In North- West Canada. 175 



away ; when the fire reaches chimps of aspen, and the forked 

 tops of the flames, magnified by refraction, flash and quiver 

 in the horizon, and the reflected light from rolling clouds of 

 smoke above tells of the havoc which is raging below." The 

 foregoing pictures belong to the glowing summer, but the 

 prairie, like the shield, has two sides. It should also be seen in a 

 blizzard, if you can see and live, when the snow, driven before 

 the wind, flies level through the air, cutting like a knife, and 

 carrying with it an intense cold that neither man nor beast 

 can face ; when, as the storm gathers strength, sky and 

 prairie are blended in an undistinguishable mass of blinding 

 white, and nothing is heard but the mad hurrying and howling 

 of the wind around and overhead, and the hissing at your feet 

 with which it drives through the long grasses that the snow 

 has not covered completely. 



It is on a day in the early months of the year, when the 

 thermometer is low, the sky stormy and unsettled, and the 

 wind fierce and steady, that the real blizzard comes ; usually 

 from the west, as the prairie grasses show, which always lie 

 flattened out toward the east by the westerly winds. During 

 the height of the storm, settlers hardly dare venture to their 

 out-houses to feed or water the cattle. The poor belated 

 farmer, caught perhaps with his team at some distance from a 

 house, makes for the nearest blufl" or woods. The trees bend 

 double before the gale. All around he hears the snap and 

 crash of breaking branches and falling trees, but these are not 

 thought of in comparison with the gi^eater danger that he has 

 escaped. A huge fire can be built, and there is little risk of 

 the firewood giving out. Should there be no friendly shelter 

 of house or blufl" near, he may come out from the blizzard 

 alive, but the fine dry snow is so blinding and penetrating and 

 the frost so merciless, that the odds are very greatly in favor 

 of the blizzard. Usually the blizzard only lasts a day or so, 

 but five years ago one in Dakota raged for three days and 

 nights. Everything outside perished, cattle froze to death or 

 starved in their stables. In many cases firewood gave out, 

 and though the furniture, floors and beams of the house were 



