The Savannah morning news., 1904-05-31
A CLERGYMAN SAYS IT'S TRUE.
Otherwise This "BIindinE Blizzard"
Yarn Might Be Looked Upon with
Suspicion.

Yarn Might Be Looked Upon With
Suspicion.
From the Youths Companion.
A clergyman vouches for the truth
of a story which would otherwise be
incredible. The winter of 1885 was the
coolest in the experience of Minnesota
farmers, and the alive stock suffered
terribly. About mile from the clergy
mans house was a piece of timber
He kept his oxen busy, he says, haul
ing wood to his house. The snow lay
three feet deep, and the shedding was
good. On Jan. l he yoked his oxen
and in addition to the yoke used some
heavy harness, including thick leather
traces. 1t was l o'clock when he left
home in in an hour or so he was load
ing the wood on THE sled at the edge
of the timber.
Meanwhile a binding blizzard blew
up, sweeping over the prairie at the
rate of fifty miles an hour, and piling
up the snow lin drifts from eight TO
ten feet deep. AS the wind increased
both myself and my oxen became chill
ed to the marrow, and ! knew that it
was certain death to man or beast to
stay out any longer.
Turning the heads of my oxen
homeward in THE very teeth of that
binding storm I urged them on across
the open space between the timber and
my house. But oxen, however willing,
are never rapid, and the one mile
seemed ten to me as the heavy beasts
pushed onward Feeling that / should
surely freeze to death in short time,
1 jumped down from my load. plunged
homeward through the snow and
reached my barn in half an hour.
Il knew that my oxen could feel
their way home and fully expected
them to appear at the barn by night
fall if, perchance, they were not blind
ed by the storm or lost in the increas-
ing drifts. But night came on, and no
oxen
The storm abated, and l started out
with my hired man to find my missing
cattle and my load of wood
I'VE fioundered through the snow
toward the timber, but the oxen were
nowhere to be seen. We hunted all
| night long, and arrived home just in
/ time for breakfast, puzzled and mysti-
| fled. After breakfast out we started
! again, helped this time by some of our
neighbors; but after a frubless search
i we came back, vanquished. No neigh
bor had seen the oxen, and their dis
| appearance became the sensation OF
the neighborhood.
They had either been lost for good
frozen to death in the. deep snow OF
else had wandered off across the
prairie to some distant farmers barn.
1--WE advertised in the country papers,
offering a reward of 5000 for the return
of the oxen and the wood. One week,
two, three passed by, but still no So
luton.
TT was the thirty-first day of jan
uary. There had been a thaw for sew
/ Il opd Of tho on the
| prairie had disappeared, leaving only
about one foot in depth, except in the
deep hollows of my ranch. 1 was
| driving a team of heavy farm horses
over to the timber to get another load
of wood. when on passing through a
small ravine a little to one side of the
| ordinary road, l noticed a movement
! in the snow.
Drawing in my reins, l alighted,
walked about ten feet from my horses
and 10! there were my oxen. alive, still
! yoked together, standing in four feet
l of snow. with just enough of their DO
dies above the snow to make move
| ment visible.
They had been caught between the
stumps of two trees, and there they
had been for thirty days, unable to
move and saved from freezing to death
only by the deep SNOW, that so mer.
cifully had covered them. They had
eaten everything within reach, includ-
| ing the leather harness, most of the
wood of the sled-pole, the bark of the
tree trunks, the twigs and sticks ly-
ing round, and the roots of the trees
to a depth OF three feet. There they
had stood for thirty days. They were
living skeletons. Every bone was
visible. Yet they were able to walk
home, and after careful feeding for
another thirty days, they were as
strong as ever, and were faithful ami.
mails on my farm for ten years after.
wards"