The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.) 1889-1931, 1909-02-06
FIFTY DEGREES BELOW.
On the Trail Between Ckileoot Pass
and St. Michael.

He travels fastest who travels
alone but not after the
frost has dropped below zero fifty
degrees or more-Yukon Code.
Day had broken cold and gray, ex
ceedingly cold and gray, when the
man turned aside from the main 4u-
kon trail and climbed the high earth
bank, where a dim and ltttle-trav-
elled trail led eastward through the
fat spruce timber-land. 1t was a
steep bank. and he paused for
breath at the top, excusing the act
to himself by looking at his watch.
1t was nine o'clock. There was no
sun Or hint of sun, though there was
not cloud in the sky 1t was a
clear day, and yet there seemed an
intangible pail over the face of
things, subtle gloom that made the
day dark, and that was due to the
absence of sun. This fact did not
lack of sun. 1t had been days since
he had seen the sun, and he knew
that a few more days must pass be-
fore that cheerful orb, due south,
would just .psep above the skyline
and dip imme diately from view.
The man flung look back along
the way he had come. The Yukon
lay a mile wide and hidden under
three feet of ice. On top of this ice
were as many feet of snow. 1t was
| all pure white, rolling in gentle,
| snow-covered undulations where the
ee-jams of the freeze-up had formed.
North and south, as far as his eye
could see, it was unbroken white,
save for dark hair1ine that curved
and twisted from around the spruce
covered island to the south, and that
curved and twisted away into the
north, where is disappeared behind
another spruce-covered island. This
dark hair-line was the trail-the main
trail-that led south FIVE hundred
miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and
salt water; and that led north seven
ty miles to Dawson, and still on to
the north a thousand miles to Nulate,
and finally to st. Michael Oh Boring
Sea, thousand miles and haf
thousand more.
But all this-the mysterious, far
reaching hair-line trail. the absence
of sun from the sky, the tremendous
cold, and the strangeness and weird
ness of it alf--made no impression
on the man. 1t was not because he
was long used to it. He was d new
conner in the land, chechaquo, and
this was his first winter. The trouble
with him was that he was without
imagination. He was quick and alert
in the things of life. but only in the
things, and not in the significance.
Fifty degrees below zero meant
eighty-odd degrees of frost Such
fact impressed him as being cold and
uncomfortable, and that was all. 1t
did not lead him to mediate upon his
frailty as a creature OF temperature,
and upon mans frailty in general,
able only to live within certain mar
row limits of temperature; and from
there on it did not lead him to the
conjectural field of immortality and
mans place in the universe. Fifty
degrees below zero stood for bite
of frost that hurt and that must be
guarded against by the use of nit
tens, ear-faps, warm meccasins and
thick socks Fifty degrees below
zero was to him just precisely fifty
degrees below zero. That there
should be anything more to it than
that was a thought that never en-
tered his head.-From Jack Lon.
don's ITO Build Fire" in the Cen