The art of preserving snow for cooling liquors during the summer,
in warm countries, was known in the earliest ages. This practice is
mentioned by Solomon[364], and proofs of it are so numerous in the
works of the Greeks and the Romans, that it is unnecessary for me to
quote them, especially as they have been collected by others[365]. How
the repositories for keeping it were constructed, we are not expressly
told; but what I know on the subject I shall here lay before the reader.
That the snow was preserved in pits or trenches, is asserted by
many[366]. When Alexander the Great besieged the city of Petra, he
caused thirty trenches to be dug and filled with snow, which was
covered with oak branches, and which kept in that manner for a long
time[367]. Plutarch says that a covering of chaff and coarse cloth is
sufficient[368]; and at present a like method is pursued in Portugal.
Where the snow has been collected in a deep gulf, some grass or green
sods, covered with dung from the sheep-pens, is thrown over it; and
under these it is so well preserved, that the whole summer through it
is sent the distance of sixty Spanish miles to Lisbon[369].
When the ancients therefore wished to have cooling liquors, they either
drank the melted snow or put some of it in their wine, or they placed
jars filled with wine in the snow, and suffered it to cool there as
long as they thought proper. It appears that in these trenches it could
not remain long clean; on the contrary, it was generally so full of
chaff, that the snow-water was somewhat coloured with it, and had a
taste of it, and for this reason it was necessary to strain either it
or the wine that had been cooled by it[370].
That ice also was preserved for the like purpose, is probable from the
testimony of various authors[371]; but it appears not to have been used
so much in warm countries as in the northern. Even at present snow is
employed in Italy, Spain, and Portugal; but in Persia, ice[372]. I have
never anywhere found an account of Grecian or Roman ice-houses. By the
writers on agriculture they are not mentioned.
Mankind however soon conceived the idea of cooling water without snow
or ice, from having remarked that it became cold more speedily when
it had been previously boiled, or at least warmed, and then put in a
vessel among snow, or in a place much exposed to the air. Pliny seems
to give this as an invention of Nero[373]; and a jocular expression
in Suetonius[374] makes it at any rate probable that he was fond of
water cooled by this method; but it appears to be much older. It seems
to have been known even to Hippocrates: at least Galen[375] believes
so. And Aristotle[376] was undoubtedly acquainted with it; for he says
that some were accustomed, when they wished water to become soon cold,
to place it first in the sun and suffer it to grow warm. He relates
also that, the fishermen near the Black Sea poured boiling water over
the reeds which they used in fishing on the ice to cause them to freeze
sooner. Galen[377] on this subject is still more precise. He informs us
that the above practice was not so much used in Italy and Greece, where
snow could be procured, as in Egypt and other warm countries, where
neither snow nor cool springs were to be found. The water after it had
been boiled was put into earthen vessels or jars, and exposed in the
evening on the upper part of the house to the night air. In the morning
these vessels were put into the earth (perhaps in a pit), moistened
on the outside with water, and then bound round with fresh or green
plants, by which means the water could be preserved cool throughout
the whole day. Athenæus[378], who gives a like account from a book of
Protagorides, remarks, that the pitchers filled with water, which had
become warm by standing all day long in the sun, were kept continually
wet during the night, by servants destined to that office, and in the
morning were bound round with straw. In the island of Cimolus[379],
water which had become warm in the day-time was put into earthen jars,
and deposited in a cool cellar, where it grew as cold as snow. It was
generally believed therefore, that water which had been warmed or
boiled, was soonest cooled, as well as acquired a greater degree of
refrigeration; and on this account boiled water is mentioned so often
in the works of the ancients[380].
The same opinion prevails at present in the southern countries of Asia,
and people there still let their water boil before they expose it to
the air to cool[381]. The experiments however which have been made on
this subject by philosophers, have proved very different in the result.
When one indeed places boiling and cold water, all other circumstances
being equal, in frosty air, the latter will become ice before the
former has cooled; but when one exposes to the cold, water that has
been boiled, and unboiled water of equal temperatures, the former will
be converted into ice somewhat sooner.
