The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1875-04-17
A BLIZZARD.

Do you know what they are? Did you
ever see one: feel one: so that you could
say, with Eneas to Dido, as to Troy,
" Magma pars .fui:' played big part in
it myself?
Well: the thermometer at $50 below
zero: the wind 80 miles an hour: Just two
hours between Sioux City and this place,
$50 miles, by the shortest cut across the
country: the air SO filled with ice particles
that you can see but few rods off: not
snow, but ice, icy spicula, which winged
with the wind and with the impetus of
hundred miles, come like so many needle
points against the skin; with a ping and a
sting that are very torture: like that of
the noted Lemuel CULVER, when the Lili-
putians made him the butt for their marks
manslip, and filled every pore of his skin
with their tiny arrows: that is "a blizzard:
the terror of all animate nature, man and
beast in the Northwest l send you some
thoughts on one.
This particular specimen came early this
morning. There is stick of wood living
against the stove hearth, has lain there all
night. two large dry sticks of hard maple
burning in the stove, yet bunch of snow
on the stick outside, not one foot from the
heated stove plates as fresh and unmelted
as when brought it in last evening for the
morning fire. There stands my gun in the
corner, eight feet from hot fire: take it
up; the barrel chills my hands, and under
meath the clasp of my hand the melted
frost rises and stands in sweat on the sur
face. Is this possible? Is that the same
gun which only five months ago, in the
open sunshine, was glad to shift to my
shoulder. the heated barrels so burned my
hand? Is this the same region where, at
that time, many day at 10 A. NJ, was
glad to crawl under the shade of a hay
driving to a neighbours funeral in the
country, an umbrella was an absolute
necessity against sun at 104o in the shade,
and, the feet had to be drawn back from
outside of the shadow line of the umbrella
and kept under the buggy seat, with all
the sensation Of blisterng? There lies
"Ponto'' with his thick setter coat, de-
lighting, at any point above zero, to roll in
the snow; breaking the ice untlnchingly
in pond on his way to goose or duck;
now fairly quailing under the icy blast, his
ears and eyelashes coated to their ENDS
with frost, and glad, poor fellow, of
chance to lie near fire. My boy runs in,
reporting poor old "Bess," my pointer, in
fit from the cold. l rush out and sure
enough the faithful creature is in spasms,
and nearly rigid; l roll her in blanket,
carry her bodily into the house, and only
by half hours heating and care, bring
back a life which represents to me some of
the most absorbing incidents of field and
wood that have fallen to me in lifetime's
shooting. My favorite mare stands in her
stable; more than average in it's closeness,
and a band of frost, like surcingle. passes
from flank to flank over her back, and
another from one forearm over to the other.
That is what l have never seen anything
but blizzard bring upon an animal. Her
long lashes hang, weighted with frost, over
her hazel eye; and, as she turns her head
at my coming, she does all but say to me
in words, at is very cold out here this
morning"
| venture down the street. The icy sleet
hunts out every inch of exposed skin
You can only have enough loop hole in
your head wrappings to see your way, and
that but at intervals; for the fierce blast
threatens to tear your very shawl from
your shoulders, and five minutes exposure
would leave your ears as white as leprosy
You gasp for very breath, under the force
Of the hurricane, and the air itself seems
frozen as you inhale it. Out of popula- |
ton of 5000, l see three solitary persons
on the street, fitting like spectres across
it, and losing not one practicable moment
i'll doing their errand and getting within
doors. Business is suspended; travel ceases,
and to attempt the prairies for five miles is
to tempt your death. 1t is not the cold
mind you, that does the business, it is the
awful gale and the ice laden air. A stranger
can have little idea of the exhausting,
paraly zing effect of one of these storms of
terror. In one of them, a Norwegian of
this region, started from his house to see
to his cattle. His barn was some thirty
rods from his house. Going or coming he
got benumbed, confused, lost, and was
found next morning mound of ice, at a
quarter of a mile from home. His wife
becoming alarmed at his absence started
for the barn in search. The same appalling
fate befei her. and she was found dead, not
ten rods from her dwelling.
You may we'll believe that that house is
not passed Summer or Winter without The
sad memorial of the fatal storm rising
fresh in the mind of the traveller. After
one of these visitations l was riding over
the country with the mail boy. The day
was bitter to the last degree. In corner
of the fence stood cow, motionless.
said, "that man does not look we'll after
his cattle ?'' "Oh, sir that COW has been
there three weeks. In the last blizzard,
she was frozen as she stands, and has never
been movedH' 1t was CHASTITY sight!
She seemed, as standing with the wonted
patience of the gentle animal, and chewing
her cud, but, alas her CLASSY eyes had no
speculation in them," aud the seeming
patience was the palsy of death. You
read in the East, the sad, sad tales of death
like this on the prairie; and probably, have
difficulty in realizing how it can come,
above all, SO suddenly. To Western men,
these ice gales of the prairie are the source
of all things dreadful. They come with
appalling suddenness. The morning may
be of one peculiar mildness. From every
quarter the farmers are tempted by the
day, to visit the town for business or trade;
in one half hours time, the treacherous
calm breaks into a Northwestern; the ther.
mometer falls fifty degrees; the air is filled
with the frozen particles, through which
the sun may shine with seeming cheer
nvarbe,6 Tn an hour'S time the road