Snow fort

“ Leaping Horse has heard from his red brothers with whom he has spoken that trail from top of valley very bad when snow falls. Many Indians stopping too long at fort, to trade goods, have been swept away by snow-slides when caught in storm here. ”

“ When the fort is in the neighbourhood of a lake or river, fish have to be caught and preserved. This is done by salting them in summer, and freezing them as soon as the cold becomes intense enough. Numerous horses have to be attended to, and dogs trained for dragging the sleighs when the snow covers the ground, the only mode then possible of travelling. Sleighs, carts, snow-shoes, and harness of all sorts, have to be manufactured, and moccasins and winter clothing prepared. ”

“ In the northern and western coast provinces, where the snow falls to the depth of many feet and remains long on the ground, it forms the material of the children's playthings, and the theatre of many of their sports. Besides sliding on the ice, coasting with sleds, building snow-forts and [Pg 62] fighting mimic battles with snow-balls, they make many kinds of images and imitations of what they see and know. ”

“ Martin and I accompanied them for some distance on our snow-shoes.
“Now, lads, you have gone far enough,” said Mr Meredith. “It is not wise to make too long a journey at the commencement of winter, before your ankles are well accustomed to the straps of your snow-shoes. You will be getting the racquettes, and may knock up before you reach the fort.” ”

“ It faces you like a broad sheet of congealed snow and water about half-way up the lofty precipice, and then spreads out its arms on each side into seeming batteries and fortifications of undistinguishable rock and ice, as though winter had here ‘built a fortress for itself,’ seated in stern state, and amidst frowning horrors. As we advanced into the plain, and before it became dusk, we could discern at a distance the dark wood that skirts the glaciers of Mont-Blanc, the spire of Chamouni, and the bridges that cross the stream. ”

“ The story is of an incredible multiplicity of marks discovered in the morning of Feb. 8, 1855, in the snow, by the inhabitants of many towns and regions between towns. This great area must of course be disregarded by Prof. Owen and the other correlators. The tracks were in all kinds of unaccountable places: in gardens enclosed by high walls, and up on the tops of houses, as well as in the open fields. ”

“ If the wind rose still more, curtains of penetrating snow-crystals rose with it from the ground; then a snowstorm, which always comes from the north, might be expected, announcing itself by a lofty white appearance in the south, the violet colour and close proximity of the mountains, and low-hanging clouds. But still we risk the march forward against the thickening snow, until painful breathing and stiffening limbs warn us to pitch our tent. ”

“ Far away the splendour gleams, hanging like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the roof of rock, waving to the wind, or stooping down to touch the water of the mountain stream that dashes it with dew. The snow at evening, glowing with a sunset flush, is not more rosy-pure than this cascade of pendent blossoms. It loves to be alone—inaccessible ledges, chasms where winds combat, or moist caverns overarched near thundering falls, are the places that it seeks. ”

“ Yet we see big stacks of firewood piled near each farmhouse door; we see the cabin newly banked with earth against the frost; at blacksmith’s shop we see men hammering on well-used sled; alongside the road, awaiting the winter’s need, lies an upturned snowplow newly ironed; everywhere men are making ready for the cold. In a fortnight the highway across the Haukeli Fjeld will be blocked with new-fallen snow. In a month the jingling bells of sleighs and sledges will sound along the now verdant valley of the Baegna Elv. ”

“ After each storm the snow-plough piles it, often above one’s head, on both sides of the roads and sidewalks; we walk between high walls built of blocks and masses of blue-shadowed white.
The brightness is almost too great, through the middle of the day; it is dazzling; but about sunset a curious opaque look falls on the landscape; a flattening, till they are like the hues of old pastels, of all the delicate colors. The country has an appearance of almost infinite space, under the snow, and the wind carves out pure sharp wave-like curves of drift about the fields and hills. ”

