96 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CKUISEE 



gigantic conflict of elemental forces that suggested 

 a vision of Dore's. The wonderful bigness of the 

 sight took one's breath away. 



In course of time we grew used to even these awe- 

 some scenes. All that remained from our first com- 

 plex of emotion was a keen personal antipathy to 

 cloud, rain, hail, lightning and thunder, singly and 

 collectively. 



The most annoying feature of it all was the ex- 

 treme cold that came with the storm. The rain when 

 not frozen into hail was cold as ice and at the same 

 time the general temperature dropped from thirty 

 to fifty degrees. Dressed as lightly as possible, our 

 blood thinned by the heat and hard work, we were 

 easily chilled. Sometimes our arms became numb 

 to the shoulders and our feet lost all sensation. 

 Sometimes we shivered and shook so that the con- 

 tours of our maps took on that tremulous character 

 which is used in mapwork to indicate the course of 

 a river. But we worked ahead perforce as best we 

 could and took our daily bath with as much philos- 

 ophy as we could command. 



To some of the party the lightning was a greater 

 trial than the rain. Often during a storm the flashes 

 came so close together that they seemed connected. 

 Each of us at one time or another managed to get in 

 the vicinity of a falling bolt when it struck and our 

 nerves consequently became affected in varying de- 

 grees. 



The most exciting incident of this sort occurred 



