Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. SERGEANT NEILL. The breaking up of the ice in the rivers of North America is one of the most wonderful operations exhibited by nature on that Continent. By the beginning of April, although the sun has attained very considerable power, yet the ice in the rivers is so thick, and its temperature so many degrees below freezing, that little or no effect is produced upon it in the middle of the stream. The banks, however, of the river, receiving heat from the sun, treacherously melt that portion of the ice which immediately touches them, and this operation continues until a space of blue water intervenes between the shore and the ice sufficient to prevent any one from passing on foot from the one to the other, and yet, long after this period, the ice in the middle of the stream remains strong enough to bear artillery or carriages of any weight. Now, it is evident that, if a river throughout its course were straight and of equal breadth, the current, without waiting until the sun should melt the ice, would carry it bodily away into the ocean so soon as the banks ceased to hold it. Rivers, however, being more or less tortuous, andcontaining generally little islands and rocks, it became necessary for Nature to resort to an admixture in about equal parts of fair means and foul, or, in other words, to combine the persuasive powers of the sun with the rude violence of the torrent, and thus the dense stratum of ice which covers the surface of the river finds itself between two powerful enemies, one of which, by the constant application of heat, is trying to melt it, while the other, as it glides beneath it, is exerting a never-ceasing effort to drag it towards the sea. Any one who in swimming down a stream has ever chanced to grasp the branch of a tree overhanging t... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.