VOL. XLII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 595 



of high mountains, whose tops are perpetually covered with snow, which ex- 

 ceedingly chills the air passing over them. Tiie fogs and mists, brought here 

 from the polar parts in winter, appear visible to the naked eye in innumerable 

 icicles, as small as fine hairs or threads, and pointed as sharp as needles. These 

 icicles lodge in the cloaths; and if the faces or hands be uncovered, they pre- 

 sently raise blisters as white as a linen cloth, and as hard as horn. Yet if they 

 immediately turn their backs to the weather, and can bear a hand out of the 

 mitten, and with it rub the blistered part for a small time, they sometimes bring 

 the skin to its former state : if not, they make the best of their way to a fire, 

 and get warm water, with which they bathe it, and so dissipate the humours 

 raised by the frozen air; otherwise the skin would be off in a short time, with 

 much hot, serous, watery matter coming from under along with the skin; 

 and this happens to some almost every time they go abroad for 5 or 6 months 

 in the winter, so extremely cold is the air when the wind blows any thing strong. 



It is observed, that when it has been extreme hard frost by the thermome- 

 ter, and little or no wind that day, the cold has not near so sensibly affected 

 them, as when the thermometer has showed much less freezing, having a brisk 

 gale of northerly wind at the same time. This difference may perhaps be oc- 

 casioned by those sharp-pointed icicles before mentioned striking more forcibly 

 in a windy day than in calm weather, thereby penetrating the naked skin, or 

 parts but thinly covered, and causing an acute sensation of pain or cold. And 

 the same reason will probably hold good in other places 



It is not a little surprizing to many, that such extreme cold should be felt in 

 these parts of America, more than in places of the same latitude on the coast of 

 Norway ; but the difference seems to be occasioned by wind blowing constantly 

 here, for 7 months in the 12, between the north-east and north-west, and 

 passing over a large tract of land, and the exceedingly high mountains, &c. 

 Whereas at Droutheim in Norway, as Capt. M. observed some years ago in win- 

 tering there, the wind all the winter comes from the north north-west, and 

 crosses a great part of the ocean clear of those large bodies of ice found here 

 perpetually. At this place they have constantly every year Q months frost and 

 snow, and unsufferable cold from October till the beginning of May. In the 

 long winter, as the air becomes less ponderous towards the polar parts, and 

 nearer to an equilibrium, as it happens about one day in a week, they then have 

 calms and light airs all round the compass, continuing sometimes 24 hours, 

 and then back to its old place again, in the same manner as it happens every 

 night in the West Indies, near some of the islands. 



The snow that falls here is as fine as dust, but never any hail, except at the 



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