294 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 



stimulants. It is a long stride from those forlorn- 

 hopes of adventure to the well-found and strongly- 

 manned expeditions we have lately been sending out to 

 the Pole. But even with all the appliances that science 

 and experience can suggest or liberality supply, the 

 lives of arctic explorers must be trying at the best ; and 

 the soundest constitutions are strained if not shattered. 

 Yet the only difficulty in finding the crews is the pick- 

 ing and choosing in the crush of volunteers ; and 

 cheerfulness under perfect discipline does its best to 

 command success, though the sole distractions out of 

 doors through the long dark winter, are constitutionals 

 along the snow-paths kept clear to the " observatory," 

 or sledging-parties carried out with heroic resolution. 



For when you change passive endurance into a 

 grapple with difficulties, the spirit will rise irrepressibly 

 to meet them. We have travellers wrapped in the 

 casings of furs and woollens they dare not cast, facing 

 the frozen blasts on the steppes of Tartary, or 

 scrambling up the highest passes in our hemisphere 

 those gutter -pipes which drain the " Roof of the 

 World." 



We can recall a dozen stories of winter-travelling 

 adventures, where we may be sure that the pleasures 

 predominated over the pains, though the adventurers, 

 who were gently born and bred, must have suffered as 

 intensely as they endured doggedly. Such as Lord 

 Milton and Dr. Cheadle hewing their way, with " Mr. 

 and Mrs. Assineboine," through the precipitous forests 

 on the banks of the Fraser River ; Major Butler like- 



