The Frost King.

The old maps, based upon the discoveries of Cabot and Castier, which represented the centre of America as a vast inland sea, erred only in the description of the ocean which they placed in the central continent. The ocean is there, but it is one of grass and waves of sand, and its shores are the crests of mountain ranges and dark pine forests. The eye travels over it to the farthest distance without one effort of vision, and reaching there, rests unfatigued by its long gaze. No jagged peaks break the monotony of the skyline; no river lays its silvery folds along the middle distance; no dark forests give shade to the foreground, or fringe the perspective; no speck of life, no trace of man, nothing but wilderness. Stripped of its drapery, space stands forth with almost terrible distinctness.

The salt sea does not present a more infinite variety of aspects than does this prairie-ocean. In early summer, a vast expanse of waving grass and pale pink roses; in autumn, too often a wild sea of raging fire; in winter a dazzling surface of purest snow, heaped into rolling ridges or frost-crested waves. The glowing waters of the Agean cannot show more gorgeous sunsets; no solitude of mid-ocean can vie with the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie. The stillness can be felt, the silence heard. The wail of the prowling wolf makes the voice of solitude audible; the stars look down through infinite silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past; treeless, desolate, and storm-swept was it when the stone of the Sphinx was yet unhewn, and the site of Nineveh was a river-meadow, and it is the same today. Time has been nought to it; and the races of men have come and gone, leaving behind them no trace, no vestige of their presence. It is an unending vision of sky and grass, and dim, distant, and ever-shifting horizon. "The seasons come and go, grass grows and flowers die, the fire leaps with tiger bounds along the earth, the snow lies still and quiet over hill and lake, the rivers rise and fall, but the rigid features of the wilderness rest unchanged. Lonely, silent, and impassive; heedless of man, season, or time, the weight of the Infinite seems to brood over it."

*To the unaccustomed voyager upon the great prairies of the Fur Land they bear no landmark. As well might he be left alone upon an uncharted sea. There are spaces where no tree or bush breaks the long monotony of the skyline, and he gets "out of sight of land." Standing in the middle of the plain, it presents the appearance of an immense sheet slightly raised at both ends; for the level prairie has the peculiarity of seemingly being elevated in whatever point of the compass one may turn, leaving the observer always in the depression. So clear is the atmosphere that the natural range of vision is greatly extended, and distant objects may be clearly and easily seen; which, anywhere else, it would be impossible to distinguish or define. It is almost like looking through a telescope. As a result, one finds it difficult to ascertain the relative distances of objects, and in consequence, to estimate their size. One makes the blunder of mistaking a buffalo for a crow, or, more frequently, a crow for a buffalo. If anyone is inclined to laugh at this, let him stand upon the seashore with a sailor, compare their distance estimate with his, and mark the difference. The eye ranges over a sea of short waving grass, without a single intervening object to afford the accustomed means of estimating relative size and distance. Left to himself, the inexperienced traveller finds it impossible to pursue a straight course and invariably begins to describe a circle by bearing continually to the left a weakness incomprehensible to the plain-dweller, who looks upon it as the most arrant stupidity. Unless he is an expert in the use of a compass, the possession of an instrument is likely to prove of little avail. If he takes the sun for a guide, he will find no theory quite so fallacious for an unskilled voyager; for, let him be as careful as he will, he can keep the sun in the position he requires, and yet go round in a circle. After one becomes accustomed to prairie or ocean travel, he learns almost intuitively to be guided by the sun, and can travel by it; but it cannot be learned by a neophyte in a single lesson.

Alone upon the illimitable plain, passing by, in his ignorance of prairie craft, those numberless milestones to safety which makes to the plain-dweller a great public highway, the lonely wanderer begins at length to realize that he is lost. It dawns upon him first in a sense of absolute bewilderment, a bewilderment so intense as to produce for the moment an almost perfect blank in the mind. He is incapable of summoning thought sufficient to realize anything to consider his present situation or take measures for future action. It is an indefinable state where all is chaotic; quickly succeeded, however, by an all-pervading terror, which chains thought and action in a manner nearly akin to death a vague, shapeless terror, imagining all possible horrible things, and painting mistily and hazily upon the numbed faculties nameless miseries yet to be experienced: a slow death by starvation or thirst; exposure to the devouring elements, or wild beasts; tortures of every imaginable description, always ending in a lingering death; and, above all, never more to look upon a human face, never more to share human sympathy a going out in utter darkness, perfectly alone. Then Despair joins Terror, adding her tortures; and lastly comes that all-powerful, all-pervading desire for human companionship which, blending with the former feelings, unhinges the intellect and renders the man insane.

