At this time the appearance of the river Thames was most remarkable. Vast pieces of floating ice, laden generally with heaps of snow, were slowly carried up and down by the tide, or collected where the projecting banks or the bridges resisted the flow. These accumulations sometimes formed a chain of glaciers, which, uniting at one moment, were at another cracking and bounding against each other in a singular and awful manner with loud noise. Sometimes these ice islands rose one over another, covered with angry foam, and were violently impelled by the winds and waves through the arches of the bridges, with tremendous crashes. Near the bridges, the floating pieces collected about mid-water, or while the tide was less forcible, and ranged themselves on each other; the stream formed them into order by its force as it passed, till the narrowness of the channel increased the power of the flood, when a sudden disruption taking place, the masses burst away, and floated off. The river was frozen over for the space of a week, and a complete _Frost Fair_ held upon it, as will be mentioned presently. * * * * * Since the establishment of mail-coaches correspondence had not been so interrupted as on this occasion. Internal communication was completely at a stand till the roads could be in some degree cleared. The entire face of the country was one uniform sheet of snow; no trace of road was discoverable. The Post-office exerted itself to have the roads cleared for the conveyance of the mails, and the government interfered by issuing instructions to every parish in the kingdom to employ labourers in reopening the ways. * * * * * In the midland counties, particularly on the borders of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, the snow lay to a height altogether unprecedented. At Dunchurch, a small village on the road to Birmingham, through Coventry, and for a few miles round that place, in all directions, the drifts exceeded twenty-four feet, and no tracks of carriages or travellers could be discovered, except on the great road, for many days. The Cambridge mail coach coming to London, sunk into a hollow of the road, and remained with the snow drifting over it, from one o’clock to nine in the morning, when it was dragged out by fourteen waggon horses. The passengers, who were in the coach the whole of the time, were nearly frozen to death. * * * * *