80 On the Ice Mountain of Hampshire County, Va. 
formed filled with snow, and loosely covered with planks, but so 
slightly that the snow could be seen through the crevices of the 
covering ; but though so imperfectly protected from atmospheric 
agencies, the snow exhibited not the slightest traces of the heat 
of the past summer, and was as dry, friable, and crystalline, as if 
new fallen. The dairy mentioned by Kerchival,* has three of 
its sides surrounded by the heap of rocks, and hence partakes of 
the low temperature of the mass. ‘The sides of the dairy were 
not however, as in ordinary seasons, encrusted with ice, nor were 
icicles pendent from its roof, but its temperature was still suffi- 
ciently low to subserve all the purposes of a dairy and refrigerator. 
The temperature of the spring which issues from the base of the 
talus is unaffected by the temperature of the overlyig mass, and 
though reputed to be but slightly above the freezing point, is in 
reality but one degree lower than the springs of the vicinity, and 
no lower than some others in the same county, which vary from 
51° to 52°. The scene, as viewed from the base of the moun- 
tain, was as interesting as paradoxical. On the one hand was 
the North River converted into a stagnant pool, its indurated bot- 
tom exposed at short intervals—the drooping foliage of the forest, 
the blighted grain, tinged not with autumn’s golden yellow, but 
a sickly hue, denoting that it had prematurely fallen into ‘the 
sere and yellow leaf’’—all too plainly indicating the long contin- 
ued action of summer’s heat. On the other hand was a mass of 
rocks below the freezing point, enclosing in its cavities snow and 
ice, while the spectator himself enjoyed an atmosphere whose 
bland, spring-like softness formed an agreeable contrast to the 
distressingly hot one, (96°,)+ for which it had a few minutes 
before been exchanged. 
Having thus given a detailed description of the Ice Mountain, 
it may not be uninteresting to inquire into the causes which give 
it a temperature so singularly independent of all those influences 
which usually determine the temperature of terrestrial bodies—a 
temperature upon which the summevr’s heat, neither in ordinary, 
nor in unusually long, and intensely hot seasons, exerts the slight- 
est influence. The solution, I conceive, is to be found in the 
large and unusual collection of rocks, which from their porous 
* Kerchival’s History of the Valley of Virginia. 
| The temperature a few moments before ascending the mountain, at 23 P. M., 
was 96° in the shade. 