The experiments made by Mariotte[382], Perrault[383], the Academy del
Cimento[384], Marian[385] and others, showed no perceptible difference
in the time of freezing, between boiled and unboiled water; but the
former produced ice harder and clearer, the latter ice more full
of blisters. In later times, Dr. Black of Edinburgh has, from his
experiments, asserted the contrary. Boiled water, he says, becomes ice
sooner than unboiled, if the latter be left at perfect rest; but if the
latter be stirred sometimes with a chocolate stick, it is converted
into ice as soon as the former. This difference he explains in the
following manner:--Some motion promotes congelation; this arises in
the boiled water through its re-imbibing air; and therefore it must
necessarily freeze before the unboiled, provided the latter be kept
at perfect rest. Fahrenheit had before remarked that water not moved,
would show a cold several degrees below the freezing-point, without
becoming ice[386].
M. Lichtenberg, with whom I conversed on these contradictory results,
assured me that he was not surprised at this difference in the
experiments. The time of congelation is regulated by circumstances,
with which philosophers are not yet sufficiently acquainted. A
certain, but not every degree of stirring hastens it; so that every
icy particle which is formed on the side of the vessel, or which falls
from the atmosphere, may convert the water sufficiently cooled into ice
instantaneously; and such unavoidable accidents must, where all other
circumstances are equal, cause a great difference in the period of
freezing.
I am inclined to think that the cooling of water, in ancient times,
of which I have already spoken, is not to be ascribed so much to the
boiling as to the jars being kept continually wet, and to the air to
which it was exposed. A false opinion seems therefore to have prevailed
respecting the cause; and because it was considered to be the boiling,
many have not mentioned the real cause, which appeared to them only
to afford a trifling assistance, though it has been remarked both by
Galen and Athenæus. We know at present that coolness is produced by
evaporation. A thermometer kept wet in the open air falls as long as
evaporation continues[387]. With sulphuric æther, and still better
with that of nitre, which evaporates very rapidly, water may be made
to freeze even in the middle of summer; and Cavallo saw in summer a
Fahrenheit’s thermometer, which stood at 64°, fall in two minutes, by
means of æther, to +3, that is to 29° below the freezing-point[388].
On this principle depends the art of making ice at Calcutta and other
parts of India, between 25° 30′ and 23° 30′ of north latitude, where
natural ice is never seen unless imported. Trenches two feet deep,
dug in an open plain, are strewed over with dry straw; and in these
are placed small shallow unglazed earthen pans, filled with water
at sunset. The ice which is produced in them is carried away before
sunrise next morning, and conveyed to an ice-cellar fifteen feet deep;
where it is carefully covered with straw to be preserved from the
external heat and air. A great deal, in this process, depends upon
the state of the atmosphere. When calm, pure and serene, it is most
favourable to the congelation; but when the winds are variable, or the
weather heavy and cloudy, no ice is formed; and the same is often the
case when the nights are raw and cold[389].
It was once believed that this freezing was occasioned principally by
the water having been boiled; but it seems to be owing much rather to
evaporation[390]. It is not however said that the vessels are kept
continually wet on the outside, but that they are unglazed, and so
porous or little burnt, that the water oozes through them; and on
that account their exterior surface appears always moist[391]. By
vessels of this kind the trouble of wetting is saved. What has been
said respecting the influence of the weather serves, in some measure,
to confirm my conjecture. The more it favours evaporation, the ice is
not only formed more easily, but it is better; and when evaporation is
prevented by the wind or the weather, no ice is produced. The latest
accounts how ice is made at Benares, say expressly that boiled water
is not employed; and that all those vessels, the pores of which are
stopped by having been used, do not yield ice so soon or so good. In
porcelain vessels none is produced; and this is the case also when the
straw is wet[392].
Another method of cooling water also seems to have been known to
Plutarch. It consisted in throwing into it small pebbles or plates of
lead[393]. The author refers to the testimony of Aristotle; but this
circumstance I cannot find in the works of that philosopher which
have been preserved. It seems to be too unintelligible to admit of any
opinion being formed upon it; and the explanation given by Plutarch
conveys still less information than the proposition itself. This is the
case, in general, with almost all the propositions of the ancients.
