OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 255 the happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall CHAP. select two remarkable circumstances of a less equivocal ' nature. 1. The great rivers which covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and the Danube, were frequently frozen over, and capable of supporting the most enor- mous weights. The barbarians, who often chose that severe season for their inroads, transported, without apprehension or danger, their numerous armies, their cavalry, and their heavy waggons, over a vast and solid bridge of ice^. Modern ages have not presented an instance of a like phenomenon. 2. The rein deer, that useful animal, fi-om whom the savage of the north de- rives the best comforts of his dreary life, is of a consti- tution that supports, and even requires, the most in- tense cold. He is found on the rock of Spitzberg, within ten degrees of the pole ; he seems to delight in the snows of Lapland and Siberia : but at present he cannot subsist, much less multiply, in any country to the south of the Baltic^. In the time of Caesar, the rein deer, as well as the elk and the wild bull, was a native of the Hercynian forest, which then oversha- dowed a great part of Germany and Poland^. The modern improvements sufficiently explain the causes of the diminution of the cold. These immense woods have been gradually cleared, which intercepted from the earth the rays of the sun^ The morasses have been drained; and, in proportion as the soil has been cultivated, the air has become more temperate. Ca- nada, at this day, is an exact picture of ancient Ger- many. Although situated in the same parallel with the finest provinces of France and England, that country
- = Diodorus Siculus, 1. v. p. 340. edit. VVessel. ; Herodian, 1. vi. p. 221 ;
Jornandes, c. 55. On the banks of the Danube, the wine, when brought to table, was frequently frozen into great lumps, frusta vini. Ovid. Epist. ex Ponto, 1. iv. 7. 9, 10 ; Virgil. Georgic. 1. iii. 355. The fact is confirmed by a soldier and a philosopher, who had experienced the intense cold of Thrace. See Xenophon, Anabasis, 1. vii. p. 560. edit. Hutchinson. '• BufFon, Histoire Naturelle, torn. xii. p. 79. 116.
- = Cjcsar de Bell. Gallic, vi. 23, etc. The most inquisitive of the Ger-
mans were ignorant of its utmost limits, although some of them had tra- velled in it more than sixty days' journey.
- " Cluverius (Germania Antiqua, 1. iii. c. 47.) investigates the small and
scattered remains of the Hercynian wood.
