CHAP. I.] SEVERE FROST AT BOSTON. 25 



ty-four hours. Notwithstanding this movement, the surface re 

 mained even and unbroken, except along the shore, where it 

 cracked. 



Had the continuance of this frost been anticipated, it would 

 have been easy to keep open a passage ; but on the 1st of Feb 

 ruary, when the Britannia was appointed to sail, it was found 

 that the ice was seven feet thick in the wharf, and two feet 

 thick for a distance of seven miles out ; so that wagons and carts 

 were conveying cotton and other freights from the shore to the 

 edge of the ice, where ships were taking in their cargoes. No 

 sooner was it understood that the mail was imprisoned, than the 

 public spirit of the whole city was roused, and a large sum of 

 money instantly subscribed for cutting a canal, seven miles long 

 and 100 feet wide, through the ice. They began the operation 

 by making two straight furrows, seven inches deep, with an ice 

 plough drawn by horses, and then sawed the ice into square 

 sheets, each 100 feet in diameter. When these were detached, 

 they were made to slide, by. means of iron hooks and ropes fixed 

 to them, under the great body of the ice, one edge being first 

 depressed, and the ropes being pulled by a team of horses, and 

 occasionally by a body of fifty men. On the 3d of February, 

 only two days after her time, the steamer sailed out, breaking 

 through a newly-formed sheet of ice, two inches thick, her bows 

 being fortified with iron to protect her copper sheeting. She 

 burst through the ice at the rate of seven miles an hour without 

 much damage to her paddles ; but before she was in clear water, 

 all her guard of iron had been torn off. An eye-witness of the 

 scene told me that tents had been pitched on the ice, then cov 

 ered by a slight fall of snow, and a concourse of people followed 

 and cheered for the first mile, some in sleighs, others in sailing 

 Doats fitted up with long blades of iron, like skates, by means of 

 which they are urged rapidly along by their sails, not only before 

 the wind, but even with a side wind, tacking and beating to 

 windward as if they were in the water. 



The Britannia, released from her bonds, reached Liverpool in 

 Ifteen days, so that no alarm had been occasioned by the delay; 

 ,nd when the British Post-Office department offered to defray 

 VOL. i. B 