In winter the dangers of the prairie-ocean deepen and become manifold. The deep snows obliterate all landmarks; today, the depressions are filled up; the ridges levelled; it is a dead surface of glistening white. Tomorrow, the shifting winds start the breakers going; they come at first in long even swells, the harbingers of the storm; they break into short chopping waves; they pile one upon another in tumultuous billows that freeze into motionless torpor. The face of the snowy sea is never the same; what is a landmark today is obliterated tomorrow. The peaceful summer scene that seemed only wanting the settler's hut, the yoke of oxen, and the wagon, to become the paradise of the husbandman, is lost in fierce storm and tempest and blinding snowdrift. But there come calms upon the prairie-ocean days when an infinite silence broods over the trackless expanse when the Mirage of the Desert plays strange freaks of inverted shoreland. It is the moment following the sunrise of such a day. A deeper stillness steals over the earth, and in its solemn hush colours of wondrous hue rise and spread along the horizon. The earth stands inverted in the sky; the capes and promontories of the prairie ocean are etched in deeper lines than graver ever drew upon the blue above; the poplar and aspen islands which dot the plain, float bottom upwards, anchored by great golden threads in a deep sea of emerald and orange and blue, mingled and interwoven together. Dwellings twenty and thirty miles distant, seem but a few rods away; the gliding dog-sleds, out of sight over the plain, are transferred to the sky, and seem to steer their sinuous courses through the clear ether; far away, seemingly beyond and above all, one broad flash of crimson light, the sun's first gift, reddens upward toward the zenith. But every moment brings a change; the day gathers closer to the earth, and wraps its impassive veil again over the sunken soul of the wilderness.

The mirages of the Plains are of wondrous beauty; every feature of the landscape seems limned with supernatural distinctness. We have seen, a moment after sunrise on a winter's morn, a little hamlet, thirty miles away, defined against the sky with a minuteness of detail not excelled by a steel engraving. We have seen men at nearly the same distance photographed so microscopically as to be able to describe their wearing apparel; and have distinguished the gambolings of dogs and other animals upon the snow. The ordinary phenomena of the mirage the simple drawing of a distant landscape near the spectator are of almost daily occurrence at some seasons of the year. Objects far beyond the range of the naked eye seem but a few rods distant; beautiful, waveless, nameless lakes glimmer in uncertain shore-line, and the shadow of inverted hill-top; the aspen groves seem standing with their trunks half buried in the water. At times, when the atmospheric conditions are perfect, the whole landscape within the range of vision seems but an optical delusion, a phantasmagoria; everything about one is uncertain, unreal. The mirage begins but a few yards distant from one, and shifts and merges into new forms, like the changing colors of a kaleidoscope. At such times the inexperienced traveller is all at sea; he pursues one ignis fatuus but involves himself in another, and becomes hopelessly and irretrievably lost.

To the plain-dweller, however, all the myriad features of the prairie are but so many guideboards pointing out his destination. He who runs may read. He has the sun by day, the moon and the stars by night. The turning of a blade of grass points him east and west; the bark of every tree north and south; the birds of the air forecast the weather for him. He sees a twig broken, and it tells the story of a passing animal; an upturned pebble on the beach marks the hour when the animal drank. He will distinguish the trail of a wagon over the prairie years after it has passed; the grass, he says, never grows the same. There is not a sign or sigh of the restless wind that is unintelligible to him. He will take a straight course in one direction over the plain, where no landmarks can be seen, on days when the sun is not shining, nor a breath of air stirring. Yet he is unable to explain the power he possesses and considers it quite a natural faculty. The half-breed or Indian never gets lost. If he is overtaken by storm upon the plain, his escape becomes simply a question of physical endurance.

