ly, in any country to the south of the
Baltic. [4] In the time of Caesar the reindeer, as well as the elk
and the wild bull, was a native of the Hercynian forest, which
then overshadowed a great part of Germany and Poland. [5] The modern
improvements sufficiently explain the causes of the diminution of the
cold. These immense woods have been gradually cleared, which intercepted
from the earth the rays of the sun. [6] The morasses have been drained,
and, in proportion as the soil has been cultivated, the air has become
more temperate. Canada, at this day, is an exact picture of ancient
Germany. Although situated in the same parallel with the finest
provinces of France and England, that country experiences the most
rigorous cold. The reindeer are very numerous, the ground is covered
with deep and lasting snow, and the great river of St. Lawrence is
regularly frozen, in a season when the waters of the Seine and the
Thames are usually free from ice. [7]

[Footnote 2: In particular, Mr. Hume, the Abbe du Bos, and M.
Pelloutier. Hist. des Celtes, tom. i.]

[Footnote 3: Diodorus Siculus, l. v. p. 340, edit. Wessel. Herodian, l.
vi. p. 221. Jornandes, c. 55. On the banks of the Danube, the wine, when
brought to table, was frequently frozen into great lumps, frusta vini.
Ovid. Epist. ex Ponto, l. iv. 7, 9, 10. Virgil. Georgic. l. iii.
355. The fact is confirmed by a soldier and a philosopher, who had
experienced the intense cold of Thrace. See Xenophon, Anabasis, l. vii.
p. 560, edit. Hutchinson. Note: The Danube is constantly frozen over. At
Pesth the bridge is usually taken up, and the traffic and communication
between the two banks carried on over the ice. The Rhine is likewise in
many parts passable at least two years out of five. Winter campaigns are
so unusual, in modern warfare, that I recollect but one instance of an
army crossing either river on the ice. In the thirty years' war,
(1635,) Jan van Werth, an Imperialist partisan, crossed the Rhine from
Heidelberg on the ice with 5000 men, and surprised Spiers. Pichegru's
memorable campaign, (1794-5,) when the freezing of the Meuse and Waal
opened Holland to his conquests, and his cavalry and artillery attacked
the ships frozen in, on the Zuyder Zee, was in a winter of unprecedented
severity.--M. 1845.]

[Footnote 4: Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, tom. xii. p. 79, 116.]

[Footnote 5: Caesar de Bell. Gallic. vi. 23, &c. The most inquisitive of
the Germans were ignorant of i