THE DAILY WORK OF AN ARCTIC EXPLORER 



but this is far from the truth. True, there are snow and 

 ice everywhere in evidence. Snow falls during the summer 

 as well as during the winter. For this, however, we are 

 prepared; suitable garments so fit the body that one does 

 not really suffer much more from the effects of cold than 

 does a New Yorker in winter, and we avoid the life-redu- 

 cing heat of the home summers. 



Still, I do not mean to infer that the cold is ever for- 

 gotten. The conditions are such that the absence of heat 

 is constantly brought to mind. When we start out from 

 our comfortable rooms at headquarters, we emerge from an 

 agreeable temperature of seventy degrees into an icy air 

 of minus forty degrees, which makes a difference of one 

 hundred and ten degrees of cold within ten seconds. This 

 causes the breath to come in jets of steam, and soon the 

 whiskers, the eyebrows, and every fragment of hair about 

 the face are covered with icicles and crystals of hoar frost; 

 beautiful little things, but they do not seem pretty at all 

 to the possessor, for he is constantly brushing them off, 

 pulling out bunches of hair and blowing out warm phrases. 

 One never learns the real trouble of the life of the frigid 

 zones until he has his face bejewelled with icicles. 



Owing to the natural laws of radiation, the extremities 

 lose their heat first. The careless traveler, constantly suf- 

 fers from cold hands and feet, and even a careful adept 

 loses his fingers or toes with remarkable ease. We start 

 out on a mission, traveling over the icy waste of white 

 wilderness, and, for a time, all are happy, comfortable and 

 contented. After a few hours we become thirsty, but we 

 well know that there is nothing to quench our thirst, for, 

 though there is water everywhere, it is frozen. Later, we 

 become hungry, but we must delay satisfying the pangs 

 until our destination is reached. 



We plod on and on, over the weary snows, until we find 

 a camping place. Then we pitch camp, but now one has 

 a stinging pain in his toes; after a while this vanishes and 

 is replaced by loss of sensation in a large part of the foot. 



The boot is removed, and through the many thicknesses 

 of hose the foot feels like something foreign. One stock- 

 ing after another is cautiously taken off, but still there is a 

 woody touch to the foot. When the last stocking is stripped 



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