Blush’d on the pannels, which were once a stream,
And soon to slide into a stream again.”
In the most northern part of the Russian territory, the cold is sometimes sufficient to freeze mercury, or 72 degrees below the freezing point of water.[78] It is so intense in some seasons, that the poor inhabitants cannot venture out of their miserable huts but at the hazard of their lives.
“There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr’d by the hand of nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow,
And heavy loaded groves, and solid floods,
That stretch athwart the solitary vast
Their icy horrors to the frozen main.”