Snow storms come up suddenly, and when the wind whirls the sheet of fallen flakes, all points of the compass are soon lost even to the well tried woodsman. The description of a blizzard may form an interesting page in fiction, but the experience adds to gray hairs and unending memory.
In January, 1906, Rev. Frank Higgins was crossing Red Lake, when the snow began to fall. The uninterrupted wind, as it swept down the long stretch of ice, caught the loose snow and filled the air with its choking mass. The wooded shore was soon hidden by the veiling snow and all sense of direction had disappeared. Down the twenty miles of the lake the crystal clouds swept with increasing volume. Night was coming on, and yet the darkness could scarcely add to the helplessness of the wanderers.
To the Father, who ruleth the rain of summer and the snow of winter, the missionary raised his prayer for help, and what man could not do was done by the leading of the ever-helpful God. He who guideth the stars in their courses led the lost to the wooded shore.
On the shore not a human habitation was to be seen, neither did the minister know the direction to the nearest village. For several hours he wandered in the unbroken forest, and near the low hour of midnight he came to the miserable shack of an Indian squaw. His scanty knowledge of the Indian tongue came into happy use and the lonely inhabitant granted him permission to sleep on the floor until morning came and the blizzard had spent itself.
When the Camp Mission first began to distribute literature, it caused a change in the means of transportation, for there were heavy boxes of old magazines to carry to the camps and horses were needed to haul the loads. Mr. Higgins had noticed that there was little to amuse the men of the camps and nothing helpful for their leisure hours. He therefore wrote to the churches in the state asking them to collect old magazines and ship them to him for distribution. The churches responded and soon he and his helpers were distributing literature to about one hundred camps. From five to seven tons of magazines are distributed in a season. Great good has come from this feature of the work; it gave the mind another channel for vent, the filthy conversation so common in the camps has largely passed away, and through reading the men are less inclined to quarrels. It has been noticed by the logging contractors that even the illiterate find recreation in the illustrations and many a dark hour has been brightened to the men who never read a line.
On going into a camp which he was visiting for the first time, Mr. Higgins held his service and afterwards distributed his magazines. Immediately there was a rush for the reading matter and then for the wannigan to buy lanterns by which to read. In a few minutes the clerk had sold every lantern he had in stock and could have disposed of several more, had they been on hand.
"What are you doing?" asked the cranky clerk when the Sky Pilot entered the office a little later. "Are you trying to turn the bunkshack into a night school? I've sold every lantern in the place and the Jacks are crying like fiends for more."
"I've only distributed a few magazines so the boys can read a little improving matter," said the minister.
"Lumberjacks improving their minds?" sarcastically replied "the guy that splashes ink." "This neck of the woods will have a university extension course next, if this thing keeps up."
"You surely don't object to the boys reading?" asked the minister.