But the measureless spaces of the Fur Land have other dangers and discomforts than those of uncharted immensity. To anyone who has not experienced the atmosphere of that hyperborean region the intensity of its coldness can scarcely be described. The sun, being so far southward, creates but little heat and the major part of the time is hidden behind sombre and leaden clouds. Before you, in every direction, the eye meets an unbroken waste of snow. Far away, perhaps, as the eye can reach, a faint line of scattered tree-tops may barely be distinguished, appearing no higher than fern bushes, marking the course of some prairie stream crossing your path, or running parallel with it not a thing of life or motion within the range of vision between the earth and sky, save the conveyance near you. The vastness and magnitude of the scene are overpowering. The immensity of the dead level is overwhelming. You are an atom in the gigantic panorama of frozen Nature about you.

Coming in from the rarefied atmosphere generated by sixty-seven degrees of frost, an extended and sentient forefinger, pointing in the direction of one's nose, instantly informs him of the frozen condition of that member. Then he recalls the fact that, fifteen minutes before, a slight pricking sensation was experienced at the end of the nose momentary, and in the hurry of the instant scarcely noticed. It was at that particular moment that it had frozen. Had he looked out, or rather down, he would have seen the ghostly spectacle; for firmer, colder, whiter, and harder than hard hearts, stony eyes, marble foreheads, or any other silicious similitude, stands forth prominently a frozen nose.

Some theorists might make a study of frozen noses which would be interesting. The inference might be connected with inference in infinite duration. One might read an essay from it on the eternal fitness of things, and history viewed by the light of frozen noses might reveal new secrets. For example, the inability of the Roman nose to stand the rigours of an Arctic winter limits the boundaries of the Roman empire; the Esquimaux nose is admirably fitted by nature, on account of its limited extent, for the climate in which it breathes, hence its assignment to hyperborean latitudes.

This, however, is by the way. One's nose was frozen, say, in traversing at a rapid walk a distance of not more than one hundred yards; for it is a "poudre" day. Sixty-seven degrees of frost, unaccompanied by wind, is endurable if you are taking vigorous exercise, and are warmly dressed; but let the faintest possible wind arise a gentle zephyr, a thing which just turns the smoke above the lodge-poles, or twists the feather detached from the wing of a passing bird then look out, for the chances are that every person met will extend that forefinger to mark some frozen spot on your reddish-blue countenance. This, however, is the extent of the courtesy; they do not follow out the Russian plan of rubbing out the plague spot with a handful of snow, probably out of deference to the limited amount of attrition most noses stand without peeling.

A Poudre day, with the temperature in the thirties below, is a thing to be spoken of in a whisper. Not a soul leaves the fireside who can avoid it; to wander away from well-known landmarks is to run the risk of never returning. Every winter half a score of men walk off into the whirling particles of snow and drift, and the morning sun finds a calm and peaceful face turned up to the sky, with its life frozen out, and its form hard and unimpressible, as if carved from granite. The early morning of such a day may be clear and still; but upon close inspection, the atmosphere will be found filled with crystal, scintillating, minute, almost imperceptible particles of snow, drifting on wings of air, impalpable and fleeting. Soon after daybreak, the wind begins to rise. Off to the north rolls a little eddy of snow, a mere puff, not larger than one's hand. Another follows; miniature coils circle over the smooth surface of the snow and sink back imperceptibly to the level again. Drifts of larger proportions roll over the expanse until the atmosphere becomes thick with the frozen particles. All landmarks are lost, and the range of vision is limited to a few feet. The wind howls like a raging beast, and the merciless cold congeals the very heart's blood.

