140 ROUGH WA YS MADE SMOOTH. 



degrees below zero was shown. At Berlin on the 2oth, and 

 St. Petersburg on the i2th, temperatures of twenty and 

 twenty-three degrees below zero respectively were noted. 

 But in Poland and parts of Germany an even greater degree 

 of cold was recorded. For instance, at Warsaw, 26^ 

 degrees below zero ; and at Bremen thirty-two degrees. At 

 Basle, on December 18, the thermometer indicated nearly 

 thirty-six degrees below zero. In the district around 

 Toulouse bread was frozen so hard that it could not be cut 

 till it had been laid before the fire. Many travellers perished 

 in the snow. At Lemburg, in Galicia, thirty-seven persons 

 were found dead in three days towards the end of December. 

 The ice froze so thick in ponds that in most of them all the 

 fish were killed. 



The winter of 1794-95 was remarkable in this country 

 as giving the lowest average temperature for a month ever 

 recorded in England. The mean temperature for January, 

 1795, was only 26.5 degrees; or more than three degrees 

 lower than that of last January. January 25, 1795, is 

 commonly supposed to have been the coldest day ever 

 known. The thermometer in London stood at eight degrees 

 below zero during part of that bitter day ; and in Paris, 

 where also there were six consecutive weeks of frost, at iof 

 degrees below zero. The Thames was frozen over at White- 

 hall in the beginning of January. The Marne, the Scheldt, the 

 Rhine, and the Seine were so frozen over that army corps 

 and heavy carriages crossed over them. Perhaps the 

 strangest of all the recorded results of cold weather occurred 

 during the same month. The French General Pichegru, 

 who was then operating in the North of Holland, sent 

 detachments of cavalry and infantry about January 20, with 

 orders to the former to cross the Texel and to capture the 

 enemy's vessels, which were * imprisoned by the ice.' ' The 

 French horsemen crossed the plains of ice at full gallop,' we 

 are told, * approached the vessels, called on them to sur- 

 render, captured them without a struggle, and took the crews 

 prisoners :' probably the only occasion in history when 



