Ice house

“ My ice-house is one of life's satisfactions; not architecturally, of course, for there has been no great development yet in ice-house lines, and this one was home-done; it is a satisfaction morally, being one thing I have done that is neither more nor less. ”

“ If it can be placed beneath the shade of trees, it will so far be relieved from the influence of the sun; but it should be so constructed that sunshine will not affect the ice within it, even if it stand unsheltered; and as it has, by the ice-merchants of our eastern cities, who put up large quantities for exportation abroad, and others in the interior, who furnish ice in quantity for home consumption, been proved to be altogether the better plan to build the ice-house entirely above ground, we shall present no other mode of construction than this. ”

“ The plan of preserving ice in this country, and the United States, is much more simple than with us, and, I have no doubt, more judicious, as, notwithstanding the superior heat of the climate, it is so much more cheap and plentiful. Almost every farmer has his ice-house. ”

“ Well or spring water is usually refreshingly cool, so an ice house is really not imperative, though I recommend building a small one if the farm provides good ice, for it is an inexpensive building to construct, rough boards, sawdust and the ordinary handy man’s labor being the only requirements. ”

“ It seemed to be turned into a strange range of white hills, with here and there a roof or a chimney peeping out. There were no fences, there were no roads, but all was one mass of glittering white, and the wind was still at work tossing the billions of sharp little ice-needles into the face of any one who ventured to peep out, sending a shower of snow into an open door, and piling it up in great drifts in every sheltered spot. So nearly everybody who was comfortable at home, and had plenty to eat in the house, at once decided to stay there. ”

“ By much questioning, I dug out something of the history of these stollen from the forester. Formerly the ice was found at this spot, among the boulders at the base of the slope. But the people gradually took many of these basaltic blocks away, to break up for road making, and then the ice diminished. About 1870, a brewery, since burnt, was built at the Dornburg and the brewer had these stollen built, a sort of semi-natural, semi-artificial ice house. Every winter, the present owner of the stollen throws a quantity of snow into them, and this helps materially in forming the mass of ice. ”

“ Crash!" went the cakes of ice as they came up the incline, and slid down the long wooden chutes, where the men hooked them off and piled them up. Pile after pile was made of the ice, until it was stacked up like an ice berg, inside the store house.
"Why doesn't the ice melt when the hot summer comes?" asked Hal.
"Because this building keeps the hot sun off the ice," explained the foreman. "Very little heat can get in our ice house, and it takes heat to melt ice. ”

“ At last some one said there was a man living in a house of ice far in the north who could put out the fire, so messengers were sent, and after traveling a long distance they came to the ice house and found the Ice Man at home. ”

“ While the rivers run perfectly clear and bright under the ice in the winter, in summer the turbid water of nearly all our large streams introduces another difficulty, and photographic operation must sometimes be deferred for weeks, unless the rain barrels be full or enough ice be found in the ice-house, over and above the domestic needs, to serve. ”

“ The existence of a natural ice-house depends, consequently, rather on the quantity of snow which enters it in winter, and the small influence of the warm winds in summer, than on the absolute elevation of the cavity, and the mean temperature of the layer of air in which it is situated. ”

“ The ice which forms during the night is broken up every morning by coolies, who carry it, carefully cleaned from adhering mud, to the ice-houses, and then flood the fields again. The ice-houses are simple in construction, but capacious; for the climate of Ningpo is too mild to permit ice to be formed every year, and the proprietors are required by law to store in them enough to last three years. The ice-house consists of a vast quadrilateral, inclosed in walls made of stones cemented with mud, rising some twenty or twenty-five feet above the ground. ”

“ It really is pleasant work grooving the ice, and splitting it into blocks, and floating it off, to be fished on shore, loaded on the cart, and deposited in the ice-house, with powderings of small ice, to compact the blocks together. One item of the business done in frosts always saddens me. ”

“ The snow has drifted over their house till only a tiny mound appears; the ice has sealed the pond and locked their home against the storm and desolation without: but the main roadway from the house is below the drifting snow, and they know where, among the stumps and button-bushes, the warm-nosed watchers have kept [Pg 177] breathing-holes open. The ice-maker never finds their inner stair; its secret door opens into deep, under-water paths, which run all over the bottom of the unfrozen pond-world. ”

“ The cold air enters through the door, slowly filling the passage, and after being warmed rises to the lamps and escapes through the skin cover and the hole. The moisture of the air forms long ice needles on the inside of the roof. Sometimes they fall down upon the skins, and must be immediately removed by shaking it until they glide down at the sides, else they melt and wet the room thoroughly. Frequently a high ice funnel forms around the hole from the freezing moisture of the escaping air.
The southern and western tribes rarely line the snow house. ”

“ As it is my solitary achievement as an architect, I must dwell rather lovingly on the building of this hut. The professional ice-cutters were bringing up daily a large supply of great gleaming transparent blocks from the river, both for the building of the band-house and for the summer supply of Rideau Hall, so there was no lack of material. On the American continent one is being told so constantly that this-and-that "will cut no ice," that it is satisfactory to be able to report that those French-Canadians cut ice in the most efficient fashion. ”

“ The chute was supported by strong iron rods that extended from the wooden wall, keeping it at the proper angle, so that it was easy to slide the blocks of ice upward by means of a block and tackle.
As Nick Carter had said, the building was capacious enough to accommodate many tons of ice, and it had been used as a storehouse for a long time.
Of later years, when facilities for handling ice were better, and when large corporations controlled the industry, there was no room for this small concern to continue in business. ”