It is the sirocco of the North! On such days travelling is particularly toilsome and dangerous. The state of the atmosphere renders respiration difficult, increasing the action of the heart, and producing a slight but constant dizziness. All landmarks are obliterated, and unless one is thoroughly conversant with the country, he is liable to lose his way and be caught at nightfall without shelter or fire. But the most dangerous phase of travel is the tendency toward inertia. Fatigued by the least effort, paralyzed by the cold, perhaps frostbitten in many places, despite every precaution, the traveller is likely to give up in despair. "I cannot "and" I will not" become synonymous terms. All effort is useless; the attention is distracted by the necessity of fighting continually to keep face and hands free from frostbite; keeping the road in so blinding a tempest seems to be impossible; the animals one is driving face about in harness, and refuse to proceed; and so, beset on every hand, with an intellect benumbed and paralyzed by the intense cold, and a body overcome by physical inertia, one gives up all effort as only adding unnecessary pain, and sits down to be bound hand and foot by the final stupor. Five minutes' rest in some snowdrift on the plain is enough, in certain conditions of fatigue and temperature, to paralyze the energies of the strongest man, and make him welcome any fate if only let alone to take his ease. We recall more than one time when we would have given all we possessed simply to have been permitted to lie down in a snowbank for ten minutes; and left to ourselves, we should certainly have done so. Some of the best dog drivers on the plains have related to us similar experiences, where the inertia of a Poudre day on the prairie seemed too intense to be resisted. Persons who know the prairie only in summer or autumn have but little notion of its winter fierceness and desolation. To get a true conception of the life in these solitudes they must go toward the close of November into the treeless waste; there, amid wreck and tempest and biting cold, and snowdrifts so dense that earth and heaven seem wrapped together in undistinguishable chaos, they will see. a sight as different from their summer ideal as the day is from night.

But, though not so dangerous, the still days are the coldest. There are every winter a dozen or more days so magically still that all the usual sounds of nature seem to be suspended; when the ice cracks miles away with a report like that of a cannon; when the breaking of a twig reaches one like the falling of a tree; Aften one's footsteps, clad in soft moccasins, come back from the yielding snow like the crunching of an iron heel through gravel; when every artificial sound is exaggerated a hundredfold, and Nature seems to start at every break in the intense silence. The atmosphere is as clear as crystal, and the range of vision seems to be unlimited. Seen from a window, from the cozy limits of an almost hermetically-sealed room, the clear sunshine and crisp freshness of the day appear to invite one forth to enjoy its seeming mildness. But the native knows better than to venture out. A fifteen-minute walk in that clear ether is a fifteen-minute fight for existence. A sudden prick and one's nose is frozen; next, go both cheeks; one raises his hand to rub away the ghastly white spots, only to add his fingers to the list of icy members. Rub as you will, run hard, and swing your arms all to no purpose; the little white spots increase in size until the whole face is covered with waxen leprosy. The breath congeals almost upon leaving the mouth, and the icy vapour falls instead of rising. Expectorate, and instantly there is a lump of ice where the spittle fell. Ah, it is cold beyond belief. The spirit registers a temperature away down in the forties. We have seen a stalwart man, after a few hours' exposure on such a day, walk into the room where every footfall clanked upon the floor like blocks of wood clapping together; his feet frozen solid as lumps of ice.

On such a day one may stand for hours in the snow with moccasined feet, and leave no trace of moisture behind. The snow is granulated like sand; there is no adhesiveness in it. It is as difficult to draw a sled through it as through a bed of sand. Slipperiness has gone out of it. A horse gives out in a few minutes. And yet the aspect of all nature is calm, still, and equable as on a Mayday.

One of these still nights upon the prairie is unspeakably awful. The cold is measured by degrees as much below the freezing point as ordinary summer temperature is above it. Scraping away the snow, the blankets and robes are spread down. Then you dress for bed. Your heaviest coat is donned, and the hood carefully pulled up over the heavy fur cap upon your head; the largest moccasins and thickest socks are drawn on (common leather boots would freeze one's feet in a twinkling); huge leather mittens, extending to the elbows, and trebly lined, come next; you lie down and draw all the available robes and blankets about you. Then begins the cold. The frost comes out of the clear grey sky with still, silent rigour. The spirit in the thermometer placed by your head sinks into the thirties and forties below zero. Just when the dawn begins to break in the east it will not infrequently be at fifty. You are tired, perhaps, and sleep comes by the mere force of fatigue. But never from your waking brain goes the consciousness of cold. You lie with tightly- folded arms and upgathered knees, and shiver beneath all your coverings until forced to rise and seek safety by the fire. If you are a novice and have no fire, count your beads and say your prayers, for your sleep will be long.

