2 
-A.pril 3 
A BLIZZARD. 
BY BOOSE. 
We are in the midst of another blizzard. Do you 
know what they are? Did you ever see one: feel one; 
so that you could say, with Eneas to Dido, as to Troy, 
“ Magna pars fui-." I played a big part in it myself? 
Well: the thermometer at 28“ below zero: the wind 
90 miles an hour: just two hours between Sioux City and 
this place, 180 miles, by the shortest cut across the 
country: the air so filled with ice particles that you can 
see but a few rods off : not snow, but ice, ky lyiicula, 
which winged with the wind and with the impetus of a 
hundred miles, come like so many needle points against 
the skin; with a ping and a sting that are very torture; 
like that of the noted Lemuel Gulliver, when the Lilli- 
putians made him the butt for their marksmanship, and 
filled every pore of his skin with their tiny arrows: that 
is a blizzard: the terror of all animate nature, man and 
beast in the Northwest. 1 send you some thoughts on 
one. 
This particular specimea came early this morning. 
There- is a stick of wood lying against the stove-hearth, 
has lain there all night, two large dry sticks of hard 
maple burning in the stove, yet a bunch of snow on the 
stick outside, not one foot from the heated stove-plates 
as fresh and unmelted as when I brought it in last 
evening for the morning fire. There stands my gun in 
the corner, eight feet from a hot fire; I take it up; the 
barrel chills my hands, and underneath the clasp of my 
hand the melted frost rises and stands in sweat on the 
surface. Is this possible? Is that the same gun which 
only five months ago,*in the open sunshine, I was glad 
to shift to my shoulder, the heated barrels so burned my 
hand? Is this the same region where, at that time, 
many a day at 10 A..M., I was glad to crawl under the 
shade of a haystack to escape the fiery sun? Where 
driving to a neighbor’s funeral in the country, an um- 
brella was an absolute necessity against a sun at 104o 
in the shade, and, the feet had to be drawn back from 
outside of the shadow line of the umbrella and kept 
under the buggy-seat, with all the sensation of blistering? 
There lies “Ponto” with his thick setter coat, delighting, 
at any point above zero, to roll in the snow ; breaking 
the ice unflinchingly in a pond on his way to a goose or 
auck; now fairly quailing under the icy blast, his ears 
and eyelashes coated to their ends with frost, and glad, 
poor fellow, of a chance to lie near a fire. My boy runs 
in, reporting poor old “ Bess," my pointer, in a fit from 
the cold. I rush out and sure enough the faithful crea- 
ture is in spasms, and nearly rigid; I roll her in a 
blanket, carry her bodily into the house, and only by a 
half hour’s heating and care, bring back a life which 
represents to me some of the most absorbing incidents 
of field and wood that have fallen to me in a lifetime’s 
shooting. My favorite mare stands in her stable; more 
thsin average in its closeness, and a band of frost, like 
a surcingle, passes from flank to flank over her back, and 
another from one forearm over to the other. That is 
what I have never seen anything but a blizzard bring 
upon an animal. Her long lashes hang, weighted with 
frost, over her hazel eye; and, as she turns her head 
at my coming, she does all but say to me in words, “ it 
is very cold out here this morning.” 
I venture down the street. The icy sleet hunts^ut 
every incn of expo^ed skin. You can only have enough 
loop-hole in your head wrappings to see your way, and 
that but at intervals; for the fierce blast threatens to 
tear your very shawl from your shoulders, and five min- 
ute’s exposure would leave j’our ears as white as lep- 
rosy. You gasp for very breath, under the force of the 
hurricane, and the air itself seems frozen as you inhale 
it. Out of a population of 3,000, I see three solitary 
persons on the street, flitting like spectres across it, and 
losing not one practicable moment in doing their errand 
and getting within doors. Business is suspended ; 
travel ceases, and to attempt the prairies for five miles 
is to tempt your death. It is not the cold, mind you. 
that does the business, it is the awful gale and the ice 
laden air. A stranger can have little idea of the ex- 
hausting,, paralysing eflect of one of these storms of 
terror. In one of them, a Norwegian of this region, 
started from his house to see to his cattle. His barn 
was some thirty rods from his house. Going or coming 
he got benumbed, confused, lost, and was found next 
morning a mound of ice, at aquarter of a mile from home. 
His wife becoming alarmed at his absence started for 
the barn in search. The same appalling fate befel her, 
and she was found dead, not ten rods from her dwelling. 
