Winter—Sleeping in the Snow—A Night Alarm.
 
Summer passed away, autumn passed away, and winter came. So did Christmas, and so did Jasper’s marriage-day.
 
Now the reader must understand that there is a wonderful difference between the winter in that part of the North American wilderness called Rupert’s land, and winter in our own happy island.
 
Winter out there is from six to eight months long. The snow varies from three to four feet deep, and in many places it drifts to fifteen or twenty feet deep. The ice on the lakes and rivers is sometimes above six feet thick; and the salt sea itself, in Hudson’s Bay, is frozen over to a great extent. Nothing like a thaw takes place for many months at a time, and the frost is so intense that it is a matter of difficulty to prevent one’s-self from being frost-bitten. The whole country, during these long winter months, appears white, desolate, and silent.
 
Yet a good many of the birds and animals keep moving about, though most of them do so at night, and do not often meet the eye of man. The bear goes to sleep all winter in a hole, but the wolf and the fox prowl about the woods at night. Ducks, geese, and plover no longer enliven the marshes with their wild cries; but white grouse, or ptarmigan, fly about in immense flocks, and arctic hares make many tracks in the deep snow. Still, these are quiet creatures, and they scarcely break the deep dead silence of the forests in winter.
 
At this period the Indian and the fur-trader wrap themselves in warm dresses of deer-skin, lined with the thickest flannel, and spend their short days in trapping and shooting. At night the Indian piles logs on his fire to keep out the frost, and adds to the warmth of his skin-tent by heaping snow up the outside of it all round. The fur-trader puts double window-frames and double panes of glass in his windows, puts on double doors, and heats his rooms with cast-iron stoves.
 
But do what he will, the fur-trader cannot keep out the cold altogether. He may heat the stove red-hot if he will, yet the water in the basins and jugs in the corner of his room will be frozen, and his breath settles on the window-panes, and freezes there so thickly that it actually dims the light of the sun. This crust on the windows inside is sometimes an inch thick!
 
Thermometers in England are usually filled with quicksilver. In Rupert’s Land quicksilver would be frozen half the winter, so spirit of wine is used instead, because that liquid will not freeze with any ordinary degree of cold. Here, the thermometer sometimes falls as low as zero. Out there it does not rise so high as zero during the greater part of the winter, and it is often as low as twenty, thirty, and even fifty degrees below zero.
 
If the wind should blow when the cold is intense, no man dare face it—he would be certain to be frost-bitten. The parts of the body that are most easily frozen are the ears, the chin, the cheek-bones, the nose, the heels, fingers, and toes. The freezing of any part begins with a pricking sensation. When this occurs at the point of your nose, it is time to give earnest attention to that feature, else you run the risk of having it shortened. The best way to recover it is to rub it well, and to keep carefully away from the fire.
 
The likest thing to a frost-bite is a burn. In fact, the two things are almost the same. In both cases the skin or flesh is destroyed, and becomes a sore. In the one case it is destroyed by fire, in the other by frost; but in both it is painful and dangerous, according to the depth of the frost-bite or the burn. Many a poor fellow loses joints of his toes and fingers—some have even lost their hands and feet by frost. Many have lost their lives. But the most common loss is the loss of the skin of the point of the nose, cheek-bones, and chin—a loss which is indeed painful, but can be replaced by nature in the course of time.
 
Of course curious appearances are produced by such intense cold. On going out into the open air, the breath settles on the breast, whiskers, and eyebrows in the shape of hoar-frost; and men who go out in the morning for a ramble with black or brown locks, return at night with what appears to be grey hair—sometimes with icicles hanging about their faces. Horses and cattle there are seldom without icicles hanging from their lips and noses in winter.
 
Poor Mr Pemberton was much troubled in this way. He was a fat and heavy man, and apt to perspire freely. When he went out to shoot in winter, the moisture trickled down his face and turned his whiskers into two little blocks of ice; and he used to be often seen, after a hard day’s walk, sitting for a long time beside the stove, holding his cheeks to the fire, and gently coaxing the icy blocks to let go their hold!
 
But for all this, the long winter of those regions is a bright enjoyable season. The cold is not felt so much as one would expect, because it is not damp, and the weather is usually bright and sunny.
 
From what I have said, the reader will understand that summer in those regions is short and very hot; the winter long and very cold. Both seasons have their own peculiar enjoyments, and, to healthy men, both are extremely agreeable.
 
I have said that Jasper’s marriage-day had arrived. New Year’s Day was fixed for his union with the fair and gentle Marie. As is usual at this festive season of the year, it was arranged that a ball should be given at the fort in the large hall to all the people that chanced to be there at the time.
 
Old Laroche had been sent to a small hut a long day’s march from the fort, where he was wont to spend his time in trapping foxes. He was there alone, so, three days before New Year’s Day, Jasper set out with Arrowhead to visit the old man, and bear him company on his march back to the fort.
 
There are no roads in that country. Travellers have to plod through the wilderness as they best can. It may not have occurred to my reader that it would be a difficult thing to walk for a day through snow so deep, that, at every step, the traveller would sink the whole length of his leg. The truth is, that travelling in Rupert’s Land in winter would be impossible but for a machine which enables men to walk on the surface of the snow without sinking more than a few inches. This machine is the snowshoe. Snow-shoes vary in size and form in different parts of the country, but they are all used for the same purpose. Some are long and narrow; others are nearly round. They vary in size from three to six feet in length, and from eight to twenty inches in breadth. They are extremely light—made of a frame-work of hard wood, and covered with a network of deer-skin, which, while it prevents the wearer from sinking more than a few inches, allows any snow that may chance to fall on the top of the shoe to pass through the netting.
 
The value of this clumsy looking machine may be imagined, when I say that men with them will easily walk twenty, thirty, and even forty miles across a country over which they could not walk three miles without such helps.
 
It was a bright, calm, frosty morning when Jasper and his friend set out on their short journey. The sun shone brilliantly, and the hoar-frost sparkled on the trees and bushes, causing them to appear as if they had been covered with millions of diamonds. The breath of the two men came from their mouths like clouds of steam. Arrowhead wore the round snow-shoes which go by the name of bear’s paws—he preferred these to any others. Jasper wore the snow-shoes peculiar to the Chipewyan Indians. They were nearly as long as himself, and turned up at the point. Both men were dressed alike, in the yellow leathern costume of winter. The only difference being that Jasper wore a fur cap, while Arrowhead sported a cloth head-piece that covered his neck and shoulders, and was ornamented with a pair of horns.
 
All day the two men plodded steadily over the country. Sometimes they wer............