Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/279

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 255 the happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall CHAP. select two remarkable circumstances of a less equivocal ' nature. 1. The great rivers which covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and the Danube, were frequently frozen over, and capable of supporting the most enor- mous weights. The barbarians, who often chose that severe season for their inroads, transported, without apprehension or danger, their numerous armies, their cavalry, and their heavy waggons, over a vast and solid bridge of ice^. Modern ages have not presented an instance of a like phenomenon. 2. The rein deer, that useful animal, fi-om whom the savage of the north de- rives the best comforts of his dreary life, is of a consti- tution that supports, and even requires, the most in- tense cold. He is found on the rock of Spitzberg, within ten degrees of the pole ; he seems to delight in the snows of Lapland and Siberia : but at present he cannot subsist, much less multiply, in any country to the south of the Baltic^. In the time of Caesar, the rein deer, as well as the elk and the wild bull, was a native of the Hercynian forest, which then oversha- dowed a great part of Germany and Poland^. 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^ The morasses have been drained; and, in proportion as the soil has been cultivated, the air has become more temperate. Ca- nada, at this day, is an exact picture of ancient Ger- many. Although situated in the same parallel with the finest provinces of France and England, that country 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, 1. iv. 7. 9, 10 ; Virgil. Georgic. 1. iii. 355. The fact is confirmed by a soldier and a philosopher, who had experienced the intense cold of Thrace. See Xenophon, Anabasis, 1. vii. p. 560. edit. Hutchinson. '• BufFon, Histoire Naturelle, torn. xii. p. 79. 116. mans were ignorant of its utmost limits, although some of them had tra- velled in it more than sixty days' journey. scattered remains of the Hercynian wood.
 * = Diodorus Siculus, 1. v. p. 340. edit. VVessel. ; Herodian, 1. vi. p. 221 ;
 * = Cjcsar de Bell. Gallic, vi. 23, etc. The most inquisitive of the Ger-
 * " Cluverius (Germania Antiqua, 1. iii. c. 47.) investigates the small and