Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/137

Rh As the sun sinks early to the horizon the owls call to one another and issue from their retreats, whirring softly among the loaded branches. The squirrels are safe in their holes, but let the incautious snowbird beware, lest he be snatched incontinently from his perch. Snake-like the mink in his dark glistening coat winds among the willows by the waterside, on murder bent. The petulant bark of the dogfox is hushed as he too moves with stealthy tread in search of prey. The stars come out, the shadows blacken, hunters and hunted alike are still. Save for the musical twang of splitting ice, now and then, along the river, a measureless silence descends upon the world. As the cold strengthens, in the northern heavens the pale aurora lifts its quivering arch.

The extreme cold is felt always in still weather. As the wind rises, so does the temperature. When sixty-eight below zero of Fahrenheit implies a calm, a rise of thirty-eight degrees is probable as the wind rises. While it does not often snow at this temperature, the wind may carry so much fine loose already-fallen snow along the surface of the open tundra or the river that it has the effect of a blinding snow-storm, against which nor man nor beast may stand. This is the dreaded 'poorga' of the Russian, the 'blizzard' of the western prairies. Here the ignorant gold seeker, ill-clothed, ill-shod, wearing himself out by vain efforts to withstand the forces of nature, often meets his fate. But who has heard of a Yukon Indian perishing in a poorga? The man of the Yukon had adapted his dress, his snowshoes, his tools, his movements, to his surroundings. Like the beasts of the valley, whose skins he wore, he knew how to seek or build a shelter which would shield him from the blast and keep him safe, even if uncomfortable, until the elements wearied of their rage. The humming of the wind in the swaying spruces, the rattle of flying bits of ice or dead branches blown over the crusted snow, the complaining cry of the hawk-owl as his hollow tree quivered under the gusts, all told of the progress of the storm to him brought up to listen to and understand the voices of the wilderness.

And when at last the storm had spent itself, the traveler came forth from his temporary shelter to beat the snow crystals from his garments and look upon a world swept clean of litter, sparkling white under the winter sunbeams. The grouse from her tunnel in the snowdrift, the squirrel from his hollow log, the snowbirds from their retreats beneath the half-buried branches of the spruce, all issued forth upon their daily sustenance intent. The world was a good world, after all, and the singing gale merely a break in its monotony.

Where the tenderfoot, untrained, undisciplined and terrified, found only a demoniac nature striving to overwhelm a shivering victim, those to the manner born might feel a power, a majesty, an unswerving flight, as of the passing of a messenger of God.