DEMOREST’S FAMILY MAGAZINE. No. CCCLXXIII. JULY, 1894. Vol. XXX., No. 9 . A DAY ON AN ICE-FIELD. rose vine which has climbed the balcony thrusts frosty air a song, a choral as robust, as resonant, as those a spray of creamy blossoms in at my window as if to the sailors sing when their bark is preparing for sea. These remind me that it is midsummer. As I lean to smell are the ice-cutters. No pleasure-seekers these, no makers of of them, as one might lean to receive a kiss, there is a rumble festivals, no chevaliers of the ladies, but journeymen of and a clatter in the street below, and a yellow-covered ve­ nature, laborers who win bread from the fiercest moods of hicle thunders by, upon whose side I read the word “ Ice,” winter, who brave death itself to wrest from the gnomes of and straightway my thoughts revert to another and a far the frost the refreshment of thousands while the dog-star different scene and season. rages and the great cities faint under the merciless noon. I see before me a wide expanse of gleaming ice upon These men sing as they saw and chop and heave, because which the sun glimmers with a thousand sparkles. Yonder, they are overflowing with health, and because to them the swaying to and fro as in some mystic dance, go a pair of fierce breath that blows from under the North Star is sweeter skaters. If that athletic young man with the bold, black than the balmy airs from the South ; for the midwinter is eyes has not yet won the petite fair-haired girl at his side their harvest time. who clings so closely to him, though she is evidently a prac­ Come nearer and observe them : big. brawny, honest-eyed ticed skater, he is more modest than his face betokens. And fellows, wondering that you should shiver in your furs, THE SCRAPERS. see how like a frightened gull yonder ice-boat swoops down though the thermometer marks close upon zero. Yonder is the wind, swift as the flight of the swallow, leaping and one with arms bare to the elbows ; here is another up to his bounding over the hummocks like a greyhound that has waist in water upon which the frost-needles collect as he sighted his prey ! And hark ! from yonder group of men stands ; and here is yet another, tugging at a huge cake of who seem to be so busily at work, comes faintly upon the ice. Look at him with admiration if you have an eye for 508 DEMOREST’S FAMILY MAGAZINE. physical strength; see how the corded muscles stand out somewhere from this good-natured human jelly, which upon his neck ; how the knotted tendons in his great arms shakes with the convulsion as if it would liquefy though the and wrists attest the man’s vast power. And do you observe thermometer is at zero. he is perspiring, even in this keen air? A long line of horses, each drawing a framework of heavy “ It is warm work,” he tells his neighbor with the ice-saw, plank shod with steel, approaches us solemnly. Over the who agrees with him. edges of these frames, in general shape triangular with the Even during the coldest winter there are but few days opening forward, the loose snow rolls and foams like the t h e m a r k e r s . during which the ice-harvest may be reaped. The farther froth before the bows of a ship. After the snow is cleared north, of course the longer the season ; but the farther away, the surface of ice beneath, which is more or less north you go the farther you get from your market, and the porous and uneven, is planed down until the clear, homo­ greater the loss sustained in transportation and storage. So geneous body is reached. Sometimes as much as three it is not surprising that these men work like engines under inches of this “ rotten ice,” as it is called, has to be scraped full pressure. Besides, as our burly friend, the foreman, away. observes, “ Don’t stand still till ye freeze fast, boys,” is the good- “ You have got to keep movin’ or freeze fast.” natured admonition of the foreman as the men pause to ex­ Yonder, near the farther shore, where the ice-boats are change a rude jest or a word of gossip, and the smoking flitting to and fro and the skaters are wheeling about, there horses move on again in leisurely procession. is a narrow strip of ice that the wind has swept clear; but Our friend tells us that ice must be perfectly clear, and over the larger portion of the frozen expanse the snow has from nine inches to one foot thick, if for home use, and at become packed down and partially amalgamated with the least twenty inches thick if it is to be exported ; since, not­ mass below. withstanding the careful provision made for preserving it. T H E P L O W S . “ All this has to be scraped off before we can begin cut­ from one-quarter to one-half its weight is lost in trans ting,” our lusty informant tells us. “ You couldn’t no more port. cut ice with that rubbish atop of it than you could make Where we stand upon this hillock of snow we command a a born liar tell the truth,—and, I take it, there ain’t nothin’ view of the whole busy scene. Ice cutting and harvesting tougher’n that.” are carried on by exclusively American methods, and with A low laugh of rich enjoyment of his own aphorism comes American tools and machinery. DEMOREST’S FAMILY MAGAZINE. 509 BREAKING OUT. “ Who else but Americans could have invented them is all of high grade ; that cut in the Kennebec River is the there ? ” says our friend, proudly pointing to the saws, plows, most celebrated. harrows, and similar apparatus before us. “ Ice is an The first process in the cutting is the measuring out of a American institution. English ice is full of holes and so large square very accurately, the lines being deeply incised soft that it melts if you speak loud; and as for the rest of with an ice plough. Next the original square is “ marked” Europe [he pronounces it ' Yurrup’] it hain’t in sight. In in smaller squares, or, rather, oblongs, of a known size, Norway I believe they do have some little fair ice ; but one generally twenty-four by thirty inches. New York hotel would use up the whole crop.” He goes “ It won’t do to work by rule o’ thumb,” says the fore­ on to tell us that New York and Brooklyn alone use in the man. “ The cakes have to be packed exactly, with no waste neighborhood of three million tons a year, and that we room. Besides, we can tell to a pound what each cake export vast quantities to all parts of the world, in ships weighs when we take it out.” built especially for the purpose. The marker is a sort of harrow drawn by a horse, and By this time the workmen have taken up their positions provided at the back with an upright which serves both as near the center of the lake, and the cutting begins. W e a guide and as a handle upon which a man walking behind learn that the ice in the middle of lakes and streams is al­ bears his weight so as to cause the teeth with which the left ways harder and purer than that near the shore, and is side of the marker is set to bite into the ice as it runs. The stored by itself as a superior grade. Ice produced in the deep right side is a thin runner of steel. This runner is set waters of Northern New York and Northern New England into one of the plowed lines of the square, the horse is FLOATING ICE TO THE SLIDE. 510 DEMOREST’S FAMILY MAGAZINE. started, and the machine travels across the field, the teeth each space representing a cake. The next stage is “ break­ cutting a deep furrow parallel with the side of the square. ing out.” Let us go closer to observe the details. Another marker, with its runner set in the groove cut by “ Shall we not be in the way ? ” the teeth of the first, follows, making a second groove. “ N o,” responds the foreman, and “ No,” say the good- When the square has been marked off thus in one direction, natured, smiling faces of these robust fellows. How is the toothed blades are adjusted to a narrower gauge, and a it that laboring or living out-of-doors always seems to make series of grooves are cut at right angles to the first set. human nature more kindly and genial ?—I believe better in Some markers are provided with several sets of saw-teeth, every way. so that two or more grooves are cut at one time. Those So we stand near by and watch these men handle their shown in the illustration are of the simpler construction. saws, ice-forks,—heavy, long-tined tridents,—ice-hooks, and Now come the plows. They look like a sort of compound ice-spades. When a single cake has been broken out, the T H E S L ID E . agricultural plow. Into a long, heavy beam are set saw-men begin along the plowed lines, the curious, double- eight separate blades, or shares, each notched at the bottom.