476 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



the house-tops with all their might. On one of these terraces, which may be no more 

 than 25 or 30 feet square, they have rolled a snow-ball which stands three feet high, so 

 that you may judge how considerable the fall has been. I think it must have been 

 snowing before midnight to have accumulated as it has done. The circumstance is cer- 

 tainly unprecedented here within the memory of man whether any record of its occur- 

 rence in former time exists, remains to be seen. I can as yet learn or perceive nothing 

 at all out of the natural course of our season in other respects, save the few days of S. E. 

 wind a week ago, as above mentioned. 8J A.M. The snow ceased falling about half an 

 hour ago ; and the sun has now burst forth on the scene, and perfected its magnificence. 

 The river is a very curious feature in the landscape. The huge mat-sails of the junks 

 fold up so massily, that they retain large volumes of snow upon them. The Chinese 

 have now taken to pelting one another in the streets. A poor Bengalee servant found his 

 way to our house-top, to collect some snow to show his Parsee master, who did not dare to 

 leave his bed ; and the man's exotic appearance in such an employment, and particularly 

 the incongruity of our Bengalee' conversation in the midst of it, was very strange. 

 Since writing the above, a few hours ago, the thaw has commenced, and the last trace of 

 snow, which will, perhaps, never again be beheld here, has disappeared. Mingqua, a 

 very venerable old Chinaman, has just called, and says he never heard of such an occur- 

 rence before, as snow in Canton. Being himself of this province, this is the first time 

 he has ever seen it in his life." 



In the higher regions of the Alps, prodigious falls of snow are the ordinary phenomena 

 of the winter season. They occur in sudden storms, and being drifted upon the ground 

 by the winds, the path of the traveller is speedily blocked up by the accumulations, 

 while 



" On every nerve 



The deadly winter seizes ; shuts up sense ; 



And o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, 



Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corpse, 



Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast." 



At the great elevation of some of the Alpine passes, that of the St. Bernard for instance, 

 the snow is formed in the atmosphere immediately over the surface. It consequently 

 falls in fine hard particles, and not in flakes as in lower situations ; and instead of con- 

 solidating under the pressure of the wayfarer, he sinks in it as in a volume of fine sand. 

 Around the hospice of St. Bernard, the highest fixed habitation in Europe, close upon 

 the line of perpetual congelation, and rarely four months in the year clear of snow, its 

 average depth is seven or eight feet in the midst of winter, Sometimes the drifts accu- 

 mulate against the building to the height of forty feet, for which reason, the entrance is 

 attained by a flight of steps. But in the most rigorous seasons, the smuggler, the pedlar, 

 and courier, brave the perils of the pass, in defiance of the snows and avalanches, not 

 unfrequently perishing in the attempt to gain the Swiss or the Italian side of the Alps, 

 and often indebted to the monks and dogs of the hospice for the preservation of life. The 

 duty of the monks calls them to set forth in the hour of tempest, to render help to 

 the. exhausted or overwhelmed passenger, whose voice and foot step, their great nicety of 

 ear, attained by practice, enables them to discriminate at a surprising distance. " The 

 night was calm and beautiful," says a summer guest at the hospice, " and so warm for 

 this elevation that we enjoyed looking out at the window upon the still and deeply solemn 

 scene which surrounded us. One of the brethren said, * There is company ascending the 

 mountain on the Swiss side ; ' but silent as the grave was everything around us, our ears 

 were not susceptible of such nice distinctions of sound. He said that they were very 

 distant. He was right ; the party arrived long enough after to astonish us at the percep- 



