. Industries of to-day. olves no longermake the frozen Kennebec a thoroughfare. With the opening of the canal comes aninteresting result at once. The thickness of theice is increased by the exposure of the water andthe cooling of its surface. The cold is let intothe river, as it were, both below and above thecut. By the time all this has been done, themiddle of January has generally been date varies, of course, with the season. The ice has now a thickness of from twelveto eighteen inches. Sometimes it is more thanthat; but this greater thickness is a disadvan-tage, because it rende
. Industries of to-day. olves no longermake the frozen Kennebec a thoroughfare. With the opening of the canal comes aninteresting result at once. The thickness of theice is increased by the exposure of the water andthe cooling of its surface. The cold is let intothe river, as it were, both below and above thecut. By the time all this has been done, themiddle of January has generally been date varies, of course, with the season. The ice has now a thickness of from twelveto eighteen inches. Sometimes it is more thanthat; but this greater thickness is a disadvan-tage, because it renders the blocks of ice hardto bar off from the field. Now the field iscarefully marked off, with a grooving machinedrawn by a horse, into regular parallelograms, [32] A Winter Harvest which are generally twenty-two by thirty inches,the size which the individual blocks of ice areto be. The ice field, unlike other fields, is cultivatedbefore it is plowed. It is only now, when themarker has grooved the ice across and that the ice plow is brought, or rather that sev-eral ice plows are brought, for several go over thesame ground in succession. A plow which cuts to a depth of six inchesfirst follows the markers grooves. Then comesanother, which cuts two inches deeper, and thenanother, and so on until the trenches have beencarried so deep that the blocks of ice may bebarred off or loosened from the field. [33l Industries of To-Day Beginning at the outermost end of the canal,and working out at right angles with it as far asthe field has been marked, the workmen breakoff, with a heavy wedge-shaped instrument calleda bursting bar, sheets or sections of blocks ofice, making a new channel running off from theoriginal canal. Through this channel the sheetsof ice are forced, by means of hooks, to the maincanal, and thence to the foot of the elevatorwhich runs to the ice house. At this point a narrow bridge of planks isthrown across the canal, upon which is posted aman armed with an ir
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