This low temperature, however, is vastly preferable to, and more enjoyable than the shifting climate of the lake regions. One always knows just what to expect, and prepares accordingly, and we doubt whether the feeling of being cold all through is not experienced on the levee at New Orleans as intensely as in the North. The air is crisp and entirely free from moisture, and there is an utter absence of that penetrating, marrow-chilling quality which makes winter life further south a burden. No sudden changes pile cold upon cold and keep one's lungs in continual congestion. The climate, while cold, is equable. From November till April one knows that he can never go out without abundant wrappings. Just what constitutes an abundance varies considerably in amount. The native attires himself in a pair of corduroy trousers, a calico shirt, an unlined coat, very much open at the breast to show the figured shirt, a fur cap, moccasins, and a pair of duffel socks without legs. Thus appareled, he is ready to face all day the roughest weather of the winter. But then he is continually in motion and possessed of an unimpaired circulation. The foreigner, not to go into the minutiae of his wardrobe, simply puts on all the clothing he can conveniently walk in, then closely watches the end of his nose. As for the aboriginal occupants of the country, little Indians may be seen any day running about in the snow before the lodge doors, with the thermometer thirty degrees below zero, clad only in their own tawny integuments.

The effect of the interminable winter landscapes of the Fur Land upon the mind of the newcomer is melancholy in the extreme; more especially upon the still days, where an occasional dwelling or tent is embraced in the desolate scene. No wind breaks the silence, or shakes the lumps of snow off the aspens or willows; and nothing is heard save the occasional cracking of the trees, as the severe frost acts upon the branches. The dwelling, if any, stands in a little hollow, where the willows and poplars are luxuriant enough to afford a shelter from the north wind. Just in front, a small path leads to the river, of which an extended view is had through the opening, showing the fantastic outlines of huge blocks and mounds of ice relieved against the white snow. A huge chasm, partially filled with fallen trees and mounds of snow, yawns on the left of the house; and the ruddy sparks of fire which issue from its chimney-top throw this and the surrounding forest in deeper gloom. All around lies the unending plain, wrapped in funeral cerements of ghastly white, or dotted here and there with slender trees, which seem to bend and shiver as they stand with their feet in the snow.

With the advent of a "blizzard," however, all still life ends and chaos begins. A blizzard is the white squall of the prairies, the simoon of the plains. Like its brother of the Sahara, when it comes all animate nature bows before it. The traveller prostrates himself in the snow, if he is of the initiated, and, covering his head, waits until it passes by. To pursue a different course, and journey on is to be lost. Let me give you an instance which may serve to illustrate its power and the dangers of travel in the Fur Land:

In February 1869, I was called by urgent business from my residence near the foot of Lake Winnipeg to an interior post, distant some two hundred and fifty miles. This call involved no ordinary journey. It meant a weary, exhaustive journey of ten or twelve days across an unbroken prairie, without shelter of any kind, without the probability of encountering a single human being throughout the entire route, and the almost certainty of being overtaken by some of the terrible storms prevalent during that season. But the call was imperative, and I set about preparing for the journey.

The preparations were of a primitive sort, there being but two methods of travel admissible at that season the one by dog-sled, the other with horses attached to light carioles. The outfit embraced a combination of the two by the selection of a commodious dog-sled, with trams in which to place a horse for me, and a light cariole for my companion; for attendant I must have over that desolate route. Choosing a stalwart half-breed, accustomed to the rough life of the prairies, and inured to all manner of hardship from infancy, we started one bitterly cold day toward the end of the month. In the forward conveyance were placed provisions for ourselves and provender for the animals, while my sled was comfortably furnished with the huge bundle of robes and blankets requisite for our comfort and even safety in camp. Into this shoe-like sled, I fondly hoped to creep and glide smoothly to my journey's end. But the intensity of the cold soon disenchanted me of that illusion; for we had proceeded but a few miles when I was forced to take to my feet and run after the sled to avoid being frozen. Even then the severity of the cold was such that, when jumping on the sled for a momentary respite, on reaching the ground again my blood would seem frozen, the muscles refuse to act, and it would require a sharp trot of a mile or more before I could recover usual warmth.