You may well believe that that house is not passed sum- 
mer or winter without the sad memorial of the fatal 
storm rising fresh in the minds of the traveller. After 
one of these visitations I was riding over the country 
with the mail bo}-. The day was bitter to the last de- 
gree. In a comer of the fence utood a cow, motionless. 
I said, “'that man does not look well after hia cattle?” 
“Oh, sir, that cow has been there three weeks. In the 
last blizzard, she wa* frozen as she stands, and has 
never been moved!” It was a ghastly sight! She 
seemed, as standing with the wonted patience of the 
gentle animal, and chewing her cud, but, alas, her glassy 
eyes had no “speculation in them,” and the seeming pa- 
tience was the palsy of death. You read in the East, 
the sad, sad tales of death like this on the prairie; and 
probably, have difficulty in realizing how it can come, 
above all, so suddenly. To western men, these ice 
gales of the prairie are the source of all things dreadful. 
They come with appalling suddenness. The morning 
may be of one peculiar mildness. From every quarter 
tue farmers are tempted by the day, to visit the town 
for business or trade; in one half hour's time, the treach- 
erous calm breaks into a Northwester; the thermom- 
eter falls fifty' degrees ; the air is filled with the frozen 
particles, through which the sun may shine with seem- 
ing cheer over head. In an hour’s time the road tracks 
are obliterated. The tempest fairly howls in its rage. 
Man and beast cower under the force of the gale. The 
bitterness of the cold, and the pelting, blinding ice- 
darts; and alas for him, who, anxious for home and 
family, with numbed fingers and dazed vLion and 
frame shrinking into itself for the cold, sets out over the 
unfenced and now trackless prairie. The horse, faith- 
ful and sagacious at other times, now left to himself 
for his course, cannot face the maddening sleet, and 
turns from it, and travels down the wmd. Yet, that 
way, may, and often does, lie death to man and beast. 
Again, we say to ourselves, is it possible ? Is it the 
same country? Why, last summer, for three long weeks, 
the thermometer averaged 90 - in the shade; rising twice 
to 102 ^ and 104 = . Not a cloud in the sky all that 
time, and not a drop of dew by night ! Now, on the 
same spot, a change of 120 ^ , and a whole region won- 
dering whether those weltering weeks were not after all, 
a dream! 
And how about our game birds, after a winter of 
storms like this ? Woe for our poor little friend. Bob 
White! He had multiplied, for the last three years, till 
he had literally become abundant. In the timber, on 
the prairie, on all the prairie roads, along every creek 
and run fringed with alder, cottonwood and willow, 
they met you at every turn. Robert is a small affair be- 
side the Cupido Boschas, Brant and Canadensis — we 
are absorbing learning with the years! — and, save in 
dearth of these, we do not turn aside for him; are, in 
fact, often disgusted when, with! 1-2 drachms and 1 oz. 
cartridge No. 4, we are threading carefully stubble or 
cornfield for the imminent grouse or mallard, our dog 
draws, stands; we hold our breath for the up-whirling 
grouse with lusty plumpness, or mallard with his red 
breast and startled and startling quack! and nothing 
rises but a bevy of Bob Whites, it may be a dozen, it 
may be a hundred.. We drop our gun, cry “Pshaw!” 
try and hide our disgust from “Ponto,” who asserts it 
genuine scent and a proper and move on. Still it 
is pleasant to see the dear little fellow crossing one’s path, 
trailing the road ahead of us, relieving the stillness of 
the prairie ride with his shrill, cheery “bob-hoit !” and 
its Icnesomeuess by his beautiful form and colors on the 
post or rail as we drive by. Now, not one in ten sur- 
vives the winter. Out on the prairie they are virtually 
extinct, and are picked up by hundreds in the huddled 
bevies in fence corners or brush where they gathered at 
night and slept the sleep that knows no waking. Farm- 
er friends tell me that the poor little fellows are found 
in their yards, in the morning, some already stone, some 
reeling about in stupor, others with the death dizziness 
not yet upon them. The frozen are eaten, the chilled 
are warmed into life by the housewife, and dismissed 
again, and those yet well are left to weather it if they 
may, with handfuls of corn thrown out to them in 
charity, save where they come under the remorseless 
clutches of those who are human in form alone; then, 
the dead, the dying are swept by one fate, and trap or 
gun finishes the rest. There are such men! “ O, my 
soul, come not thou into their secret ! with their assem- 
bly, mine honor, be not thou united !” I give chapter 
and verse, (Gen. xlix, 6,) for it applies; and such men 
are blood lineal with Simeon and Levi. 
