The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-09
From Pearson's Weekly.

From Pearsons weekly.
 THE coldest place in the world one \Op would naturally expect to be
 either the. north or the south pole, but it is not. It is small village in the northeast of Siberia, named Yer 'hoyansk.
 There the average temperature of the three worst winter months Is 53 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, which means 50 degrees of frost. During January the average temperature is 56 degrees below zero, or S8 degrees of frost. On one oc- casion the thermometer registered the re-
 markable figure of 120 degrees of frost! The average January figure for London, on the other hand, is seven degrees above freezing point.
 But in Verhoyansk most months are winter months July curiously enough
 is as hot there as in London, but the
 shadow of the terrible winter hangs over even the warmest months.
 Even in midsummer the forests which
 surround the desolate plain in the center
 of which verhoyansk stands are withered
 and gray. The grass is colorless. The
 few flowers are odorless. The bare soil of
 the plain itself refuses to produce vege-
 tables of any kind. The ground is frozen
 hard to an incredible depth. No farming, of course, is possible There
 are no cattle or poultry. All food is im-
 ported Why then, does this little village exist? It is a convict station, and it's population of 400 is made up of officials and exiles. No precautions against escape are need ed. Prisoners are known to have gone mad with the loneliness of the place. But no one has ever been mad enough to try to escape Verhoyansk, strange though 1t sounds, is guarded by the wind. A gale, when the thermometer stands at 30 or more below zero, will destroy every living thing that is not under shelter. One of the many curious facts about cold is that intense cold is in itself easy to bear provided the air is still Our traveller has declared that he has often felt colder in Piccadilly on damp day
 in November than during his entire stay
 in Verhoyansk, where the thermometer sometimes showed 90 degrees of frost.
 The reason is that at Verhoyansk the ooCS
 not penetrate far. With a tent at night
 and warm furs in the daytime one can be quite comfortable, however low the temperature
 But let a wind once rise and things are different As Verhoyansk is the coloest place in the world the few winds that 1 come must bring warmth. But then all winds carry moisture. And so we have | the curious fact that, though one may be quite comfortable with the ther- mometer showing 60 degrees of frost, if i wind springs up and adds 20 or 30 de-
 grees of warmth to the air, one has to | fly for dear life to shelter
 1 Half an hour in that fierce, biting cold | means death. But the intense dry cold that is Verhoyansk's normal weather Is. | if not so dangerous. quite as powerful in its effects. In that icy stiffness an iron | x-head dropped on the ground smashes | like glass A board of unseasoned wood | on the other hand, freezes hard as iron. | De Windt in his travels in this region | carried his milk in solid cubes in net ] attached to his sleigh His thermometers i all burst, for at the Verhoyansk tempera lures quicksilver freezes. and can be ham mered like copper. ct has, indeed, been turned into bullets and shot through a
 deal board.)
 All he could find of case of claret was
 few Jumps of red ice and some splint- 1 cred glass. But what troubled him most
 was the discovery that it was impossible 1 to smoke. At 40 degrees below zero frtzen l nicotine blocks the stem of the pipe.