44 



in the narrative of his second voyage, mentions that, on tlie oth of Febniary, 

 1830, an Esquimaux Avoman took her infant out of the bag in which it was 

 carried and exposed it naked to the air at the breast with the tliermometer 

 40° below zero. Captain McClintock, in his voyage of the Fox, relates a 

 similar incident. He says: "Esquimaux mothers carry their infonts on their 

 backs within their large fur dresses, and where the babes can only be got at by 

 pulling them out over the shoulder. Whilst intefit upon my bargaining for 

 silver spoons and forks belonging to Franklin's expedition at the rate of a few 

 needles or a knife for each relic, one pertinacious old dame, after having ob- 

 tained all she was likely to get from me for herself, pulled out her infant by the 

 arm, and quietly held the poor little creature (for it was perfectly naked) before 

 me in the breeze, the temperature at the time being 60° below freezing point [28° 

 below zero.] Peterson informed me that she was begging for a needle for her child. 

 I need not say I gave it one as expeditiously as possible ; yet sufficient time 

 elapsed before the infont was again put out of sight to alarm me considerably 

 for its safety in such a temperature. The natives, however, seemed to think 

 nothing of what looked to me like cruel exposure of a naked baby." 



The principal feature of December, and one which necessarily attracted very 

 general notice, was the intense cold and severe snow-storm which prevailed at thus 

 west on the last few days of the month, and extended in the beginning of Janu- 

 ary, though with less severity, to the Atlantic States. The western papers at 

 the time were crowded with painful and distressing evidences of the severity of 

 the storm. The roads were blocked up by the snow, and for several days all 

 travelling was interrupted, and there was no mode of conveying either mails or 

 passengers ; great numbers of cattle perished with the cold, and in many places 

 men were severely frost-bitten, and some even frozen to death. In the Prairie 

 Farmer, of February 6, a writer giving an account of the loss of two hundred and 

 fifty of his sheep, says that, " nine years ago the 20th of January we had just 

 such a storm, except it was not, I think, so cold." The tables for December 

 and January give the minimum temperature during the storm. The duration 

 of the cold, and other materials with regard to it, will be inserted in the next 

 number. This storm presents the same general characteristics as all those great 

 atmospheric movements which are sweeping over our continent season after 

 season, and century after century, and which follow one another as unceasingly 

 and as unchangeably as wave follows wave over the bosom of the sea. Since 

 the mountains and the dry land of the continent, and the waters which surround 

 it, were formed as tliey now stand, the course of these storms has, probably, 

 not changed ; and while nothing seems so fitful and uncertain as drought and 

 moisture," heat and cold, calms and storms, yet they must be subject to laws as 

 fixed and invariable as those which steady the earth in its ever-onward and ever- 

 revolving motion, and keep its surface and its atmosphere ever exposed to the 

 controlling power of the sun. These laws Ave now know only in part; but every 

 observer who is accurately though quietly recording the course of the wind, and 

 the changes of temperature and moisture, is contributing to that storehouse of 

 materials which will reward another generation with clear and definite percep- 

 tions of what we already know to exist, but can as yet see only in dim and 

 shadov.-y outline. 