We indeed learn from the questions that they were acquainted with
many phænomena; but the answers scarcely ever repay the trouble which
one must employ in order to understand them. They seldom contain any
further illustration; and never a satisfactory explanation.
It appears that the practice of cooling liquors, at the tables of the
great, was not usual in any country besides Italy and the neighbouring
states, before the end of the sixteenth century. In the middle of that
century there were no ice-cellars in France; for when Bellon relates,
in the Account of his travels, in 1553, how snow and ice were preserved
at Constantinople throughout the whole summer, for the purpose of
cooling sherbet, he assures us that the like method might be adopted
by his countrymen; because he had found ice-cellars in countries
warmer than France. The word _glacière_ also is not to be met with in
the older dictionaries; and it does not occur even in that of Monet,
printed in 1635[394]. Champier, the physician who attended Francis I.
when he had a conference with the emperor Charles V. and pope Paul III.
at Nice, saw the Spaniards and Italians put snow, which they caused to
be brought from the neighbouring mountains, into their wine in order
to cool it. That practice, which excited his astonishment, he declared
to be unhealthful; and this proves that in his time it had not been
introduced at the French court[395].
Grand d’Aussy quotes an anecdote, related by Brantome, from which
he forms the same conclusion. The dauphin, son of Francis I., being
accustomed to drink a great deal of water at table, even when he was
overheated, Donna Agnes Beatrix Pacheco, one of the ladies of the
court, by way of precaution, sent to Portugal for earthen vessels,
which would render the water cooler and more healthful; and from which
all the water used at the court of Portugal was drunk. As these vessels
are still used in Spain and Portugal, where the wine is cooled also
with snow, both methods might have been followed in France. I have in
my collection of curiosities, fragments of these Portuguese vessels;
they are made of red bole; are not glazed, though they are smooth, and
have a faint gloss on the surface like the Etruscan vases. They are so
little burnt that one can easily break them with the teeth; and the
bits readily dissolve to a paste in the mouth. If water be poured into
such vessels, it penetrates their substance; so that, when in the least
stirred, many air-bubbles are produced; and it at length oozes entirely
through them[396]. The water that has stood in them acquires a taste
which many consider as agreeable; and it is probable that it proceeds
from the bark of the fir-tree, with which, as we read, they are burnt.
When the vessels are new, they perform their service better; and they
must then also have a more pleasant smell. If they really render water
cold, or retain it cool, that effect, in my opinion, is to be ascribed
to the evaporation. Their similarity to those in which the Indians make
ice is very apparent.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, under the reign of Henry
III., the use of snow must have been well known at the French court,
though it appears that it was considered by the people as a mark of
excessive and effeminate luxury. In the witty and severe satire on
the voluptuous life of that sovereign and his favourites, known under
the title of L’Isle des Hermaphrodites[397], a work highly worthy
of notice but which is exceedingly scarce, we find an order of the
Hermaphrodites that large quantities of ice and snow should everywhere
be preserved, in order that people might cool their liquors with them,
even though they might occasion extraordinary maladies, which, it
seems, were then apprehended. In the description of an entertainment we
are told that snow and ice were placed upon the table before the king;
and that he threw some of them into his wine; for the art of cooling it
without weakening it was not then known. The same method was practised
even during the whole first quarter of the seventeenth century[398].
Towards the end of the above century this luxury must have been very
common in France. At that period there were a great many who dealt in
snow and ice; and this was a free trade which every person might carry
on. Government, however, which could never extort from the people
money enough to supply the wants of an extravagant court, farmed out,
towards the end of the century, a monopoly of these cooling wares.
The farmers, therefore, raised the price from time to time; but the
consumption and revenue decreased so much that it was not thought worth
while to continue the restriction; and the trade was again rendered
free. The price immediately fell; and was never raised afterwards but
by mild winters or hot summers.
The method of cooling liquors by placing them in water in which
saltpetre has been dissolved, could not be known to the ancients,
because they were unacquainted with that salt. They might however, have
produced the same coolness by other salts which they knew, and which
would have had a better effect; but this, as far as I have been able to
learn, they never attempted. The above property of saltpetre was first
discovered in the first half of the sixteenth century; and it was not
remarked till a long period afterwards, that it belongs to other salts
also.
