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Atlas (search for this): chapter 6
the fine image of this baby hemlock: each delicate leaf droops above as delicate a copy, and here and there the shadow and the substance kiss and frolic with each other in the downy snow. The larger larches have a different plaything: on the bare branches, thickly studded with buds, cling airily the small, light cones of last year's growth, each crowned with a little ball of soft snow, four times taller than itself,— save where some have drooped sideways, so that each carries, poor, weary Atlas, a sphere upon its back. Thus the coy creatures play cup and ball, and one has lost its plaything yonder, as the branch slightly stirs, and the whole vanishes in a whirl of snow. Meanwhile a fragment of low arbor-vitae hedge, poor outpost of a neighboring plantation, is so covered and packed with solid drift, inside and out, that it seems as if no power of sunshine could ever steal in among its twigs and disentangle it. In winter each separate object interests us; in summer, the mass.
Orpheus (search for this): chapter 6
for hours, the whole air being filled with them, and drifts of several inches being accumulated while he watched. Let us imagine the eye gifted with microscopic power sufficient to enable it to see the molecules which composed these starry crystals; to observe the solid nucleus formed and floating in the air; to see it drawing towards it its allied atoms, and these arranging themselves as if they moved to music, and ended with rendering that music concrete. Thus do the Alpine winds, like Orpheus, build their walls by harmony. In some of these frost-flowers the rare and delicate blossom of our wild Mitella diphylla is beautifully figured. Snow-flakes have been also found in the form of regular hexagons and other plane figures, as well as in cylinders and spheres. As a general rule, the intenser the cold the more perfect the formation, and the most perfect specimens are Arctic or Alpine in their locality. In this climate the snow seldom falls when the mercury is much below zero
Elizabeth Woodcock (search for this): chapter 6
al life. It holds in its bosom numerous animalcules: you may have a glass of water, perfectly free from infusoria, which yet, after your dissolving in it a handful of snow, will show itself full of microscopic creatures, shrimp-like and swift; and the famous red snow of the Arctic regions is only an exhibition of the same property. It has sometimes been fancied that persons buried under the snow have received sustenance through the pores of the skin, like reptiles imbedded in rock. Elizabeth Woodcock lived eight days beneath a snow-drift, in 1799, without eating a morsel; and a Swiss family was buried beneath an avalanche, in a manger, for five months, in 1755, with no food but a trifling store of chestnuts and a small daily supply of milk from a goat which was buried also. In neither case was there extreme suffering from cold, and it is unquestionable that the interior of a drift is far warmer than the surface. On the 23d of December, 1860, at 9 P. M., I was surprised to observe
Forty Thousand (search for this): chapter 6
s a sovereign Remedy against both putrid and pestilential Feavors. Therefore Men should Praise God, who giveth Snow like Wool. But there is an account against the snow, also. Not only the disease called Bulimia, but others more fatal have come out of the Snow. Geographers give us to understand that in some Countries Vapours from the Snow have killed multitudes in less than a Quarter of an Hour. Sometimes both Men and Beasts have been destroyed thereby. Writers speak of no less than Forty Thousand men killed by a great Snow in one Day. It gives a touching sense of human sympathy, to find that we may look at Orion and the Pleiades through the grave eyes of a Puritan divine. The Seven Stars are the Summer Constellation: they bring on the spring and summer; and Orion is a Winter Constellation, which is attended with snow and cold, as at this Day. Moreover, Late Philosophers by the help of the Microscope have observed the wonderful Wisdom of God in the Figure of the Snow; each fl
Emerson (search for this): chapter 6
the diminution in quantity. Winter, with fewer and simpler methods, yet seems to give all her works a finish even more delicate than that of summer, working, as Emerson says of English agriculture, with a pencil, instead of a plough. Or rather, the ploughshare is but concealed; since a pithy old English preacher has said that thme to paint our own pictures, and cease to borrow these gloomy alien tints. One must turn eagerly every season to the few glimpses of American winter aspects: to Emerson's Snow-Storm, every word a sculpture; to the admirable storm in Margaret; to Thoreau's Winter's Walk, in the Dial; and to Lowell's First Snow-Flake. These are frit and gallery stairs under charge of the constables, at hearing for once a discourse which they could understand,—snowballing spiritualized. This was not one of Emerson's terrible examples,—the storm real, and the preacher only phenomenal; but this setting of snow-drifts, which in our winters lends grace to every stern rock and r
Richardson (search for this): chapter 6