The woods and valleys of our streams have preserved 
enough for continuance of the dear little bird; but it 
will be three years before prairie and forest will be vocal 
with their morning and evening call. 
The grouse, gallant fellow that he is, has suffered, but 
to small extent, vast flocks yet survive in all parts of 
our State, to give the usual return for August and fall 
shooting. It is their wont to plunge into the deepest 
snow-drift at nightfall, and a foot under the surface, if 
the prowling coyote or swift do not hunt them out, they 
spend the night in a quiet as deep, from the tempest 
that rages above them, as the human sleeper within 
walls of brick and stone. But at times the drift blows 
from them, or is not deep enough for a perfect cover- 
ing. Then a blizzard is their death. A friend of mine 
drove in from the prairie one day this winter, with a 
half-dozen, stark and stiff, which he had drawn from 
the snow by the uncovered and frozen neck and head. 
It IS a painful mockery of life to see all its marks and 
signs, while, in fact, the bright, clear sun looks down, 
without a ray of warmth, on dying and dead. And you 
have the painful thought that, under this same cold, re- 
maining out but a few hours, the same sun would look 
down as bright and mocking on your own cold form, as 
before your eyes, he does on the humbler animal forms 
from which life is gone forever. 
All this time that the Ice-King has reigned, and while 
the poor hungry grouse would light by dozens on the 
corn cribs by the house, would almost lake corn from 
your baud, the trappers have been at work ! Asainst 
all law, against all decency, against humanity itself, 
they Lave plied their nefarious war on the starving 
grouse, and men in our towns with heads as high as 
any, and ready for any office the dear people may give 
them, and going to and fro with a perfect bluster of 
honor, aud the ready criticism on all in others that is 
not honor, will buy these birds. Brought in by stealth, 
hidden in sacks, then packed in box and barrel with tur- 
kej's, etc., and branded “Poultry !” the word, a tiuth; 
the thing, a lie ! — woujd it could be branded on their 
brows ! — they are sent, not to Chicaeo, for then Klein- 
man is on their trail ; not to New Y'ork, for true men 
are after them there ; but for England ; a part of the 
178 tons sent off abroad after season, and in defiance of 
law. So we go ! But, gentlemen, your days are num- 
bered ; your deeds are known ; true men are on your 
trail, and by another winter, with our wretched law in 
proper shape, we will have “poultry” mean poultry ; 
the aegis of the law shall be thrown over the gallant 
birds, and they shall sleep in peace ! 
RECOLLECTIOXS OF MARAJO ISLAXD. 
BY CHARLES LESDEK. 
Right on the mouth of the Amazon river, with in a 
few degrees north and south of the Equator, lies the 
great island of Marajo. Its peculiar situation seems to 
have encroached upon the natural flow of this majestic 
stream, which is divided thereby into two main 
branches, the Amazon proper and ihe so-called Para 
river. The latter is regarded by many as an independent 
channel, a sort of a continuation of the Tocantins, which 
empties itself into the Para, a few hundred miles above 
the city of Para, and swelled by this enormous addi- 
tional volume pursues an even, unchecked flow to the 
sea, and defines in some measure the southern shores of 
Marajo. This island is very low, during the rainy sea- 
son almost inundated, with a surface soil of muddy 
deposit, intermixed vyith vegetable loam and light 
sand, which rest upon a foundation of dark red 
argillaceous sandstone, which characterizes the entire 
extent of the enormous valley of the Amazon Its 
eastern shores are continually changing; large tracts of 
newly formed land are sometimes swept away outright 
during high spring tides, while again, when circum- 
stances favor, new lands are added by accumulation 
and consolidation of the sediment of the river. These 
antagonistic agencies, however, only check the rapid 
growth of the coast lines, which extend slowly but 
steadily on account of the weakened flow of the stream 
near its mouth, whereby all the coarser and heavier 
particles, borne along so far, sink, and form as far as 
fifteen miles seaward enormous mud banks, which are 
indicated on all marine charts. The sea acting upon 
these during high equinoctial tides, raises their sub- 
merged level, trees and other bulky vegetable masses 
floating along with the ebb tides will strand on them, 
and form admirable barriers for future lodgment of 
sediment, which soon develops itself from fluctuating 
mud banks into dry land. The first vegetation which 
can maintain its existence on these is the Mangrove, since 