“ No more grand views of snow-fields and ice-rivers. No more of nature’s battlemented and pinnacled ramparts and castles far above us while the storm was raging far below us. No more pleasant halts at mountain châlets, or on the turf by the huddling streamlet, in such haste to get down to the valley. ”

“ But, as I had left my coat in camp for the sake of having my limbs free in climbing, I soon was cold. The wind increased in violence, raising the snow in magnificent drifts that were drawn out in the form of wavering banners blowing in the sun. Toward the end of my stay a succession of small clouds struck against the summit rocks like drifting icebergs, darkening the air as they passed, and producing a chill as definite and sudden as if ice-water had been dashed in my face. This is the kind of cloud in which snow-flowers grow, and I turned and fled. ”

“ Well! it means that you are absolutely cut off here from any communication or intercourse with any one outside of that canyon. By this time the snow is five feet deep over the only trail by which one can pass in and out of that gateway. I am not alarming you, I hope, for there is no real physical danger; a place like this ought to be well garrisoned, and certainly is self-supporting so far as the mere necessities and even comforts are concerned. You have wood, water, cattle, and game at your command, but for two weeks at least you are completely isolated. ”

“ The gale had hardly been blowing for ten or fifteen minutes, when the snow began to whirl down. It came in the tiniest possible flakes, consisting this time of short needles that looked like miniature spindles, strung with the smallest imaginable globules of ice—no six-armed crystals that I could find so far. Many a snowstorm begins that way with us. And there was even here, in the chasm of the road, a swing and dance to the flakes that bespoke the force of the wind above. ”

“ By-and-by the snow-flakes pile more leisurely: they grow large and scattered, and come more slowly than before. The hills, that were brown, heave into sight—great, rounded billows of white. The gray woods look shrunken to half their height, and stand waving in the storm. The wind freshens, and scatters the light flakes that crown the burden of the snow; and as the day droops, a clear, bright sky of steel color cleaves the land and clouds, and sends down a chilling wind to bank the walls and to freeze the storm. ”

“ In the rigorous cold of winter, traversing innumerable miles on their snowshoes, sinking sometimes into the icy water, sleeping in the snow, carrying their supplies on their backs, they surprised the forts which they went to attack, where one would never have believed that men could execute so rash an enterprise. ”

“ A sharp north wind shook the bare branches of the trees that grew thick on both sides of the way, blew the snow in the ravines, and heaped it to huge snow-drifts, which threatened the traveller unacquainted with the locality with danger.
The wind grew every moment more sharp and cutting, the snow deeper, and the difficulty greater for the tired horses to draw their weary load. ”

“ Yet who shall attempt to draw them forth for another, or write down even a faint suggestion of their beauty for those by whom they have never been beheld? Surely at no time are the great snows endowed with more dignity, more of the impressiveness of visible size, more aspect of aloofness, of belonging to another and a nobler world, than when the full moon shines perfectly upon them. And then, too, how the snow-fields glisten over all their wide expanse, yet with a pale effulgence that does not paralyse the eye! ”

“ Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children is the snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in which their world melts into a white star ten million miles away. The man who can stand the test is a Snow Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or Moses’s carven tablets of stone.
Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the cañon of Big Lost River, and I urged my horse toward the Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was deepening. ”

“ All the interminable day they pushed on stoically through the soft, implacable snow-depths, but stopping ever more and more frequently to rest, as the cold and the toil together devoured their forces. ”

“ No, the winter has not yet come; but it is coming, for the muskrats are building. Let it come. Let the cold crawl stiff and gray across the meadow. Let the whirling snow curl like smoke about the pointed top of the little tepee down by the meadow ditch. Let the north wind do its worst. For what care the dwellers in that thick-walled lodge beneath the snow? Down under the water their doors are open; their roadways up the ditches as free as in the summer ”

