The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1885-11-13
Good Hot Weather Reading.

Frederick Schwatka in New York Times
Seventy-one degrees below zero
means 100 deg. below freezing point
1t was in the Artic regions, not fal
from Backs Great Fish River, when
the author was conducting home.
ward sledge journey to Hudson's Bay
in the depth OF an Artic winter-Nov
ember, December. January, February
and March-that he experienced it.
Severe weather-that is, intensely cold
had set in just before Christmas, in
1879, the thermometer sinking down
to 65 deg. and SO deg. below zero, and
never getting above so deg. below, and
We were having a hard time with our
slelghlng along the river, our camps at
night almost in sight of those we had
left in the morning, SO close were they
together and so slowly did we Labor
along. Reindeer, ON which we were
relying for our daily supply of food,
were not found near the river. and be-
ing seen some ten or fifteen miles back
from it, 1 determined to leave it's bed
and strike straight for home in Hud.
sons Bay.
We had been gone three or four days,
when, as we assembled the higher levels,
the thermometer commenced lowering
and on the 3D. of January, 1880, at 8
O'Clock III the afternoon, reached II
deg. below zero, the coldest we exper-
fenced on our sledge journey of nearly
a year In length, and the coldest ever
encountered by white men travelling
out OF doors, for that day we moved
camp some ten or twelve miles to the
south-eastward. The day was not at all
disagreeable, 1 must say, until along
toward the early night, when slight
zephyr, the merest kind of motion OF
the wind that would hardly ruffie the
leaves on a tree, or even sufficeto cool
the face on q warm day, sprang up
from the southwark, and, slight and
insignificant as it was, it cut to the
bone every part of the body that was
exposed, and which, fortunately, was
only the face from the eyebrows to the
chin and about half of the cheeks. We
turned our backs toward it as much
as possible, and especially after wehad
gotten into camp and got to work
building our snow-houses and digging
through the thick ice of the lake
for fresh water, and so lazily did our
oLSeooii' ei.lu 1I1UO
clouds, float away to the northward,
like the little, li,ht cirrus clouds of
summer sky, that we knew well enough
how terribly cold it must be without
looking at the thermometer that stood
II deg. below zero, Fahrenheit.
1t is not SO much the intensity of the
cold, expressed in degrees on the ther-
mometer, that determines the disa-
greeableness of Arctic winter weather
as it is the force and relative direction
of the wind. I have found it far
pleasanter with the thermometer at
SO deg, so deg. or even 10 deg. below
zero, Fahrenheit, with little OF no wind
blowing at the time, than to face a
rather stiff breeze when the little tell
tale showed 20 deg warmer tempera-
ture. Even an Arctic acclimated white
man facing a good strong wind at 20
deg. or 25 deg. below zero is almost
sure to find the wind freeze the nose
and cheeks, and the thermometer does
not have to sink over deg. or 5 deg.
to induce the Esquimaux themselves to
keep within their snug snow houses I'M
der the same circumstances, unless
want or famine demands their presence
in the storm. With plenty in the
larder for all the mouths, brute and
human, none of them venture out in
such weather.