GORGE AT ELLENVILLE.
From a Photograph by Mr. Davis.
We found no ice. It generally lasts till about the beginning of September; and Professor Angelo Heilprin, and Miss Julia L. Lewis, of Philadelphia, have found plenty of it in July and August. But the ice had evidently now been gone for some time, for the temperature at the bottom of the gorge was about 11° C. at ten-thirty A. M. This was but little colder than the temperature v outside, which at ten-fifteen A. M. was 14° C.
On returning to Ellenville, I learnt that there was another somewhat similar smaller gorge, some eight kilometers away, at a place called Sam’s Point. This, however, is said to retain only snow, while in the Ellenville gorge much ice is sometimes formed, and icicles a couple of meters long are said to hang on the sides of the cliffs. The proprietor of the hotel told me he had heard of a cave which contained ice not far from Albany, at a place called Carlisle, on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad.
FREEZING CAVE AND WINDHOLES NEAR FARRANDSVILLE.
I arrived at Farrandsville, Clinton County, Pennsylvania, early on Tuesday morning, October the 11th, 1898, and found a boy, who worked in a brick mill, as guide to the caves.[11] After emptying a small, flat bottomed boat of the water of which it was half full, we rowed across the Susquehanna River; then we walked up the road, along the river bank, for a couple of hundred meters, and struck up the so-called path to the caves. Although the whole of the mountain side was at the disposal of the road maker, no better plan seems to have suggested itself than to make the track go straight up. This saved making zigzags, yet the result is that the path is steep, and as it is rocky and slippery, it is hard travelling without bootnails or alpenstock.
[11] I learned of this cave from Mr. Eugene F. McCabe, of Renovo, Pennsylvania. Mr. McCabe took out large pieces of ice from it in the month of August. On December 23d, 1896, he found no ice inside the cave, but a hoar frost covered the rocks; the temperature outside was -5.6°; inside -4.5°: the day was clear and there was no breeze; several matches lighted in the cave were almost instantly blown out by a current of air coming from crevices in the rocks.