“ The steady hum of the drifting snow, together with its movement, made the brain dizzy, and the two explorers generally found it necessary to form a camp when such a storm came on, the snow soon piling up against their shelter tent and effectually protecting them from the wind. Then, when the breeze had died away and the snow ceased moving, they were able to dig out their sledge and proceed. ”

“ The track of the road is an even wilderness of snow. Yet for the fifty or even one hundred miles that the peasant comes to this honey fair he finds his road, and battles gaily forward. Through drift, over stream, skirting the great forest, he goes on with many a slip and tumble, the dry snow blowing up and down in a Russian snow mist. ”

“ If the fine powdery snow-drifts are glossed with the ice of unbroken sun-glare, the runners strap iron crampets to their snow-shoes, and with a great jingling of the dog-bells, barking of the huskies, and yelling of the drivers, coast away for the leagueless levels of the desolate North. Frozen river-beds are the only path followed, for the high cliffs—almost like ramparts on the lower MacKenzie—shut off the drifting east winds that heap barricades of snow in one place and at another sweep the ground so clear that the sleighs pull heavy as stone. ”

“ But it is on the mountain tops, when they are laden with loose, dry snow and swept by a gale from the north, that the most magnificent storm scenery is displayed. The peaks along the axis of the Range are then decorated with resplendent banners, some of them more than a mile long, shining, streaming, waving with solemn exuberant enthusiasm as if celebrating some surpassingly glorious event. ”

“ Great crevasses marvellously coloured in their depths yawn all about. You wind your way amongst them, creeping over snow-bridges and under impending walls and pinnacles of ice, all decked with sparkling icicles. Finally, you emerge on to some gentler-sloping, wide-expanding field of spotless snow, that only a gentle undulation diversifies with the most delicately displayed modelling. All around are steep slopes of snow or ice, cliffs of newly-riven rock, avalanche tracks and heaps of ruin. The details of the high peaks can be distinguished, their overhanging cornices, their furrowed sides. ”

“ Moreover, Alpine climbing has revealed the wonders of the kingdom of frost and snow. The imprisoned colours of glacier ice, the ruin of its fantastic towers and tottering minarets, the splendour of its fretted and icicle-hung caves are no longer familiar only to Arctic travellers. The overpowering height of some peak soaring majestically heavenwards can never have been felt as it is by those who understand through experience the dimensions and meaning of each rock and patch of snow on its ridges. ”

“ Nowhere else have I felt so rapturous a quality of stillness: the frozen snow lies taut under the grip of the immense energy of the frost: no avalanches slipping from the snow-laden flanks of the Jungfrau under the hot beams of the sun, startle the valley with sonorous thunder: the wind stirs not the lightest needle of the pines; the villagers are home from the frozen fields, and doors are shut. ”

“ The snow lay deep in the dry ravines and streaked the sea-like surface with jagged lines of foam between which lay broad spaces clean-swept by the gale. Heavy masses of cloud, dark and forbidding, draped the sky from zenith to horizon, and the air was thick with spiteful gusts and spits of snow, crackling against the window-panes, making fierce dashes every time a car door was hurriedly opened, and driving about the platforms like a myriad swarm of fleecy and aggressive gnats raging for battle. ”

“ The ground is almost bare for half a mile to the west, however; and they could come in on the grade. Of course they can come on snow-shoes at any time and go everywhere. I cannot even hope to keep out of having trouble with them. I have made no answer to this letter, and can’t make up my mind whether it would be best to do so or not.
I kept up work all the week on the fortifications, when the weather would permit; for there has been another great blizzard, the worst of the winter so far. I even worked all day yesterday, though it was New-Year’s. ”

“ An inch or two of snow may fall even in mid-summer. In winter the snow covers the ground to a great depth, as we can tell by the trees. Nothing grows but rather stunted fir and pine and a little grass of the most hardy variety. The rounds of the Park are then made by mounting the cavalry on the ski, or Norwegian snow-shoe, and with its aid men travel the desolate snow-clad wilderness from one “shack” to another. ”