nity of cold, its fingers are feeling after us, and even if they do not clutch us, we know that they are there. The sensations of such days almost make us associate their clearness and whiteness with something malignant and evil. Charles Lamb asserts of snow, It glares too much for an innocent color, methinks. Why does popular mythology associate the infernal regions with a high temperature instead of a low one? El Aishi, the Arab writer, says of the bleak wind of the Desert (so writes Richardson, the African traveller), The north wind blows with an intensity equalling the cold of hell; language fails me to describe its rigorous temperature. Some have thought that there is a similar allusion in the phrase, weeping and gnashing of teeth,—the teeth chattering from frost. Milton also enumerates cold as one of the torments of the lost,— O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp; and one may sup full of horrors on the exceedingly cold collation provided for the next world by the Norse
Glaisher (search for this): chapter 6
with the primeval star, especially, seems far and fanciful enough, but there are yet unexplored affinities between light and crystallization: some crystals have a tendency to grow toward the light, and others develop electricity and give out flashes of light during their formation. Slight foundations for scientific fancies, indeed; but slight is all our knowledge. More than a hundred different figures of snow-flakes, all regular and kaleidoscopic, have been drawn by Scoresby, Lowe, and Glaisher, and may be found pictured in the encyclopaedias and elsewhere, ranging from the simplest stellar shapes to the most complicated ramifications. Professor Tyndall, in his delightful book on The Glaciers of the Alps, gives drawings of a few of these snow-blossoms, which he watched falling for hours, the whole air being filled with them, and drifts of several inches being accumulated while he watched. Let us imagine the eye gifted with microscopic power sufficient to enable it to see the mol
Wool (search for this): chapter 6
Prayse due to God for His Mercy in giving Snow like Wool. One can fancy the delight of the oppressed Puritanprove, Prop. I. That the Snow is fitly resembled to Wool. Snow like Wool, sayes the Psalmist. And not only tWool, sayes the Psalmist. And not only the Sacred Writers, but others make use of this Comparison. The Grecians of old were wont to call the Snow Eriodes Hudor, Wooly Water, or wet Wool. The Latin word Floccus signifies both a Lock of Wool and a Flake of SnoWool and a Flake of Snow, in that they resemble one another. The aptness of the similitude appears in three things. 1. In respect othe Snow. [Here the reasoning must not be omitted.] Wool is warm. We say, As warm as Wool. Woolen-cloth has Wool. Woolen-cloth has a greater warmth than other Cloathing has. The wool on Sheep keeps them warm in the Winter season. So when thing vertue in it, and is therefore fitly compared to Wool. Snow has many merits. In Lapland, where there iherefore Men should Praise God, who giveth Snow like Wool. But there is an account against the snow, also. N
Mather (search for this): chapter 6
y word a sculpture; to the admirable storm in Margaret; to Thoreau's Winter's Walk, in the Dial; and to Lowell's First Snow-Flake. These are fresh and real pictures, and carry us back to the Greek Anthology, where the herds come wandering down from the wooded mountains, covered with snow; and to Homer's aged Ulysses, his wise words falling like the snows of winter. Let me add to this scanty gallery of snow-pictures the quaint lore contained in one of the multitudinous sermons of Increase Mather, printed in 1704, entitled A Brief Discourse concerning the Prayse due to God for His Mercy in giving Snow like Wool. One can fancy the delight of the oppressed Puritan boys in the days of the nineteentblies, driven to the place of worship by the tithing-men, and cooped up on the pulpit and gallery stairs under charge of the constables, at hearing for once a discourse which they could understand,—snowballing spiritualized. This was not one of Emerson's terrible examples,—the storm real, an
1814 AD (search for this): chapter 6
hed in America; but it must be remembered that very severe storms occur only at considerable intervals, and the Puritans did not always, as boys fancy, step out of the upper windows upon the drifts. In 1717, the ground was covered from ten to twenty feet, indeed; but during January, 1861, the snow was six feet on a level in many parts of Maine and New Hampshire, and was probably drifted three times that depth in particular spots. The greatest storm recorded in England, I believe, is that of 1814, in which for forty-eight hours the snow fell so furiously that drifts of sixteen, twenty, and even twenty-four feet were recorded in various places. An inch an hour is thought to be the average rate of deposit, though four inches are said to have fallen during the severe storm of January 3, 1859. When thus intensified, the beautiful meteor of the snow begins to give a sensation of something formidable; and when the mercury suddenly falls meanwhile, and the wind rises, there are sometimes s
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