118 Packing of the Ice. 



much force, that the river, dammed up by the barrier, which in 

 many places reaches to the bottom, attains in the harbour a height 

 usually twenty, and sometimes twenty-six feet above its summer 

 level ; and it is not uncommon between this point and the foot of 

 the current within the distance of a mile, to see a difference in 

 elevation of several feet, which undergoes many rapid changes, 

 the waters ebbing or flowing according to the amount of impedi- 

 ment they meet with in their progress, from submerged ice. 



It is at this period that the grandest movements of the ice- 

 occur. From the effect of packing and piling and the accumula- 

 tion of the snows of the season, the saturation of these with water, 

 and the freezing of the whole into a solid body, it attains the 

 thickness of ten to twenty feet, and even more ; and after it has 

 become fixed as far as the eye can reach, a sudden rise in the 

 water, occasioned no doubt in the manner mentioned, lifting up a 

 wide expanse of the whole covering of the river so high as to free 

 and start it from the many points of rest and resistance offered 

 by the bottom, where it had been packed deep enough to touch 

 it, the vast mass is set in motion by the whole hydraulic power 

 of this gigantic stream. Proceeding onward with a truly terrific 

 majesty, it piles up over every obstacle it encounters ; and when 

 forced into a narrow part of the channel, the lateral pressure it 

 there exerts drives the bordage up the banks, where it sometimes 

 accumulates to the height of forty or fifty feet. In front of the 

 town of Montreal there has lately been built a magnificent revete- 

 roent wall of cut limestone to the height of twenty-three feet 

 above the summer level of the river. This wall is now a great 

 protection against the effects of the ice. Broken by it, the ice 

 piles on the street or terrace surmounting it, and there stops ; but 

 before the wall was built, the sloping bank guided the moving 

 mass up to those of gardens and houses in a very dangerous 

 manner, and many accidents used to occur. It has been known 

 to pile up against the side of a house more than 200 feet from 

 the margin of the river, and there break in at the windows of the 

 second floor. I have seen it mount a terrace garden twenty feet 

 above the bank, and crossing the garden enter one of the princi- 

 pal streets of the town. A few years before the erect : on of the 

 revetement wall, a friend of mine, tempted by the commercial 

 advantages of the position, ventured to build a large cut-stone 

 warehouse 180 feet long and four or five stories high, closer than 

 usual upon the margin of the harbour. The ground-floor was not 



