CANADIAN SNOW CAMPS. 



also, all foot-prints and other traces of their passage 

 are completely obliterated. 



" Day after day (says Baron Nordenskiold) during the win- 

 ter, drifting snow was so thick that the dark hull of the ves- 

 sel itself could be distinguished only when we were in its 

 immediate neighbourhood." 



This sort of snow is however perfectly dry, and brushes 

 or shakes off clothes exactly like dry dust, and is 

 as light as a feather; in Canada such snow is 

 consequently known as " poudre " and it is generally 

 supposed there that it takes about eighteen inches of 

 it to make one inch of water. Of course in this fine 

 state, when there is a wind it penetrates everywhere, 

 no crevice seeming to be too minute to allow it to 

 make its way through ; in log houses therefore newly- 

 arrived settlers are often surprised in Canada, on 

 awaking in the morning, to find quite a little bank 

 of snow formed on the floors of their houses, by the 

 drift getting in through some small chink in the boards 

 or under doors etc., etc. On account of the descent 

 of the polar cold into the Temperate Zone, during 

 the Canadian winter, its temperature is often so low 

 that in winter camps it is no uncommon thing to 

 see a shelter wall of snow, banked up around them 

 to a height of four or five feet, remain standing 

 unaffected by the fierce blaze of a large fire burning 

 close to it the heated and rarefied air from the camp 

 fires in the still atmosphere seeming to rise almost 

 perpendicularly, and in the intense cold, to throw out 



* Vovage of the Vega, by A. E. Nordenskiold, translated by Alexander 

 Leslie, 1881, Vol. i, p. 473. 





