136 POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF A PROLONGED BLIZZARD. 



There can be no doubt of it! Some of the drifts 

 were described by eye-witnesses as mounting up, at 

 certain points, as high as the first floor windows of 

 the houses, and New York had already begun to 

 suffer from partial famine. * * People were unable to 

 get down town, or in from the suburbs." "Many 

 banks were unable to open their safes, because the 

 officers could not get to the banking houses." And, 

 " the Stock Exchange finding business impracticable, 

 adjourned."! The dead lay unburied, and the living 

 were unable to go out to the shops to buy food a 

 little more and the words of the Times might have 

 been verified, and the pulse of the great city might 

 have been stilled for ever. " The blizzard has made 

 good its claim, with fire, famine and earthquake: as one of 

 the great visitations to which societies of men are liable, " 

 and the sensational novelist could find endless mate- 

 rial in its tracks for the exercise of his most exuberant 

 fancy. Happy are we in Britain, that for so far no 

 such storm has been recorded. There can be no doubt 

 that the ocean exercises a powerful influence in such 

 matters yet at times our storms are bad enough. 

 An English blizzard of minor force did, however, occur 

 on the night of Sunday, December 25, 1886, by which 

 a large portion of the English telegraph system was 

 destroyed. With many parts of England communica- 

 tion was entirely suspended. 



" The combination of so heavy a fall of snow with so 

 powerful a gale" (says the Times) "was almost without pre- 

 cedent Few winters pass without some weak point being 



* Times of March 17, 1888. 

 t Times of March 16, 1888. 

 Extract Times, Leading Article, in Paper of March 19, 1888. 



