Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/121

Rh ſubject, as it propoſes to ſtate only the ordinary heat and cold of each month, and not thoſe which are extraordinary. At Williamſburgh in Auguſt 1766, the mercury in Farenheit's thermometer was at 98° correſponding with 29 and one third of Reaumur. At the ſame place in January 1780, it was 6° correſponding with 11½ below 0, of Reaumur. I believe theſe may be conſidered to be nearly the extremes of heat and cold in that part of the country. The latter may moſt certainly, as at that time, York River, at York town, was frozen over, ſo that people walked acroſs it; a circumſtance which proves it to have been colder than the winter of 1740, 1741, uſually called the cold winter, when York River did not freeze over at that place. In the ſame ſeaſon of 1780, Cheſapeak bay was ſolid, from its head to the mouth of Patowmac. At Annapolis, where it is 5¼ miles over between the neareſt points of land, the ice was from 5 to 7 inches thick quite acroſs, ſo that loaded carriages went over on it. Thoſe, our extremes of heat and cold, of 6° and 98° were indeed very diſtreſſing to us, and were thought to put the extent of the human conſtitution to conſiderable trial. Yet a Siberian would have conſidered them as ſcarcely a ſenſible variation. At Jenniſeitz in that country, in latitude 58° 27′ we are told, that the cold in 1735 ſunk the mercury by Farenheit's ſcale to 126° below nothing; and the inhabitants of the ſame country uſe ſtove