BOOK IV. WINTER 



IMPRESSIONIST SKETCH 



A TRUE judgment as to the vital import of a Northern 

 Winter is not altogether easy for us, here and now. 

 It is not so easy for us, apart from our science, as it was 

 for our ancestors, for we have become more and more 

 cunning in ignoring Winter. What was in early days 

 expressed in shelter, a fire, warm clothes, and fatty food 

 has become a fine art with us. It is not so easy here as it 

 is farther North to realise the Winter, for, in spite of all 

 our grumbling, a British winter is usually a mild affair. 

 It is not so easy now as it once was, for even our worst 

 winters are but far-off echoes of the Glacial Epoch, when 

 Winter not only conquered Summer in the annual contest, 

 but remained victoriously dominant throughout the year, 

 and for long ages. Thus it is evident that to do Winter 

 justice we have need to question the Lapps and Samoyedes 

 and other dwellers in the Far North, or, where these have 

 not voices that we can understand, explorers like Nansen 

 and Peary ; we must think of the Polar Regions, of Alpine 

 life above the snow-line, or of that dark, silent, plantless, 

 intensely cold world the Deep Sea where the spel] 

 of Winter is unrelieved and perennial ; and we must let 

 our imagination travel back to the Ice Ages the Ages 

 of Horror during which whole faunas shuddered. Unless 

 we make some such efforts, which we can only suggest, 



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