214 A RIVER VIEW. 



are rigged, is broad and low ; upon this the pleas- 

 ure-seekers, wrapped in their furs or blankets, lie at 

 full length, and, looking under the sail, skim the 

 frozen surface with their eyes. The speed attained is 

 sometimes very great more than a mile per minute, 

 and sufficient to carry them ahead of the fastest ex- 

 press train. When going at this rate the boat will 

 leap like a greyhound, and thrilling stories are told of 

 the fearful crevasses, or open places in the ice, that 

 are cleared at a bound. And yet, withal, she can be 

 brought up to the wind so suddenly as to shoot the 

 unwary occupants off, and send them skating on their 

 noses some yards. 



Navigation on the Hudson stops about the last of 

 November. There is usually more or less floating 

 ice by that time, and the river may close very ab- 

 ruptly. Beside that, new ice an inch or two thick is 

 the most dangerous of all ; it will cut through a ves- 

 sel's hull like a knife. In 1875 there was a sudden 

 fall of the mercury the 28th of November. The hard 

 and merciless cold came down upon the naked earth 

 with great intensity. On the 29th the ground was a 

 rock, and, after the sun went down, the sky all around 

 the horizon looked like a wall of chilled iron. The 

 river was quickly covered with great floating fields of 

 smooth, thin ice. About three o'clock the next morn- 

 ing the mercury two degrees below zero the 

 silence of our part of the river was suddenly broken 

 by the alarm bell of a passing steamer ; she was in 

 the jaws of the icy legions, and was crying for help ; 