The Italians at any rate were the first people by whom it was employed;
and about the year 1550, all the water, as well as the wine, drunk
at the tables of the great and rich families at Rome, was cooled in
this manner. Blasius Villafranca, a Spaniard, who practised physic in
that capital, and attended many of the nobility, published, in the
before-mentioned year, an account of it, in which he asserts, more
than once, that he was the first person who had made the discovery
publicly known. In his opinion it was occasioned by the remark that
salt water in summer was always cooler than fresh water. According to
his directions, which are illustrated by a figure, the liquor must be
put into a bottle or globular vessel with a long neck, that it may
be held with more convenience; and this vessel must be immersed in
another wide one filled with cold water. Saltpetre must then be thrown
gradually into the water; and while it is dissolving, the bottle must
be driven round with a quick motion on its axis, in one direction.
Villafranca thinks that the quantity of saltpetre should be equal to a
fourth or fifth part of the water; and he assures us, that when again
crystallized, it may be employed several times for the same use, though
this, before that period, had by many been denied. Whether other salts
would not produce the like effect, the author did not think of trying;
but he attempts to explain this of saltpetre from the principles of
Aristotle; and he tells his noble patrons what rules they should
observe for the preservation of their health, in regard to cooling
liquors.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century this method of cooling liquors
was well known, though no mention is made of it by Scappi, in his
book on cookery. Marcus Antonius Zimara, however, speaks of it in his
Problems[399]. I do not know at what time this Appulian physician
lived. In a list of the professors of Padua, his name is to be found
under the year 1525, as _Explicator philosophiæ ordinariæ_; and because
another is named under the year 1532, we have reason to conjecture that
he died about that time. But in that case the physician Villafranca
would probably have been acquainted with the Problemata of Zimara; and
would not have said that no one had spoken of this use of saltpetre
before him.
Levinus Lemnius[400] also mentions the art of cooling wine by this
method so much, that the teeth can scarcely endure it. We are informed
by Bayle that the earliest edition of his work, which has been often
reprinted, was published at Antwerp, in the year 1559, in octavo. It
contains only the first two books; but as the above account occurs in
the second book, it must be found in this edition.
Nicolaus Monardes, a Spanish physician, who died about the year 1578,
mentions this use of saltpetre likewise. It was invented, as he says,
by the galley-slaves; but he condemns it as prejudicial to health. From
some expressions which he uses, I am inclined to think that he was not
sufficiently acquainted with it; and that he imagined that the salt
itself was put into the liquor. At a later period we find some account
of it in various books of receipts; such as that written by Mizaldus in
1566, and which was printed for the first time the year following[401].
In the Mineralogy of Aldrovandi, first printed in 1648, this process
is described after Villafranca; but where the editor, Bartholomæus
Ambrosianus, speaks of common salt, he relates that it was usual in
countries where fresh water was scarce to make deep pits in the earth;
to throw rock-salt into them; and to place in them vessels filled with
water, in order that it might be cooled. This remark proves that the
latter salt was then employed for the same purpose; but it has led the
editor into a very gross error. He thinks he can conclude from it, that
the intention of potters, when they mix common salt with their clay,
is not only to render the vessel more compact, but also to make it
more cooling for liquors. But the former only is true. The addition of
salt produces in clay, otherwise difficult to be fused, the faintest
commencement of vitrification; a cohesion by which the vessel becomes
so solid that it can contain fluids, even when unglazed; but for this
very reason it would be most improper for cooling, which is promoted by
the evaporation of the water that oozes through.
The Jesuit Cabeus, who wrote a voluminous commentary on the
Meteorologica of Aristotle, which were printed at Rome in 1646, assures
us that with thirty-five pounds of saltpetre one can not only cool a
hundred pounds of water, by quickly stirring it, but convert it also
into solid ice; and for the truth of this assertion he refers to an
experiment which he made. Bartholin says that for the above account
he can give him full credit[402]; but the truth of it is denied by
Duhamel, who suspects that this Jesuit took the shooting crystals of
the salt to be ice[403].
