The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1888-03-24 00:00:00

(To he continued.)

A SNOWBOUND ENVOY.

A communication from a Queen's Messenger, giving
a vivid account of the severity of the weather on the
Continent, and descriptive of his own experience, is
published in the Times. The Messenger left Berlin
on the night of March 2, and, at about eight the next
morning, he found the train snowed up between
Bromberg and Dirschau, and about 320 miles from
Berlin. It was blowing a hurricane, and snowing so
much as to make the air quite dark. For seven hours
they remained there, and during that period the Mes-
senger, who had had nothing to eat since leaving Berlin,
had no food of any kind. At length, hunger com-
pelled him to bribe a peasant who was scratching at
the snow with a pickaxe—about as much good as a
toothpick—and this individual, after the lapse of
about an hour, placed before him some black bread
and WO-m/2-st (blood sausage). After a while the
five passengers in the carriage hold a council and
arrived at the decision to remain where they
were, which seeing that the snow was many feet
deep, pedestrianism almost impossible, and vehi-
cular traffic altogether out of the question, was
very wise on their part. However, the intrepid
Queen's Messenger sallied forth, feeling, he says, "like
an Arctic explorer." He then resolved to send for a
sledge. His fellow passenger, in terror as to his fate,
tried to dissuade him. He was inexorable, and, when
three sledges arrived, his companions, German-like,
were only too pleased to accept seats. "The cold and
the force of the snowstorm were so groat as almost to
blind us," he says, "and, in about half an hour, we
got to a small cabaret, where there was barely stand-
ing room for all of us with our hand luggage, and
nothing to eat. As the sledges could not take us to
the nearest station, we then started on foot, and
floundered about in single file like geese on a common
in the dark for about a mile or more, the
snow being nearly up to our middle and the
cold very great. We then got to Laskovitz, wet
through, and chilled to the bone. At Laskovitz
we waited for two hours in a miserable sallo
d'attente, and then took the train for Graudenz,
small town on the Vistula near the Polish frontier,
where there was a decent inn, and we got supper and
a bed. We were at Graudenz about 30 hours, and at
last got away, after many delays, to the Russian
frontier, which we crossed at Wierzboloff. There was
no train till next morning, so I had to sleep in a
" toilette-zhnmer " on the floor between two Polish
Jews, one of whom coughed all night, and expec-
torated with such vigour and impartiality that I ex-
pected to find at daylight that he had bespattered my
fur coat and rugs. Next moaning we left for St.
Petersburg by a slow train, and I am quit for a slight
cold and a sore nose and ear, which were a little frost-
bitten. One poor fellow was so had from the ex-
posure that he had to remain at Graudenz. It is
barely a month since I was
.snowed up in Hungary,
and underwent a similar experience, though not so
severe. I consider myself lucky to have saved my
despatches."