St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1895-02-22

| some ones DaTlOr or DeuTOoH'
For practical purposes the long
narrow Scandinavian shoes are easy
to manage, but it is not safe tor a
beginner to undertake cross coun'
try walk upon them. There is much
to be learned before snow-shoer
becomes adept. Rope or cloth must
be bound around the shoes when
steep inclines are to be mounted, and
when a traveller is about to slip
down a grade at express speed nc
must see to it that his shoes do not
Scissor" or cross one another else
he will take header in the snow
and die there. And he must be
certain there is no ravine at the bot
tom OF his slide. He must know
how to dodge the trees and how to
avoid the "well" that surrounds
many a tree trunk. He must not
lose shoe, for that suggests a
wretched death, unless it be that he
is sufficiently skillul TO ride with
both feet on one board. Men tie a
rope to each shoe and connect it
with their belts to avoid the sudden
sight of flying shoe scudding down
a mountain side, and knocking from
tree to tree and rock to rock far in
the downward distance, while its
owner looks on and listens in terror.
A stick is the essential accompani-
ment of each pair of shoes-a stick
that has it's lower end run through
a small block of wood In climbing
this can be leaned upon. 1t will not
penetrate the snow too far. In de-
scending the steep slopes it is carried
between the snow-shoer's legs, drag
ging its protruding block like a
brake behind him.
In all the United States there is nc
other winter and no other snowfall
like this. Five years ago it Icy TWEEN
ty-three feet on the level in these
mountains. To-day it has been
showing, off and on, every day Tor
about sixty days. The region is
unique, because there the mountains
rise above semitropical conditions.
On the loWlands there is rainy sea.
son instead of a winter, and when
this downpour is interfered with by
tall mountains, incessant rain turns
to incessant snow. 1t is very
light foury snow OF tiny mustard
seed granules. 1t is much drier than
other snow, and yields so much less
water that our signal service officials
often fancy the local reports to be
miscalculated. Railroading through
is not SO perilous as stage-coaching
used to be, when slides buried stages
and horses as they to-day bury cot
tages and grind them up under the
rocks they drag with them. But
railroading is difficult, slow and ex-
pensive in the Sierra Nevadas. The
trains that crawl between the solid
white walls are dragged by twins
and triplets of great engines and
pushed by Others. And even then
they only move when they follow
close behind the huge diabolcal-look-
ing rotary snow-ploughs, that are
shaped like great houses, and that
bore through the depths by means of
lanlike turbine-wheeIs, sucking up
the snow and showering it over the
adjacent lands in huge dense clouds.
Even then the wind often proves
stronger, and hurls the snow back
upon the tracks, or packs it in the
cuts, or slides it over the rails by
breaking through the high white
walls. Where there is greatest dan
ger of this, long massive snowsheds
are built, and of these there are forty
miles in the mountains, am told
[Julian Ralph in Harper's Weekly.