424 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



On December 9th, at midnight, a terrible snow-storm began, and 

 in the short space of ten minutes covered men, dogs, and sledges, 

 forming a perfect hill above them. We sat at the foot of a hill, 

 with the wind from the opposite side, and our feet drawn under us 

 to prevent them from freezing, and covered with our parkas. When 

 we were covered by the snow, we made holes with sticks through to 

 the open air. In a short time the warmth of the breath and per- 

 spiration melted the snow so that a man-like cave was formed about 

 each individual. In these circumstances our travellers passed five 

 hours, calling to one another at intervals to keep awake, it being 

 certain death to sleep in that intense cold. If we had been on the 

 other side of the hill, exposed to the full fury of the wind, we would 

 have been buried in the snow and suffocated." 



Such are the experiences of all travelling traders on the Yukon, 

 who encounter these wintry "poorgas" in the pursuit of their call- 

 ing every year of their lives spent in that great Alaskan moorland. 

 Familiarity with this subject never breeds contempt for it in the 

 minds of those hardy men that pain and privation to which these 

 characteristic storms subject all human beings who are caught and 

 chained on a tundra, or in the mountains, by their wild rushing 

 and bitterly cold breath, is never forgotten. 



On the shores of Norton's Sound are many low clayey bluffs, 

 which, as they are annually undermined by the surf and chiselled by 

 frost, fall in heavy crumbled masses upon the beach. This exposes 

 their long-concealed deposit of the tusks and bones of those pre- 

 glacial elephants, the mammoth and the mastodon. Such fossil ivory 

 has been used by all Innuits from time immemorial in making 

 their sleds and in tipping their spears, lances, and arrows. 



A party of Americans spent the summer of 1881 exploring the 

 country at the head of that deep indentation in the north shore of 

 Norton's Sound called Golovin Bay. They were miners, and en- 

 gaged in locating the sources from which the Innuits had been 

 bringing large masses of lead-ore with a micaceous sparkle. The 

 hope of a silver-mine had allured these hardy prospectors, who had 

 not reckoned, however, on what they would have to face during the 

 long winter, on the ice that was always left in the soil. Still, in the 

 summer this bay of Golovin is an attractive anchorage the most 

 agreeable landscape presented anywhere on our Arctic coast. Sev- 

 eral rivers empty into it, and on the slopes of the uplands of the 

 northwest side is a growth of white pines that reach a height of fif- 



