ARCTIC EUROPE

Evening Star, Issue 20138, 1 April 1929, Page 1

ARCTIC EUROPE

ICE-AGE WINTERS SOME HISTORIC COLD SHAPS ICE-BREAKERS ON THE THAMES. The terribly severe winter in Europe, resulting in the greater part of flic Continent being frosthound, livers being frozen over, cities, towns, and villages being isolated owing to flic fact that roads and railways are buried, deep in snow, is the worst that has been experienced lor more than half a century. It is far more severe than the, cold snap which occurred la’st year, though that was flic coldest winter that had been experienced by the great majority of tho present generation of .Europeans. On that occasion .snow began to. fall in London and South of England on Christmas Day. ami ifc was followed by a succession of severe frosts, rain, and heavy falls of snow. It disorganised traffic and transport for a week, and isolated many villages; hut. by Now Year's Day a, than' set in, and the worst of the winter was over.

We are accustomed to associate snow with Christmas in England, hut, previous to the Christmas of 1027 if had been twenty-one years since England had experienced a fall of snow on Christmas Day. Those familiar engravings and lithographs of snow Christmas scenes in England belong to tho days of the mail coaches;'hut oven in those days a, snowy Christmas was the exception rather than Hie rule. Dickens, with his many description:; of Chris!mas scenes, of roaring lires and good cheer •within, and falling snow without, did lunch to foster Hie tradition Hint Christmas and snow are inseparable in England. Rut snowfalls in England occur more often in January and February than in 'December, and a whole winter without a fall of snow i? the rule rather than the exception in London and the South of England. Londoners have often a succession of three nr ionr winters without a sign of snow. THE FROZEN THAMES.

It. has been staled in our cable messages that tho Seine, tho Rhine, the Marne, and oilier rivers have been partly frozen, and Hint the Thames in its upper readies has been Irozon over. The Thames Conservancy has been using ice breakers to prevent the. lower readies of tho river, which are a highway lor shipping from all parts of tho ■world, being frozen over. There have been more severe winters in England than flic present one. and Hie meteorological records show that, on several, occasions in the seventeenth century (he Thames was completely frozen. Samuel Pepys mentions in his famous diary Hint in December. 1665. Hie Thame? was fill! of ice. and that it was troublesome to get anywhere by wafer. In his day Hie Thames was Hie main highway of London's traffic, for hackney coaches had not come into general u?e. and people who -wauled to go from the eastern parts ol the city to Iho Strand or AVosI minster went by river. Hundreds of boatmen earned their living by rowing people up and down the Thames.

Pepys's diary shows that by December 22, 1665. the Thames was frozen over, and that it remained frozen until December 27. when a thaw set in. In Die following year there was another severe winter, and Pepys wrote on January 1, 1667: ‘‘Lay long, being a hitler, cold, frosty day, the frost being now grown old, and the Thames covered with ice.” The sear of the first of' these two severe winters witnessed the groat outbreak of plague, in which over ](10.000 persons perished iu London out of a populalion of about 450.000. The •severe winter of Hie following year occurred just after I lie great fire of London, which swept away two-thirds of the oily, destroying .10.200 houses and S 7 -churches.

FAIRS ON THE FROZEN RIVER. Rut these Mere not Hie first, winters in which tho Thame? was frozen. It was frozen in 1607, 160 S. ami 1620. and on each of Hie occasions Londoners held fairs on the ice. The severest winter nu record is that of 1686-81, when the Thame? remained in a frozen stale from January 0. J6SL In Eehniary !). John Evelyn, writing in his diarv on January f), said: “ I went eros-e the Thames on (he ice. which now became so thick as to bear not only street? of holthcs. in which they roasted meale. and had divers shops of wares, quite acrossc, as in town, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over,” Mis? Joan Parkes. in her recent hook. ‘Travel in England in Hie Seventeenth Century,’ states in describing 1 his fair on Hm frozen Thame?: ‘‘There wore streets of shops' to tempt the citizens’ pockets; eating houses to warm the inner man. More l.luui fifty conches plied between the Bridge and Westminster. There were )nu>e races, coach races, hull baitings, interludes, and puppet play.? to beguile Hie passing hour, and more beneficial to the circulation of the on lookers, a fox hunt, iu which the King look part. The roasting of an ox, which, together with the printing p"ess and the eating houses, became a traditional feature of all ice fairs, took place near Whitehall. NEW YORKS GREAT BLIZZARD.

