196 OUR AKCTIC PROVINCE. 



Paul Island (1872-73) was one of great severity, and, according 

 to the natives, such as is very seldom experienced. Cold as it was, 

 however, the lowest marking of the thermometer was only 12° Fahr. 

 below zero, and that lasted but a few hours during a single day 

 in February, while the mean of that month was 18° above. I found 

 that March was the coldest month. Then the mean was 12° above, 

 and I have since learned that March continues to be the meanest 

 month of the year. The lowest average of a usual winter ranges 

 from 22° to 26^ above zero ; but these quiet figures are simply in- 

 adequate to impress the reader with this exceeding discomfort of 

 a winter in that locality. It is the wind that tortures and cripples 

 out-door exercise there, as it does on all the sea-coasts and islands 

 of Alaska. It is blowing, blowing, from every point of the compass 

 at all times ; it is an everlasting succession of furious gales, laden 

 with snow and sleety spiculte, whirling in great drifts to-day, while 

 to-morrow the wind will blow from a quarter directly opposite, and 

 reverse its drift-building action of the day preceding. 



Without being cold enough to suffei*, one is literally confined 

 and chained to his room from December until April by this ^olian 

 tension. I remember very well that, dui-ing the winter of 1872-73, 

 I was watching, with all the impatience which a man in full health 

 and tired of confinement can possess, every opportunity to seize 

 uj)ou quiet intervals between the storms, in which I could make 

 short trips along those tracks over which I was habituated to walk 

 during the summer ; but in all that hyemal season I got out but 

 three times, and then only by the exertion of great physical energy. 

 On a day in March, for example, the velocity of the wind at St. 

 Paul, recorded by one of the signal-service anemometers, was at the 

 rate of eighty-eight miles per hour, with as low a temperature as 

 —4° ! This particular wind-storm, with snow, blew at such a velocity 

 for six days without an hour's cessation, while the natives passed 

 from house to house crawling on all fours. No man could stand up 

 against it, and no man wanted to. At a much higher temperature 

 — say at 15° or 16° above zero — with the wind blowing only twenty 

 or twenty-five miles an hour, it is necessary, when journeying, to 

 be most thoroughly wrapped up so as to guard against freezing. 



As I have said, there are here virtually but two seasons — winter 

 and summer. To the former belongs November and the following 

 months up to the end of April, with a mean temperature of 20° to 

 28° ; while the transition of summer is but a very slight elevation 



