Of winter dark and drear;
Just because a snow-flake
Has fallen on his forehead,
He must go and fancy
’Tis winter all the year.”
“Well, it is, pretty nearly,” comes the quick rejoinder. “I have seen it snow every day during the last week of August, and the seasons which do not give us frosts in July are rare. When I first came to Baker’s park I asked a miner what sort of a climate reigned here. ‘It’s nine months winter and three months mighty late in the fall!’ was his laconic report, and I have found it a true one.
“You see,” he continued, “winter really begins about the first of November. The superintendent who hasn’t got his supplies at his mine-house by that time had better hurry, for some morning a storm will begin which will drop three or four feet of snow on a level, and fill all the small gulches full. Then his chance of packing anything up the mountain is gone. In 1880, several foremen were surprised in that way, but the first storm came remarkably early,—the 8th of October,—and on the 11th the snow was five feet deep. Later there was an open spell, though, when deficiencies could be made up, but that was only luck.”
“But,” said the Madame, solicitously, “how can men live in those little cabins, away up there, all through the terrible winter? I should think they would freeze, or that avalanches would sweep them away.”
“Oh, both those misfortunes can be guarded against. The houses are very tight and snug, and fuel is carefully stored away. Then, too, the work is carried on underground, where the temperature is practically changeless the year ’round, and the men have little occasion to go out of doors unless they wish to, for the entrance to the mine is under the shelter of the house-roof. Then, too, the fact is, that bleak and thoroughly arctic as it looks, the mercury will not fall so low, or at least will not average as low, up at timber line on Sultan, as it will down here in town. I suppose the excess of dampness in the valley makes the difference, which is more apparent to our feelings than even to the thermometer.”
“But the snow-slides are sometimes terrific, are they not?” is asked.