Who first conceived the idea of mixing snow or ice with saltpetre and
other salts, which increases the cold so much, that a vessel filled
with water, placed in that mixture, is congealed into a solid mass of
ice that may be used on the table, I cannot with certainty determine;
but I shall mention the earliest account of it that I have been able
to find. Latinus Tancredus, a physician and professor at Naples, whose
book De Fame et Siti was published in 1607, speaks of this experiment;
and assures us that the cold was so much strengthened by saltpetre,
that a glass filled with water, when quickly moved in the above
mixture, became solid ice[404].
In the year 1626, the well-known commentary on the works of Avicenna,
by Sanct. Sanctorius, was published at Venice. The author in this work
relates, that in the presence of many spectators, he had converted
wine into ice, not by a mixture of snow and saltpetre, but of snow and
common salt[405]. When the salt was equal to a third part of the snow,
the cold was three times as strong as when snow was used alone.
Lord Bacon, who died in 1626, says that a new method had been found
out of bringing snow and ice to such a degree of cold, by means of
saltpetre, as to make water freeze. This, he tells us, can be done
also with common salt; by which it is probable he meant unpurified
rock-salt; and, he adds, that in warm countries, where snow was not to
be found, people made ice with saltpetre alone; but that he himself
had never tried the experiment[406]. Boyle, who died in 1691, made
experiments with various kinds of salts; and he describes how, by means
of salt, a piece of ice may be frozen to another solid body[407].
Descartes says that in his time this was a well-known phænomenon, but
highly worthy of attention[408].
Since that period the art of making ice has been spoken of in the
writings of all philosophers where they treated on heat and cold, and
with many other experiments has been introduced into various books of
receipts. It was then employed merely for amusement[409]; and no one
suspected that it would ever form an important item of luxury. In the
like manner Fugger’s first bills of exchange were said to be useful
only for gambling, and gunpowder was called a trifling discovery.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, drinking-cups made of ice
and iced fruit were first brought to the table; but towards the end of
that century it appears that the French began to congeal in this manner
all kinds of well-tasted juices, which were served up as refreshments
at the tables of the great and wealthy[410]. This was a grand invention
for the art of cookery; which became common among the German cooks,
both male and female, about the middle of the last century; and since
that time our confectioners sell single glasses of iced articles at
balls and in the theatres.
I am acquainted with no older information respecting this invention
than what is contained in Barclay’s Argenis, which is, indeed, a
romance; but the author’s account makes the possibility of its being
used so clear, that we may certainly conclude it was then employed;
especially as he mentions it several times. Arsidas finds in the middle
of summer, at the table of Juba, fresh apples, one-half of which was
encrusted with transparent ice. A basin, made also of ice and filled
with wine, was handed to him; and he was informed that to prepare all
these things in summer was a new art. Snow was preserved throughout
the whole year in pits lined with straw. Two cups made of copper were
placed the one within the other, so as to leave a small space between
them, which was filled with water; the cups were then put into a pail,
amidst a mixture of snow and unpurified salt coarsely pounded, and
the water in three hours was converted into a cup of solid ice, as
well-formed as if it had come from the hands of a pewterer. In the like
manner apples just pulled from the tree were covered with a coat of ice.
The first edition of the Argenis was printed at Paris in 1621, and in
that year the author died at the age of thirty-nine.
After brandy, from being a medicine, came into general use as a liquor
at table, and was drunk in common by the populace, the Italians, above
all, endeavoured to render it weaker and more pleasant by various
mixtures; and by raising its value to make it more respectable, and
at the same time more useful to people of the first rank. That their
wares might be distinguished with more certainty, they gave them the
name of _liquori_; and under that appellation sold them to foreign
nations. The French were the first who adopted the use of these
articles; particularly after the marriage of Henry II., when duke of
Orleans, with Catharine de Medici, in the year 1533. This event brought
to France great numbers of Italians, who made the French acquainted
with these delicacies of their native country; and who taught them
to prepare and to use them. They were the first, therefore, who made
and sold the fine _liqueurs_ at Paris; and in order to serve those
who could not bear heating liquors, or rather to serve themselves by
filling their pockets with money, their successors in this business
invented about the year 1630 or 1633 that beverage called _lemonade_,
because the juice of lemons or oranges was its chief component part.