The severest winter experienced in New York iu its history of 800 years occurred within living memory. This was the great blizzard of March. T 888.» According to the calendar winter ends in March in the temperate zone of Hie Northern Hemisphere, and tho shops of New York were displaying spring goods when the city was overwhelmed by a blizzard which completely disorganised iis traffic and isolated it from the rest of the world. f‘For two days, both by rail and telegraph. New York was almost, completely out of touch with the outside world,” wrote Eunice Fuller Barnard in an article published in the New York ‘Times’ on the fortieth anniversary of _ the blizzard. ‘‘ Snowdrifts rested against the houses as high as the second story windows. For four days no street ears ran, and no milk or other food was received. For almost a week no street was really cleared save Broadway. Not for ten days was normal train service restored. “ The actual gale lasted sonic thirty hours. It began on Monday morning, March 12, a few mmnlesv after midnight, when Sunday’s deluge of rain suddenly changed to a stinging sleet, and then to a needlefikc snow The first si.v hours sufficed to bury flic city, and make the streets- almost impass-

— *A able. By 7 a.in. Brooklyn Bridge va* closed to pedestrians, and the one man who was allowed to pass had. to bo rescued by the police before he had gone halfway. “ A weird darkness like that of an eclipse overhung the streets, and the air was so full of driving flakes that one could scarcely see or breathe. .In the white drifts not a horse car moved.' Faintly one could hoar the gasps of the elevated locomotives ns they ground their cautions way over icy rails, only to stick last in giant drifts. Soon thev, too, were motionless.

“Here and there a lone cabby urged his staggering horse into the gale, while* shutters, bill boards, barbel' poles, and cigar si ore-Indians toppled soundlessly, sunk without trace in a hazy sea. Telegraph poles careened like the masts of derelicts, dragging their rigging., Mow and then a woman catapulted, around a corner, driven head first into' a snow hank. Telephone wires under their ice sagged and snapped, and sparvows dropped frozen into a shroud ol“ snow. North, cast, and west of town long lines of trains stretched helpless and half-buried. Shops and houses alike stood barricaded in frozen drifts. “Before 1) a.in. every car track in the wily was 12ft deep in snow, and nil] some places the drifts were already 7:IV deep. ' The cable ears had not even', tried to start; the ico on the tracks' made it impossible for the grips to reach the cables. A few horse cars, 1 which set out with four horses apiece, | were abandoned wherever they stuck’} fast, like so many wrecked barges, and ; drivers and condociors rode the horses'] back to tlie stables, leaving the pas- 1 sengers to their fate. The west side, elevated roads stopped running before, 8 a.m., and flic station gates were] locked. One train which'had started ou| the Sixth avenue road succeeded in go-] ing two blocks in six hours and twenty] minutes. Finally it gave up midway/ between Eighteenth and Fourteenth' streets, neara line of stalled trains. “One industry not curbed by tho! storm was i tlm newspaper. Tuesday 1 morning the ‘ Times ’ appeared with ad nineteen-column story on the blizzard covering the whole first and isecondl pages and most of the third. Wednesday was bonfire day. Merchants ring holes in the drifts and set wood atira there to melt the snow. Others attacked it with streams of hot wafer, and barrels of rock salt: were dumped, on the car .tracks. Bailroads hired snow shovellers at the imhea.i'd-nf price of odol ('Jos') a day. By Thursday tin* sun was shining, and the papers issued appeals to householders to clear t.ho goiters lest the city be inundated with, the thaw. Tho house roofs showered pedestrians with melting slush, and (ha black wall of mow JOft high along tho west side of Fifth avenue began to diminish,”