Our rate of travel was about twenty-five miles a day. The route pursued was that commonly taken by the voyageurs in their summer trips, and in many of our proposed camping places, the fuel had been exhausted to supply the numberless trains which had come and gone in the years before. This necessitated, at times, continued travel for an entire day without stopping.

At night, we descended the banks of the river, pitching our camp upon the second terrace, in some spot equally convenient to wood and water. Then, making an excavation in the snow, logs would be heaped up, until our fire was sufficiently large to afford a genial warmth throughout the night. Our sleds turned across the head, and blankets spread upon the snow formed a bed into which, with caps and overcoats on, we were at all times ready to creep. Thus we journeyed on until the closing of the seventh day brought us to the crossing of Elm River, a small stream upon our route.

The day had been warmer than any experienced since starting. In the afternoon the snow had melted sufficiently to wet our moccasins thoroughly, and by its softness to impede our travel; so that the distance made had not been so great as on other days, while the fatigue and discomfort had been greater. During the day we had fallen in with a Mr. Wheeler, a gentleman from Montana, with whom I had been previously acquainted; a man of huge and burly physique, capable of immense endurance. He was journeying in our direction, having come up on the mail-sled the day before, and gladly availed himself of an invitation to encamp with us for the night. It was nearly dark on our arrival at the river, we did not think it necessary to build a fire, both on account of the warmth of the evening, and the quality of the fuel, of which we were unable to find any except wet, green elm, hardly ignitable. So, having eaten a cold supper, we set about our preparations for the night.

Elm River, like all prairie streams, is narrow and runs in a channel much below the surface of the plain, having, in consequence, high banks, which in most cases are precipitous but on this stream sloped back, with only moderate abruptness, to the level prairie. It was on the farther bank that we selected our place of rest for the night, without shelter, of course, but sufficiently below the level to be out of the sweep of the wind, as we thought. The half-breed and myself had for bedding four large buffalo robes and four blankets, and our custom was to spread one robe and a blanket under us and use the remainder as covering. The amount under was sufficient, owing to the snow preventing the cold from reaching us from the earth, and rather increasing the amount of heat than otherwise. Mr. Wheeler had two robes and two blankets. We lay with our feet toward the stream, Mr. Wheeler placing himself immediately across the head of our bed if so I may call wrapped in his bedding.

I am thus minute in the description of our positions and bedding, to more thoroughly impress the reader with the intensity of the storm which followed.

It was about six o'clock in the evening when, after taking off our wet shoes, we retired, with overcoats and caps on, as customary. The sky at that time exhibited no extraordinary appearance, and the temperature, if anything, indicated snow. Being fatigued with the labours of the day, I was soon asleep and did not awaken until about half-past nine o'clock, when I was aroused by the tossings of Mr. Wheeler in his efforts to adjust his bedding more comfortably. I observed that it had grown colder and that a sharp wind had sprung up, which seemed to come down the channel of the stream instead of across it, as we had anticipated in the selection of a camp. However, having the guide on the windward side, I thought but little of it and was soon asleep.

I awoke again, as near as I can judge, in about an hour and a half; this time from a general sensation of cold which enveloped me. I found both my companions awake, on speaking to them, and that Mr. Wheeler had been unable to sleep at all, owing to the cold, as he lay with his head to the wind, and could not prevent it from entering under the covering. It was blowing a perfect gale, and the air was so filled with whirling particles of snow that we could not distinguish our animals at a distance of a few yards. From that time forward it was impossible to sleep. We did everything we could devise to ward off the cold, and the half-breed seemed especially anxious that I should not suffer; covered me with care, and shielded me as much as possible with his person. But the chill seemed to have taken complete possession of me. I could not restrain my desire to shake and shiver, although knowing that it augmented the difficulty. For a time we conversed on the severity of the storm, and our error in not having built a fire, but gradually relapsed into silence; each one engaged in endeavouring to protect himself, or moodily brooding over his sufferings.

