142 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTff. 



The winter of 1813-14 was colder in England than on 

 the Continent I mean, the winter here was colder for 

 England than the winter in any region of continental Europe 

 was for that region. The frost lasted from December 26 to 

 March 21, and the mean temperature of January was only 

 26.8 degrees. The Thames was frozen over very thickly, 

 and a fair was held on the frozen river. 



The winter of 1819-20 was bitter throughout Europe. 

 Mr. Thomas Plant, in an interesting letter to the Times of 

 February 4, says that this winter was one long spell of 

 intense frost from November to March, and was almost as 

 severe as that of 1813-14. In Paris there were forty-seven 

 days of frost, nineteen of which were consecutive, from 

 December 30, 1818, to January 17. 'In France,' says 

 Flammarion, ' the intensity of the cold was heralded by the 

 passage along the coast of the Pas de Calais of a great 

 number of birds coming from the farthest regions of the 

 north, by wild swans and ducks of variegated plumage. 

 Several travellers perished of cold ; amongst others a 

 farmer near Arras, a gamekeeper near Nogent (Haute Marne) 

 a man and woman in the Cote d'Or, two travellers at Breuil, 

 on the Meuse, a woman and a child on the road from Etain 

 to Verdun, six persons near Chateau Salins (Meurthe), and 

 two little Savoyards on the road from Clermont to Chalons- 

 sur-Saone. In the experiments made at the Metz School oi 

 Artillery, on the roth of January, to ascertain how iron re- 

 sisted low temperatures, several soldiers had their hands or 

 their ears frozen.' During this winter the Thames, the 

 Seine, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Danube, the Garonne, the 

 lagoons of Venice, and the Sound, were so far frozen that it 

 was possible to walk across them on the ice. 



The winter of 1829-30 was remarkable as the longest 

 winter of the first half of the present century. The cold was 

 not exceptionally intense, but the long continuance of bitter 

 weather occasioned more mischief in the long run than has 

 attended short spells of severer cold. The river Seine was 

 frozen at Paris first for twenty-nine days, from December 2 8th 



