THE GREAT BLIZZARD AT NEW YORK. 133 



many lost their way and perished, only a short distance 

 from places of refuge."* 



The following March witnessed the advent of the 

 greatest blizzard that had ever visited the eastern 

 states within the memory of man. The Times of 

 March 17 says 



"For the first time in the present generation a north 

 western blizzard has attacked the Atlantic Coast of the 

 United States, and has been raging for the past three days. 

 Friday and Saturday (March 9 and 10) the sky was clear 

 and the air balmy, and Sunday came with a S.W. wind and 

 a warm rain, and the thermometer at 60. During Sunday 

 night the scene underwent a change, as remarkable as un- 

 expected: the wind changing to the N.W. After midnight 

 the cold grew intense and by morning was accompanied by 

 a blizzard against which nothing could make head. All tele- 

 graph wires broken down, rendered isolation perfect, from 

 New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington; each 

 city being as much cut off from communication with the 

 world as if it had been in the centre of the ocean. Enorm- 

 ous snow drifts filled up railway cuttings; scores of trains, 

 bearing thousands of passengers, were blockaded in snow drifts, 

 sometimes 20 feet deep. On Monday, the I2th, the weather 

 moderated, but at nightfall came another piercing N.W. wind, 

 freezing everything fast, and holding the snow drifts with an 

 icy hand, that nothing could unloose. Tuesday, the I3th, 

 dawned with almost all movement paralyzed, worse than 

 before. The wind howled, and the snow drifted throughout 

 Tuesday until night, during which the storm blew itself 

 out." f 



Such is a brief outline of this terrible tempest, and 

 for many days the papers were literally filled with 



* Times of January 19, 1888. 

 f Times of March 17, 1888. 