This liquor soon came into high repute, as it not only served for
cooling and refreshing people during the sultry heats of summer, but
was even recommended by physicians against putrid diseases.
The _limonadiers_, or venders of lemonade, endeavoured to increase
the first property, which occasioned the far greatest consumption, by
the means of ice; and one of them, Procope Couteaux, an Italian from
Florence, about the year 1660, conceived the happy idea of converting
such beverage entirely into ice, by a process which had been before
employed only by jugglers. The ready sale which he found for his
invention induced others to make articles of the like kind. His
example, therefore, was followed by Le Fevre and Foi; and these three
for some years enjoyed a monopoly of this new-fashioned commodity.
About the year 1676, liquors cooled by, or changed into ice, must
however have been the principal things sold by the _limonadiers_;
for being then formed into a company, the following delicacies were
mentioned in the patent which they received on that occasion: “Eaux
de gelée et glaces de fruits et de fleurs, d’anis et de canelle,
franchipanne, d’aigre de cetre, du sorbec,” &c. There were at that time
in Paris two hundred and fifty masters in this employment. In 1690,
when De la Quintiny wrote, iced liquors were extremely common[411].
People, however, long imagined that such articles could be used
only during the hot months of summer. In the year 1750, Dubuisson,
successor to the celebrated Procope, _au café de la rue des Fossés de
S. Germain des Près_, and author of the Art du Déstillateur, began to
keep ready prepared, the whole year through, ices of every kind for the
use of those who were fond of them. At first they were little called
for, except in the dog-days; but some physicians recommended them in
certain disorders. Have the physicians then, by their opinion, done
most service to the venders of _liqueurs_ and to cooks, or the latter
to the physicians? This would make a fine subject for an inaugural
dissertation. It is, however, certain, for we are told so by Dubuisson
himself, that after two cures, in which ices had been of the greatest
service, the _more discerning_ part of the public made use of them in
every season of the year. That this part of the public might never lose
their conceit, the venders of _liqueurs_ always employed their thoughts
upon new inventions. Among the latest is that of iced butter, which
acquired its name on account of some likeness to that substance. It
was first known at the Parisian coffee-house (_caveau_) in 1774. The
Duke de Chartres often went thither to enjoy a glass of iced liquor;
and the landlord, to his great satisfaction and surprise, having one
day presented him with his arms formed of eatable ice, articles of a
similar kind immediately became fashionable.
[Ice is now used extensively for a variety of œconomical purposes, such
as packing salmon, cooling liquors, &c. Of late years it has become a
regular article of commerce. In September 1833, a cargo of ice, shipped
at Boston, was discharged at Calcutta. It was sold at threepence per
pound, while the native ice fetched sixpence. It was packed in solid
masses, within chambers of double planking, with a layer of refuse
tan or bark between them. The quantity shipped was 180 tons, of which
about 60 wasted on the voyage, and 20 on the passage up the river
to Calcutta. Thousands of tons are now annually shipped from Boston
(United States) to our East Indies, to the West Indian Archipelago,
and to the Continent of South America, and quite recently ‘The Wenham
Lake Ice Company’ have erected extensive ice-houses in London and at
Liverpool, and arranged for the transportation to this country of
thousands of tons of ice. One surprising circumstance connected with
the trade, is the fact that their ice, though transported to this
country in the heat of summer, is scarcely reduced in bulk. The masses
are so large that they expose a very small surface to atmospheric
action in proportion to their weight, and therefore do not suffer from
exposure to it, as the smaller and thinner fragments do, which are
obtained in our own or other warmer climates. It appears, also, that
ice frozen upon very deep water, is more hard and solid than ice of
the same thickness obtained from shallow water; and even when an equal
surface is exposed, melts more slowly. In this country, the collection
of ice, even by those largely engaged in the trade, is an occasional
and fitful undertaking; depending, both as to time and quantity, upon
the accidental occurrence of severe frost; and when the process of
collection is carried on, it is with very few artificial aids. In
America, on the other hand, this labour can be regularly carried on
through the whole winter; while the adjuncts of machinery for cutting
and storing, and of steam for transporting it, are brought extensively
into action.
