HKB
represented, consisting of a square wooden building, which having no other foundation than the boulders, requires to be taken down every winter, and rebuilt on the reopening of the river.
These effects of frost, which are so striking on the St. Lawrence above Quebec, are by no means displayed on a smaller scale below that city, where the gulf rises and falls with the tide. On the contrary; it is in the estuary, between the latitudes 47 degrees and 49 degrees, that the greatest quantity of gravel and boulders of large dimensions are carried down annually towards the sea. Here the frost is so intense, that a dense sheet of ice is formed at low water, which, on the rise of the tide, is lifted up, broken, and thrown in heaps on the extensive shoals which border the estuary. When the tide recedes, this packed ice is exposed to a temperature sometimes 30 degrees below zero, which freezes together all the loose pieces of ice, as well as the granitic and other boulders. The whole of these are often swept away by a high tide, or when the river is swollen by the melting of the snow in Spring. One huge block of granite, 15 feet long by 10 feet both in width and height, and estimated to contain 1500 cubic feet, was conveyed in this manner to some distance in the year 1837, its previous position being well known, as up to that time it had been used by Captain Bayfield as a mark for the surveying station.
Ground-ice.--When a current of cold air passes over the surface of a lake or stream it abstracts from it a quantity of heat, and the specific gravity of the water being thereby increased, the cooled portion sinks. This circulation may continue until the whole body of fluid has been cooled down to the temperature of 40 degrees F., after which, if the cold increase, the vertical movement ceases, the water which is uppermost expands and floats over the heavier fluid below, and when it has attained a temperature of 32 degrees Fahr. it sets into a sheet of ice. It should seem therefore impossible, according to this law of congelation, that ice should ever form at the bottom of a river; and yet such is the fact, and many speculations have been hazarded to account for so singular a phenomenon. M. Arago is of opinion that the mechanical action of a running stream produces a circulation by which the entire body of water is mixed up together, and cooled alike, and the whole being thus reduced to the freezing point, ice begins to form at the bottom for two reasons, first, because there is less motion there, and secondly, because the water is in contact with solid rock or pebbles which have a cold surface.[285] Whatever explanation we adopt, there is no doubt of the fact, that in countries where the intensity and duration of the cold is great, rivers and torrents acquire an increase of carrying power by the formation of what is called ground-ice. Even in the Thames we learn from Dr. Plott that pieces of this kind of ice, having gravel frozen on to their under side, rise up from the bottom in winter, and float on the surface. In the Siberian rivers, Weitz describes large stones as having been brought up from the river's bed in the same manner, and made to float.[286]