Alice and Beatrice

								

bigger and bigger, till some join and stick together, and go on getting
larger, till by degrees they cover the surface of the water. These
pieces or masses of ice are pushed towards the shore, and there the ice
first begins to make a firm covering over the sea.
‘But the ice on the sea is never smooth or even, like the ice on a pond
or on a river; it is rough, and large pieces are heaped together, and
large cracks are often made in the ice by the wind and the waves moving
it, which makes it dangerous to drive or even walk a long distance over
the Frozen Sea.’
‘Can people drive over the sea? But if it is frozen hard, why is it
dangerous?’
‘Yes, dear Alice, people can and do drive on the Frozen Sea, and I have
driven short distances myself on it, and I have known many people cross
this gulf,’ showing Alice the Gulf of Finland. ‘You know, dear, what a
gulf is?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice; ‘it is an arm of the sea that runs into the land.’
‘The peasants, or poor country people, used to drive across this gulf,
as soon as the ice was tolerably firm and safe. They drove in small
sledges drawn by little horses, and took over corn and other things to
sell to the inhabitants of rocky Finland, where very little corn grows.
But the getting across the large crevices or cracks was both difficult
and dangerous. The people for that purpose take long boards with them on
their sledges, and laying them across these open places, they drag their
sledges over, walking over the planks themselves, and making their
horses swim through the water; but their horses have often been lost in
these large cracks, for though the horses can always swim, they cannot
always get out of them, as the ice at the edges is brittle, and breaks
under their efforts to scramble up.
‘I remember how some men, belonging to one of our villages, were lost in
a snow-storm out at sea, and their bodies were not found till the
summer, on a small, uninhabited island where they had taken refuge
during the storm, lying on their faces. I believe that they had first
lost their horses.’
‘How did they die, poor men? Were they starved or frozen to death on
that desert island?’
‘I believe that they were frozen to death, and had gone to sleep from
the cold, and never awoke.’
‘How very sad!’ said both the little girls.
‘But did you like Russia, grandmamma,’ asked Alice; ‘so cold and
horrible, with wolves and bears?’
‘The winter in Russia is very long, and where I lived it sometimes
lasted half the year, and we saw no grass all that time.’
‘How did you like to live in Russia, then?’
‘I had kind friends there; but though I liked some people very much, I
did not like the country or the climate. In truth, dear children, there
is no country in the whole world like our dear England; no country where
people love God and pray to God so much as in England; and no country
where everybody tries to do so much good as in England.’