The history and antiquities of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

4q-76 REMARKABLE EVENTS. Great Snow in 1717. The following account of the Great Snow of February, 1717, by Dr. Mather, is perhaps the most particular description which can now be obtained. [AN HORRID SNOW.i Boston, 10th Dec. 1717. Sr Tho' we are gott so far onward as the beginning of another Winter, yett we have not forgott ye last, which at the latter end whereof we were entertained & overwhelmed with a Snow, which was attended with some Things, which were uncommon enough to afford matter for a letter from.ius. Our winter was not so bad as that wherein Tacitus tells us, that Corbulo made his expedition against the Parthians, nor that which proved so fatal to ye Beasts & Birds in ye days of ye Emperor Justinian, & that the very Fishes were killed under ye freezing sea, when Phocas did as much to ye men whom Tyrants treat like ye Fishes of ye Sea. But ye conclusion of our Winter was hard enough, and was too formidable to be easily forgotten, & of a piece with what you had in Europe a year before. The snow was ye chief Thing that made it so. For tho' rarely does a Winter pass us, wherein we may not say with Pliny Ingens Hyeme Nivis apud nos copia, yet our last Winter brought with it a Snow, that excelled them all. The Snow, 'tis true, not equal to that, which once fell & lay twenty Cubits high, about the Beginning of October, in the parts about ye Euxine Sea, Nor to that which ye French Annals tell us kept falling for twenty Nine weeks together, Nor to several mentioned by BoPthius, wherein vast numbers of people, & of Cattel perished, Nor to those that Strabo finds upon Caucasus & Rhodiginus in Armenia.

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