The details connected with this trade, as carried on in America, are so
novel and so interesting, that we lay them before our readers with the
confident belief that the result of our labours will prove attractive
to them. Wenham Lake, whence a large proportion of the ice now
imported to this country is obtained, is eighteen miles from Boston, in
the State of Massachusets; it occupies a very elevated position, and
lies embosomed in hills of majestic height and bold rugged character.
The lake has no inlet whatever, but is fed solely by the springs which
issue from the rocks at its bottom, a depth of 200 feet from its
surface. The ice-house, which is capable of storing 20,000 tons of ice,
is built of wood, with double walls, two feet apart, all around; the
space between which is filled with sawdust; thus interposing a medium,
that is a non-conductor of heat, between the ice and the external air;
the consequence of which is, that the ice is scarcely affected by
any condition or temperature of the external atmosphere, and can be
preserved without waste for an indefinite time.
The machinery employed for cutting the ice is very curious, and was
invented for that express purpose. It is worked by men and horses in
the following manner:--From the time when the ice first forms, it is
carefully kept free from snow until it is thick enough to be cut; that
process commences when the ice is a foot thick. A surface of some two
acres is then selected, which at that thickness will furnish about 2000
tons, and a straight line is then drawn through its centre from side to
side each way. A small hand-plough is pushed along one of these lines,
until the groove is about three inches deep and a quarter of an inch
in width, when the ‘Marker’ is introduced. This implement is drawn
by two horses, and makes two new grooves, parallel with the first,
twenty-one inches apart; the gauge remaining in the original groove.
The marker is then shifted to the outside groove, and makes two more.
Having drawn these lines over the whole surface in one direction, the
same process is repeated in a transverse direction, marking all the ice
out into squares of 21 inches. In the meantime, the ‘Plough,’ drawn
by a single horse, is following in these grooves, cutting the ice to
a depth of 6 inches. One entire range of blocks is then sawn out, and
the remainder are split off toward the opening thus made with an iron
bar. This bar is shaped like a spade and of a wedge-like form. When
it is dropped into the groove, the block splits off; a very slight
blow being sufficient to produce that effect, especially in very cold
weather. The labour of ‘splitting’ is slight or otherwise, according
to the temperature of the atmosphere. ‘Platforms,’ or low tables of
frame-work, are placed near the opening made in the ice, with iron
slides extending into the water, and a man stands on each side of this
slide, armed with an ice-hook. With this hook the ice is caught and by
a sudden jerk thrown up the ‘slide’ on to the ‘platform.’ In a cold day
everything is speedily covered with ice by the freezing of the water on
the platforms, slides, &c., and the enormous blocks of ice, weighing
some of them more than two cwt., are hurled along these slippery
surfaces, as if they were without weight. Beside this platform,
stands a ‘sled’ of the same height, capable of containing about three
tons; which, when loaded, is drawn upon the ice to the front of the
store-house, where a large stationary platform of exactly the same
height, is ready to receive its load; which, as soon as discharged, is
hoisted block by block, into the house.
Forty men and twelve horses will cut and stow away 400 tons a day. In
favourable weather 100 men are sometimes employed at once. When a thaw
or a fall of rain occurs, it entirely unfits the ice for market, by
rendering it opake and porous; and occasionally snow is immediately
followed by rain, and that again by frost, forming snow-ice, which
is valueless, and must be removed by the ‘plane.’ The operation of
‘planing’ is somewhat similar to that of ‘cutting.’ A plane gauged to
run in the grooves made by the ‘marker,’ and which shaves the ice to
the depth of three inches, is drawn by a horse, until the whole surface
of the ice is planed. The chips thus produced are then scraped off;
and if the clear ice is not reached, the process is repeated. If this
makes the ice too thin for cutting, it is left in _statu quo_, and a
few nights of hard frost will add below as much as has been taken off
above. In addition to filling their ice-houses at the lake and in the
large towns, the company fill a large number of private ice-houses
during the winter, all the ice for these purposes being transported
by railway. It will easily be believed, that the expense of providing
tools, building houses, furnishing labour, and constructing and keeping
up the railway, is very great; but the traffic is so extensive, and the
management of the trade so good, that the ice can be furnished, even in
England, at a very trifling cost[412] (it is retailed at twopence per
pound).]