“ At each intersection of the incline and runs to the galleries, there is a gate, which may be removed from the face of the incline, thus affording access from the incline to the runs. The gate at the lower run being open, the ice cakes all pass on to the first run, and enter the house at this height. When the house has been filled with ice to the height of the first run, or one or two courses higher, the level of the house is then too high to handle the ice over the lower run. ”

“ In the meantime the women are employed in stuffing the joints 200with snow, and the boys in constructing kennels for the dogs. The laying the snow sofa with skins and the insertion of the ice window complete the work; the passage only remaining to be added, as it is after the house is finished, together with some smaller huts for stores"—the design being similar to that of the yurts of the Eskimos of the north, with a change of material, snow for stone, and ice instead of seal-gut for the window over the entrance. ”

“ The ice having been collected and stored in winter, the ice-houses were solemnly opened in the spring. A sacrifice was offered to 'the Ruler of Cold, the Spirit of the Ice,' and of the first ice brought forth an offering was set out in the apartment behind the principal hall of the ancestral temple. A sacrifice to the same Ruler of Cold, it is said, had also been offered when the ice began to be collected. ”

“ As the ice in ice-houses has commonly subsided some feet, as four, five, or more, by the beginning of the spring, it is proposed to deposit in the rooms or vacancies so left empty, the roots that are to be preserved. ”

“ Ice-houses should therefore be, in all their parts, as dry as possible: and they should be so constructed, and the ice so deposited in them, as to ensure the running away of the meltings as quickly as possible, whenever such meltings come. Any-thing in way of drains or gutters, is too slow in its effect ”

“ None of the crew would accompany me: my mess-mates did not volunteer: so I was alone.
“It was a walk to be remembered. Snow up to the neck; drift moist and blinding; and a gale, luckily not a cold one, in my face. But after a mile of such promenading as no other region can boast of, I reached the water at last. Water it was; dark, surging water; no pellicles of glazing ice; no sludgy streams of pancake; but the liquid element itself, such as we saw last summer, and you see every day, stretching out as broad as the Delaware, and in contrast with the snow at its margin as black as Styx. ”

“ The gigantic gray walls, seamed and full of wide cracks, sloped upward, forming an almost complete arch overhead that admitted a dull glow of light to mingle with the white sheen of the ice below. Great icicles hung by thousands from the rock-crevices, while eternal drippings through the cavern-like roof had formed immense ice columns resembling unsmoothed marble pillars. ”

“ It made me thoughtful to see the long shadows stretching out upon the snow toward the isthmus of the Graves.
“The wind is from the north and westward, and the ice is so driven in around us as to grate and groan against the sides of our little vessel. The masses, though small, are very thick, and by the surging of the sea have been rubbed as round as pebbles. They make an abominable noise.” ”

“ We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef, that flanked the small cape, in the finest style,—a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. “There it is!” ”

“ Then we have the struggle and confusion which attend the encounter of the young glacier with the first obstacles. An irresistible impulse urges the still half-formed ice over the edge, and it is transformed in a moment into a maze 343 of towers and blue abysses, of walls of marble-like snow seamed with the soft veins which mark each year's fall, of crystal-roofed and fretted vaults hung with pendant icicles. ”

“ It melts at every pore, and streams as if a perpetually overflowing fountain were upon the summit, and flashes and scintillates like one vast brilliant. Prongs and reefs of ice jutting from the body of the berg below, and over which we pass, give the water that emerald clearness so lovely to the eye, and open to the view something like the fanciful sea-green caves. We now lie to, under the lee side, fearfully close, it seems to me, when I recollect the warning of the Bishop, never, on any account, to venture near an iceberg. ”

“ Nearer, nearer he crept, till at last, lying motionless with his lean muzzle just over the crest of the ice-ridge, he could make out the dark shapes of the seals, vague as shadows, emerging for a few moments to sprawl upon the edge of the ice. Every few seconds one would slip into the water again, while another would awkwardly scramble forth. In that phenomenal cold it was necessary for them to take heed to the air-holes, lest these should get sealed up and leave them to drown helplessly under the leagues of solid ice-field. ”

“ Now we must use all caution and give the larger icebergs a wide berth. They are treacherous creatures, these icebergs. You may be paddling along by a peaceful looking berg, sleeping on the water as mild and harmless as a lamb; when suddenly he will take a notion to turn over, and up under your canoe will come a spear of ice, impaling it and lifting it and its occupants skyward; then, turning over, down will go canoe and men to the depths.
Our progress up the sixty miles of Glacier Bay was very slow. Three
nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of the bay. ”

“ Some of the storehouses, indeed, were so effectively hidden that they were not found till after several days’ excavations in the following July. The great advantage of a snow-house is that it takes its temperature from the earth, and not from the air. ”

“ Pertell had heard of it and had laid one scene of a drama there.
There was a fairly good road almost to the ice cave, and then came a trip across an unbroken expanse of snow, the snowshoes being used, they having been carried strapped to the backs of the four.
"Oh, how beautiful!"
"See how the sun sparkles on the ice."
"And what big icicles!"
"Oh, if we could only keep that until Summer!"
Thus the young people cried as they saw the beautiful ice cave. It was indeed a pretty sight. Nature, unaided, had done more than man could ever hope to achieve.
"Let's go inside," suggested Russ. ”

“ When the ponds are frozen to a depth of six or eight inches blocks of ice are cut out and laid on the roof of the hut out of reach of the dogs. If a new window is required the old melted pane is removed, and a fresh block of ice is fitted on the outside with wet snow, which serves as putty and shortly freezes. At night-time boards are placed indoors against the windows to protect them from the heat of the fire, but the cold in these regions is so intense that one ice window will generally last throughout the winter. ”