The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-11-13

hardly imagine what an endless worry it is
to make caps, mittens, stockings, and ell
such small things. We have to do IL all
ourselves, and often canaot get either
cloth or fur. Our Wors trouble, however,
is want of food. However hard we work
at our fishing, however careful we are new
er to lose q chance OF obtaining any kind
of men-all the same, in summer, there are
times when we have to actually starve, for
in summer there is absolutely no meat TO
be got and to live constantly and exclu-
sively on fish not only affects one with
nausea, but with some people produces
actual fish poisoning. We have all come
to the conclusion that sudden change
from ordinary food to an exclusive fish
diet results 10 peculiar form of poisoning,
not yet known to science. In winter,
when there is meat as well, we eat the fish,
but in summer the mere sight of boiled
fish affects many with nausea and vomit-
ing. In summer we live on very small
quantity of -four, little milk from our
own COWS, wild berries and the intermin-
able fish. The worst time of the year is
the beginning of autumn, when large guam
titles of food have to be stored up, and
the roads are not properly frozen. The
COWS leave of giving milk, neither car
casses nor live cattle are brought ln-the
only way out of the difficulty would be to
go to sleep for three weeks, like the bears.
But even at the best season of the year we
never really have enough to eat; we are
too poor for that-and even If we were ricn
it would not he p us-there Is not food
enough in the Place You can imagine how
delightful il must be TO lie down hungry at
night, to wake up the next morning still
hungrier, to wait anxiously for the half
ratiou5 that go by the name OF dinner
after dinner 10 go into the kitchen and
carefully gather up all the bits-all the
scrapings Of pots and pans; then to strap
one's belt tighter for hunger and wait for
supper, and so on, Gay after day.
1t is like the life of half starved sailors,
wrecked On desert island.
az have not spok en- OF thousand other
conveaiences of life; for instance, arti-
fetal light, which, with US, is now the
burning question of tina moment. 1t has
been bad year, SO that the cattle are very
lean, snd we cannot get any tallow TO make
candles. We have already bought up and
used nearly all the candles there were in
the town. and now, in one more fortnight,
we must expect TO be left candleless in the
unbroken night OF December 1T is the
same with everything. All our life is made
up of Thousand pitable wants and hard
ships. Altogether, our housekeeping is
very original; on the one hand, an out Of
the-way Arctic hole where we ara no
body's business and nobody cares what we
do or how we manage; on the other, our
stern jailer -nature-wno forces US to live
quite in prison style, to sleep in gen.
eral barracks, to eat at general
mess and SO on. If we did not
submit to this we should all have
died of cold and hunger before now. An
other feature of our life is the hard man
uaI labor-labor as of beast of burden
such as even the all-enduring Russian
peasant has no idea Of. For instance, for
two persons to drag a loaded barge along
with towing ropes for forty miles is re-
garded here as the merest trihe. and, as
there are no sails here, hauling and rowing
are the only means OF navigation. Then
there is the autumn fishing. standing knee
deep in the water and floating ice, ana
pulling at frozen rope that cuts your
hands until the blood comes: then moving
| in the deep swamp mud, at the mercy Of
mosquito. often without any food or drink
| but. the water from the bog pools; then,