Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1904-10-07
SIBERIA IN WINTER.
ARCTIC COLD AND iciRES6 REIGN
FOR FOUR MONTHS.

world OF black anu Deauiy rrost
The way Frozen Food Is Displayed
In the Bazaar-Coast SIedge Racing,
Imagine q black world frozen stiff,
and that is Vladivostok in winter.
Wherever water ones flowed, In bay
Or harbor, a wide, gray white road now
runs, and these are the only two colors
In a wide, still world. There are no
trees. The large forests of which the
bid travellers wrote have long since
been cut down for fuel, and the i'm
mediate hills behind the town are all
rs bare as a mans hand. Once behind
these hills the endless rolling plain be-
gins, which is Siberia, says Heritage
Edwards In London Black and White.
Directly summer is over all the
wealth of flowers which for five short
months have simply rioted in the land
20 black, die out. The earth freezes
stiff. Winter has come, and black and
stiff the world remains. In V~ladivostok
there is little snow. Sometimes a gray
dust, more like powdered ice than
snow, blows over the land, but for the
most part it is a black, not a white,
world Of frost, and In its way it is
more impressive. The earth freezes
deep many feet down and is as hard as
iron. The whole harbor turns a kind
Of dull gray. That, too, is frozen deep.
To keep any sort of channel open the
powerful Ice breaker has to go through
It's work twice a day. Twelve hours Of
IN ordinary winters day is often sufi-
eient to block the passage. And all
this in a town In the same parallel as
harseilles.
To those who have never expert
snced 1t real arctic cold is almost in
conceivable. They cannot grasp the
difference between 10 and 80 degrees
Of frost. 1t remains to them merely
one of numbers. Indeed when once
tho winter has gone 1t is sometimes
difficult to remember really how cold
It was, but during the four severe win
ter months themselves it is a very
solid and serious fact. Every night
you go to sleep remembering, If you
are new to such things, that a failure
Of the furnace which heats the house
means death. You might wake first to
know you We're frozen or you might
not. In the poorer houses the inhabit-
ants sleep on the stoves, and the weak
,nes often die. Drunkenness here is
often attended with q swift retribu-
don, which does not in the least pre-
vent 1t, and every day in winter people
are taken up frozen from the cutters,
the spirit which is in them only has
tening the freezing, so that the carts
which are always sent round to pick
up the sailors when the crews of the
men-of-war are ashore have to do their
work quickly. In the summer time,
when there Is not the same need for
hurry, the men often lie about in gut
ters until the afternoon. The word
CUTTERS is used simply to designate a
sertain part of the roadway. Cutters
as such do not exist. The drunken
ness among all classes of Russians Is
simply appalling. officers think moth
Ing Of taking a tumblerful of raw
whisky as a modest "bitters' before
dinner.
When the wind Is not blowing the
eold is endurable, though FIVE fur lined
~overcoats are not at all an extraordi-
nary amount of winter wrap. You
wear, Of course, fur boots, fur gloves,
fur caps. Women have their skirts
and bodices lined with fur. Wildcat,
being both soft and very warm, is Of
ten used for this purpose. 1t is quite
astonishing the Partially for such
things as oily sardines that one devel-
ops.
In the winter time the bazaar is real
" a sight Everything Is frozen stiff
The huge, long surgeons from the In
terror stand in rows on their very sharp
pointed noses. Baskets full of little
fishes are piled together like chips of
ice. Frozen birds hang down on long
~testoons, and the municipality is spar
ed trouble-it never has to make
away with food gone bad The
bazaar Is almost entirely in the hands
Of the Chinese, the tall, dark, rough
Chinese of the north, who live wrapped
1p In wadded cotton clothes until they
look like bundles of bedding. Without
the Chinese and the Japanese yladivos-
tok would find it hard to exist. They
do all the work Of the town. The
Russians garrison and govern 1t. The
Chinese, the Germans. the Japanese
and the other nations trade In 1t.
The great sport of Vladivostok In the
winter Is sledge racing. and when once
the harbor Is frozen over a proper
course is marked off, and every one
who owns a horse takes part. A Rus
sian horse is a superior brute. He
stands as high and looks as strong as
a cart horse, but he goes like the wind.
He will walk or he will gallop, but he
Soes not condescend to do anything be-
tween. His harness is weird 9sl won
herful and very Russian, consisting
primarily OF a huge wooden half hoop
over the head, the keystone of the
whole structure, which is attached to
the shafts by winding long, thin straps
backward and forward. 1t takes hours
10 put this on, is always liable to come
undone and IL undone is very danger