Last Tuesday the wind blew a gale at seventeen degrees below zero, and I thought I would see what I could stand. I wear now a union suit of fleece-lined underwear, a pair of blanket-lined canvas trousers, and a heavy wool shirt, with a pair of thin wool socks and a pair of lumber-man's socks inside my muckluks. I put on a leather corduroy coat and my heavy wool hood, with a scarf around my neck and across my face. I was gone, down among the sand dunes, about an hour and a half. The wind had an unmolested sweep there and I had good opportunity to test my clothes. It did not penetrate my clothing a particle, and I was perfectly warm all except my face. The wind pierced like a sword right through my scarf and wool hood. When I got home the lobe of my left ear was frost-bitten and also the same side of my nose. Both sections of my countenance are now very sore and are peeling off. I should have worn a canvas hood outside of my wool hood. Canvas keeps the wind out better than anything else. Furs are the best clothing in this country, but are very scarce among these poor Indians, and but few of our company have any. Again we regret not having traded for furs at Cape Prince of Wales. But we do not suffer by any means. We have clothing enough to last for years. We are not so fortunate in the provision line. However, should we strike it rich enough, lying around in our warm cabin, to make it pay another winter, it will be an easy matter to send the "Penelope" back to San Francisco for another load. The "Penelope"! What will be her fate when the ice breaks up in the spring no one can foretell. At the mercy of the unlimited and savage ice of Bering Sea, a frail little craft, no longer than the frontage of a city lot. We do not think or speak of the "Penelope" very often. We may be orphans in the spring.
CHAPTER XI.
D
DEC. 8.—The beautiful snow has come at last and to-day it is six inches deep on the level. The trees are loaded and the river and meadows are painfully white. We must get out our snow-glasses, of which we have an abundance for all. Our condition seems to resemble that of the Swiss Family Robinson. We find everything we desire in our cabin, if not in our "wreck." We have no wreck. The north wind has been blowing a gale for days, which at last amounted to a blizzard. I went across the river in the teeth of the wind, just crawling along on the slippery ice, but the fun was in coming back. I had but to keep my balance and the wind did the rest.
We have been having some strange experiences with the Eskimos the past week, which has introduced us to more of their interesting superstitions.
Sunday evening, while we were all engaged in reading, or quiet talk, we were suddenly startled by a loud groaning outside. As the gruesome sound grew nearer we scarcely knew what to expect, but were prepared to give relief to sick or wounded human beings of whatever type. We rushed to the door, to find Charley, the Indian medicine man from the native village above. We thought at first that he was but practicing his arts, but when he was brought in groaning and sobbing we realized that he was really very sick, and the doctor pronounced it pneumonia. Soon Charley's family followed, and one of the little children was nearly frozen. The wind was blowing a gale, and Charley told us that he had come down from his igloo, four miles.
A few days before one of his wives had died, she who had eaten the bear gravy, and, according to Indian superstition that a person who lives in a house after another has died in it will surely die himself, he had moved out of his warm dugout into a tent. Of course it was very cold in the tent, and Sunday morning one of his little girls died as the result of exposure. So Charley could no longer live in either the tent or the igloo, and he was thrown out into the pitiless storm with his other wife and three remaining children. They went to a neighboring igloo, but a native would as soon commit suicide as shelter any of the family of the deceased in his house or enter the house where one has died. As a last resort Charley came to our cabin, and no doubt the whole family would have died but for this.
Of course we warmed and fed all of them, and the doctor attended upon Charley, who was too sick to object to another medicine man's treatment. Several of us then went over to the church cabin and, by stopping the fireplace and putting up a camp stove, we made it a comfortable hospital. Charley is there now. Not a single Indian has been inside our cabin since Charley was here.
Indian Charley and Family.