The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1888-02-10

servers, whose action is stimulated by great
personal interest.
The Rocky mountains attain their great
est height in the central part of their course
and directly along their eastern base a
storm from the west is very rare. One
may start in eastern Kansas facing fierce
wind from the west; but as he goes west
ward he finds it moderating, and there is
a calm at Denver and Cheyenne. Going
:lorthward, however the Rocky mountains
bend far toward the west and decline in
height, and on entering British America
there are low and broad passes through
which the warm "Chinook winds" from
the Pacific coast sweep into Manitoba and
northwestern Dakota From these winds
often 90 degs. warmer than the local air
of north Dakota-curious results appear.
The ice and snow sometimes melt ON the
upper Missouri while the section of that
stream below latitude 46 is still bound i'll
thick ice; then the floods from above burst
up the ice and we have those destructive
'sjams" and oyerfows, one of which
wrought such havoc last winter. But as
the warm wind moves southeastit rapidly
loses its warmth; and as such wind is
temporary, there comes after it (behind it,
we might say lin increased cold from the
dampness-and then the blizzard. The
cold wind from the far north comes down
across the track of the warm wind its
motion fearfully accelerated; the moisture
is instantly condensed to powdery snow,
or spoudre, - in some instances as sharp
as fragments of steel, and in the binding
cloud the benumbed traveller is hopelessly
lost. When the vapor is so suddenly con-
densed as to form sharp spicules the Can
adian voyageurs call it the "barber," as it
cuts the face like razor. Unfortunately
this is about all that is known of the
blizzard; to foretell its coming or forecast
its course are alike impossible. There
have not been observations enough.
OF blizzards both history and tradition
give many accounts. All the early in
Quirers into American archaeology were
amazed at the fact that the Indians had
a very clear tradition Of creatures like im-
mense elephants, which once inhabited the
Mississippi valley, and were exterminated
by sudden cold; and it is now conceded
that the disappearance of the mastodon
was (geologically spcaking) quite recent.
The traditions of the Sioux and Mondans
abound in accounts of billiards. which
destroyed whole bands of Indians, and the
Assiniboines add that all the buffalo in
their territory were killed in a single
usual The poet Longfellow has given us
in 'sHiawatha'' his rendering of one
Sioux tradition of prolonged and terrible
cold. A curious fact in this connection is
that one may travel northward till he gets
'behind the blizzard,'' as they say, in a
region where the cold is intense, it is true,
but does not come on suddenly with wind
and flying snow; such is the case at Win
niDeg generally and on the Saskatchewan:
and far to the west of the Red river, at
the very base of the Canadian Rocky
mountains, the climate Of winter is singu-
larly even. Going westward from central
Dakota, Nebraska or Kansas, similar
gain in evenness of winter climate is OBJ
servable; so the settlers are not far wrong
who say the blizzard must have Groom to
breed and turn itself''
In the last night of 1868 came a
storm which wrought havoc over every
section east of the Rocky mountains;
the mercury fell 20 degs in some
places in a few hours, causing inn
mense suffering. The deaths due
to the "Cold New Years." as it was
called, were pretty evenly distributed
from the lakes to the gulf, many soldiers
dying from exposure on guard duty in
Dakota then contained but a few hundred
people, but there was much suffering in
Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Late in 1871 a wind and snow storm Of
unusual violence swept the whole west
from Chicago to the Sierra Neyadas; the
Union Pacific railroad was blockaded for
two months, and i'll some cuts the snow
and ice packed SO hard that imprisoned