Ice Bridge and Frost Freaks
Slowly, steadily, surely it pressed on. Suddenly there would be an explosion, sharp and loud, when a root gave way. No motion in the ice or tree could be discovered. After a lapse of two or three hours another sharp crack would give notice of another fracture. Thus the ice pressed gradually on, and in ten hours the work was done. A thousandth part of this force would pulverize a bowlder of adamant. We need not wonder, therefore, that the river Niagara keeps its channel clear.
In the ice-gorge of 1866 the ice was set back to the upper end of the Whirlpool, over which it was twenty feet deep. The Whirlpool rapid was subdued nearly to an unbroken current, which all the way below to Lake Ontario was reduced to a gentle flow of quiet waters. Never was there a sublimer contest of the great forces of nature. The frost laid its hand upon the raging torrent and it was still.
The winter of 1875 was intensely cold. The singular figures represented in the illustrations—the eagle, dog, baboon, and others—are exact reproductions of the real chance-work of the frost of that season. The long-continued prevalence of the south-west wind fastened to every object facing it a border or apron of dazzling whiteness, and more than five feet thick. The ice mountain below the American Fall, reaching nearly to the top of the precipice, was appropriated as a "coasting" course, and furnished most exhilarating sport to the people who used it. A large number of visitors came from all directions, and, on the 22d of February, fifteen hundred were assembled to see the extraordinary exhibition.
In the coldest winters, the ice-bridges cannot be less than two hundred and fifty feet thick. The ice-bridge of 1875 formed on the 6th and 7th of May, was crossed on the 8th, and broke up on the 14th—the only one ever known in the river so late in the spring.
Coasting below the American Fall