first winter following the establishment of the Colony there were very heavy frosts, the river at Jamestown freezing almost from Lank to bank, but in the course of the second there were said to have been fourteen days of sunshine for every eight or ten days of harsh weather; it was, however, during this winter that Smith visited Werowocomoco, and found the surface of the river frozen half a mile from either shore.[1] The state of the atmosphere was almost entirely governed by the direction from which the wind was blowing, and as this was very variable, the air was hot, cold, or temperate in rapid alternations. In December, January, February, and March, the north and northwest winds were always sharp and piercing, it being supposed at a later period that they had their origin on the great lakes. The northwest wind generally brought clear weather. The hardest freezes followed a heavy blow from that quarter, after an equally heavy blow from the southeast, accompanied by rain. The snow, which so often attended the northerly winds, rarely lay upon the ground for a period longer than a few days, although it may have fallen to a considerable depth. The winds from the south and southeast were warm even in January, and in summer they always produced a hazy and sultry atmosphere. It was from the southwest that the heaviest gusts of hail and rain arrived, and in the tempests brewed in this quarter, it was observed that the thunder reverberated the loudest, and the flashes of lightning were most
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, pp. 48, 449; see also pp. 603, 604, for an account of the sufferings of Governor Butler and his companions from the cold in February, 1623. Secretary Spencer informed Clayton, about 1688, that he had seen the Potomac frozen from shore to shore opposite to his house, where the river was nearly nine miles in width. Clayton’s Virginia, p. 5, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
