed capable of forcing its way 

 across the straits for at least two months longer than 

 navigation is now open, viz. seven months, and the sug- 

 gestion has been made by a local engineer of running out 

 long wharfs, say a mile in length, at each side, round 

 which ice would lodge and form in sufficient strength to 