Real physical suffering it had now become. The skin on my arms and limbs felt quite cold to the touch, and my bones grew heavy and chill as bars of iron. Yet, I had no fear, or thought even, of freezing to death. On that point, I simply expected to shiver until morning would give us light sufficient to build a fire. The mind, however, was unnaturally acute. Thought on every subject was very vivid and distinct. I remember to have received a better insight into several subjects which occurred to me than at any previous time and was able to think more rapidly. This was, I suppose, owing to the increased and enforced vitality necessary to sustain life, and to the stimulated condition of the brain under the suffering arising from the cold. Everything was clear and distinct. I thought over the business I was upon and studied the minutest details of it, all with remarkable rapidity. Occasionally my companion spoke to me or touched me gently with his arm, but neither served to break up the general current of thought.

All through this outer surface of thought, however, there ran an undertow of suffering. I was conscious of growing colder; my limbs, especially, felt more chill and heavy. I began also to experience a peculiar sensation, as if the flesh, for the depth of a quarter or half an inch, was frozen solid, and the congealment gradually extended to the bone. The bone itself at times felt like a red-hot bar. I noticed, further, increased labour in the beating of the heart, and could distinguish the pulsations quite easily. At every throb, I could feel the blood seemingly strike the end of the veins and arteries in the extremities. This after a time produced a slight dizziness in the head and a laborious respiration. As time went on, the sensation of surface-freezing extended to the trunk of the body, and my thoughts grew less connected, changing frequently from subject to subject, and narrowing down to my sufferings. I noticed, furthermore, that the half-breed spoke more frequently than before, and shook me occasionally. Still, I had no thought of danger and even laughed at Mr. Wheeler exclaiming, '' Men, men, I believe I am freezing to death!

"However, during this whole period of two hours or more, I could not prevent a continual shivering and shaking. I endeavoured several times to control my nerves and remain quietly in one position but without avail. At the end of that time I noticed that I was becoming quieter; but, while physically so, my mind was suffering more. My whole idea was to get warm. My body was cold all over frozen in, I felt, to an equal depth in every place. I clung closer to my companion in the vain hope of producing more warmth. Oh, if I could only get warm again! I felt that I could willingly barter every earthly possession to be warm. I thought bitterly of our culpable carelessness in not building a fire the evening previous, and of the joy it would be to sit before such blazing fires as we had on nights now gone.

If I could only get warm again! Was there not some way in which we could get to a fire? Could not the half-breed build one? If he would only try, I would give him anything; nothing was too dear if I could only feel warm. There was a particular room in my brother's house, with a large open fireplace in it. If it were only evening, and we were gathered about a bright, cheerful fire, how nice and warm I could get! One sometimes goes into a hotel sitting room in winter, and they have a huge box stove, made to take in cord-wood whole. What a genial warmth and heat there is! What a glow there is over the entire room! Oh, if I could only get warm like that! I would be aroused at times out of thoughts like these by my companion, who now took to pushing me, and constantly warning me against falling asleep. Mr. Wheeler, also, was continually talking of his freezing and assured us both that his ears were already frozen.

For the first time, I became conscious of the danger we were in. Strange to say, it did not affect me. I felt no alarm at the possibility of being overtaken by death, I was so cold if I could only get warm again! This was the burden of my thought. Yet I was fully conscious of the danger. I knew if death overtook me, in exactly what shape it would come. And I knew, furthermore, that I had already passed through the first stage, and was nearly through the second. Still, with this well-defined knowledge of what was before me, I was indifferent to the pangs of death. I only wanted to be warm; I felt that in some way I must get warm. I thought over the prospect of a speedy death indifferently. There was no trouble about the future at all I did not think of it. The physical suffering and stupor were too great to admit of it.

Twice before in my life, I had been in momentary expectation of death; and one experience of the horrors of dissolution was the same as this. That was a case of dengue fever. While perfectly conscious in the last moments told they were my last, and asked if I was prepared to undergo them I felt the same sensation as here; if I were only comfortable, I would willingly go. I knew a gentleman once who told me that, when in a similar situation on the point of death his only feeling was one of hunger; no thought or fear for the future at all, if only his appetite could be satisfied. But how different that other experience, when called upon to face death in full bodily vigour! The terrors which encompassed me are indescribable.

