filled with ice, especially if near the surface on the north slope of a
mountain.
Freezing Cave, Fergus County, Montana.--Mr. Robert Butler, of San José,
Cal., visited this place, which is about 35 kilometers southeast of
Lewistown. It is on the north side of a butte. Masses of ice and great
icicles form in some parts of the cave in such quantities during the
latter part of winter that the cave furnishes ice for cooling the
drinking water for several dozen families. During July and August the
people come from some distance around to get the ice. The people in the
neighborhood believe that the ice forms in summer and thaws away in
winter. They also speak of the ever upward draught of cold air coming
possibly from some great hidden cavern in the lower recesses of the
mountain.
Freezing Well at Horse Plains, Montana. (Levi Allen, _Scientific
American_. New Series, 27th October, 1883.)--The well is described as
13.60 meters deep. It is dug through solid gravel, and in sinking it
there was encountered, at a depth of 10.60 meters, a current of air
strong enough to blow out a candle. It began to freeze in September,
1882, and in November it was frozen solid.
Freezing Silver Mine, Bighorn County, Wyoming.--This place is in the
Sunlight Basin of the Shoshone Mountains. Mr. William Worrell Wagner,
of Philadelphia, informs me that he visited it in August, 1897. It is
a silver mine or tunnel, running straight into the mountain for about
60 meters, at an altitude of about 3300 meters. The peaks of the Teton
range were in sight from the mouth of the tunnel. For the first half of
the way in, a good many icicles were hanging from the rocks. The last
half of the tunnel was thickly coated with ice and looked like a cold
storage plant. Snow disappears on the rocks outside about June, and
begins to fall again in September, so that Mr. Wagner's visit was at
about the hottest time of the year. Mr. Wagner presented the meat of a
bull wapiti he had shot to the miners, and they stored it in the mine
as if it had been an artificial refrigerator.
Rifts of Ice, Mount McClellan, Colorado. (Edward L. Berthoud, _American
Journal of Science and Arts_. Third Series, 1876, vol. XI., page
108.)--Near the summit of Mount McClellan, is the Centennial Lode,
which runs into the mountain, at an altitude of about 3900 meters.
Intercalated in the mineral vein are three or four well defined veins
of solid ice parallel with the bedding of the rock and filling all its
inner side-cracks and fissures. The same frozen substratum is found in
two other lodes near by on the same mountain. Nothing of the kind is
known on other Colorado mountains. The soil is loose and largely made
up of rocky débris, which shows that the ice is probably due to local
causes.
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