Continuing in the consciousness of danger, and yet thinking only of my suffering and desire to become warm, after the lapse of an hour, probably, I began to get warm that is, the sensation was one of warmth and comfort, but was in reality, a species of numbness. I felt my flesh in several places, and it produced a prickly, numb feeling, similar to that experienced when a limb is asleep. I was comfortable and happy, because I was warm, and grew indignant with my companion for his unwearied thumps on my body, and the continual answers he required to his questions; I wanted to be let alone. Fully conscious that, if I went to sleep I would never awaken again, I was perfectly willing to go to sleep. Even then I remember thinking of poor travellers, lost in the snow, being brought in by St. Bernard dogs.

But I was warm and laughed silently at Mr. Wheeler's complaints of freezing. I paid no further attention to the shakings of my companion or his questions but gathered myself up, and lay thinking how comfortable I was. Pretty soon I began to doze, then awaken suddenly, when I received a more severe blow than usual. Then I awoke to see the half-breed sitting up and bending eagerly over my face and hear a few muttered words to Wheeler and then a sense of comfort and oblivion.

Now I was dead. Sensibility had left me. It was evident that I would suffer no more. In thirty or forty minutes, an hour at farthest, my body would die. Then what?

That I should awaken with a bright fire before me, and be wrapped in robes and blankets, seemed the most natural thing in the world to me. For the matter of that, it appeared to me that when I had fallen asleep I had anticipated just such a consummation of things, and it was fully half an hour before I began in the least to comprehend that anything out of the ordinary channel had occurred. True, I knew vaguely and indistinctly that the half-breed was talking of Mr. Wheeler being lost, but the matter seemed to be no affair of min", and created no surprise. I looked at him chafing my arms and legs and simply felt that it was quite right and natural that it should be so.

Gradually, however, I regained consciousness sufficiently to understand that, finding me fast freezing, and impossible to arouse, he had gone, at the imminent risk of his own life, some three hundred yards farther down the stream, and, finding a dry and partially rotten log, had built a fire; had then returned to find me unconscious, and to carry me, robes and all, to the fire. The few words he had addressed to Mr. Wheeler before leaving me showed that he, too, was fast lapsing into the same state, and, when I was carried in safety to the fire, had returned to find Mr. Wheeler gone having awakened from his stupor sufficiently to realize that he was alone, and to wander off, half frenzied, in search of us.

These facts being at last impressed upon my mind by the excited and voluble half-breed, I urged him to renew the search for our lost companion; but he positively refused. He explained that, in doing what he had already done, he had jeopardized his own life, and had frozen both hands and feet considerably; that, while paid to care for me, he had nothing to do with Mr. Wheeler. He urged that if he left the bank of the stream, he was likely to be lost, the snow at once obliterating all trace of his tracks. I ordered him to go, begged him to go, but without avail. An offer of five golden sovereigns met with a like refusal. At length, I told him that, if he would find Mr. Wheeler, dead or alive, I would give him a good horse. For this consideration, he went. In twenty minutes he returned, leading the unfortunate man, badly frozen, whom he had found running wildly about in a circle on the prairie. He was kept from the fire with some difficulty, until his hands, feet, and face, were thawed out with water, but did not recover his mind until six hours later. From frequent personal observation, I am led to believe that nearly everyone who freezes to death upon the prairies, or elsewhere, becomes insane before death.

*Having been thoroughly warmed and recruited by a steaming-hot breakfast, we followed the river to avoid losing our way, and in the afternoon reached a Hudson's Bay Company's post. Here we were informed that the temperature had fallen, during the previous night, to forty-five degrees below zero! We remained in that hospitable shelter for two days, during which the terrific storm raged with unabated fury. Some dozen Indians and half-breeds perished upon the route over which we had just passed.

After this lapse of time, I recall my thoughts and feelings with much more distinctness and accuracy than I could for some time immediately after the events related. No one who has passed through great danger realizes fully the extent of it at once. It requires time to impress the memory with all its circumstances. What my feelings were at this un- expected preservation from the dreadful fate which threatened me, it is impossible to express.